Blog - BiZZdesign EA and Business Process Management Software

How to Mitigate Risk without Slowing Down Digital Transformation

May 15, 2019/0 Comments/in Adaptive Enterprise, BiZZdesign, Blog, Digital Transformation, Enterprise Architecture, Enterprise Architecture Software, Security Architecture /by Raz Mitache

Cybersecurity is one of the key issues the business world has to deal with, and its importance will only rise. As technology steadily evolves to take over increasingly more aspects of business (and personal) life, the need for security is being made pressingly apparent by incidents such as the breaches at Yahoo and Experian, or the WannaCry ransomware attack. Every year, a huge number of companies are hacked. Here are just some of the most famous cases to give you an idea. The result? Countless people worldwide being affected, with the cost of poor cybersecurity easily running in the millions.

Architecture and Talent: a Path to Fostering the Right Skills and Expertise

May 1, 2019/0 Comments/in Adaptive Enterprise, BiZZdesign, Blog, Business Capability, Enterprise Architecture, Enterprise Architecture Software, Enterprise Architecture Tools /by Raz Mitache

Talent is rare

Well, the right talent is, anyway. As new technologies make their way into the marketplace and their adoption becomes generalized, organizations are experiencing a personnel squeeze that poses a risk to both ongoing operations as well future plans. The newer (and more sophisticated) a technology, the scarcer the talent to support it, and ultimately the more difficult it is for an enterprise to ensure it doesn’t miss out in favor of the competition.

Building a Digital Twin of Your Organization

April 15, 2019/0 Comments/in Adaptive Enterprise, Agile, Application Portfolio Management, ArchiMate, Blog, BPMN, Business Process Modeling, Digital Transformation /by Marc Lankhorst

In previous blogs, we have written about the combination of structure and data to create novel insights into your enterprise, and about how this can support creating a Digital Twin of your organization. To reiterate, a digital twin is a digital representation of a real-world entity or system.

A Solution for Ailing Retailers: Change Your Business Model

April 3, 2019/0 Comments/in ArchiMate, BiZZdesign, Blog, Business Model Management, Digital Transformation /by Raz Mitache

All over the world, retailers seem to be having a hard time lately. In the UK, for instance, over the last several years, their woes have become part of the national narrative, alongside the lack of housing, or an underfunded NHS. Whether in the local paper, online or on television, one hears about retailers’ troubles regularly – at times it seems the only thing disappearing faster than retail stores in Britain are the polar ice caps.

How to Get AI Right Using Enterprise Architecture

March 20, 2019/0 Comments/in Blog, Business Capability, Capability Based Planning, Enterprise Architecture, Enterprise Architecture Software, Enterprise Architecture Tools /by Raz Mitache

Artificial intelligence (AI) is probably the most important new technology today. It has clear use cases, and the value that it’s produced so far is indisputable – just think of the digital assistant on your phone, driverless cars, even Gmail uses it. But it’s no longer the sole remit of huge tech companies. With AI becoming more established, many organizations are starting to get access to and try their hand at running artificial intelligence initiatives. The business world is after all similar to an arms race, and having the latest ‘weapon’ to help you get ahead of competitors is an irresistible prospect. The forecast? A large wave of new AI deployments in the near future… and with it, a lot of heartache.

Making the Case for Enterprise Architecture

March 14, 2019/0 Comments/in BiZZdesign, Blog, EA Business Case, Enterprise Architecture Software, Enterprise Architecture Tools /by Marc Lankhorst

Making the case for Enterprise Architecture in your organization is not always straightforward. That’s because management and, generally speaking, business stakeholders tend to want numbers up front, which is impossible to calculate beforehand. Now, there are plenty of studies that have been done that prove the value of Enterprise Architecture, but that’s only possible after engaging in the practice.

Business Architecture with ArchiMate

March 6, 2019/0 Comments/in ArchiMate, Blog, Business Architecture, Business Capability, Business Model Management, Business Process Management, Business Process Modeling, Capability Based Planning, Enterprise Architecture, Enterprise Architecture Software, Enterprise Architecture Tools /by Marc Lankhorst

Today, organizations need to move at speed and adapt their business to a volatile environment, while at the same time dealing with many inside and outside stakeholders and influences, ranging from customers and partners in the ecosystem to regulators, competitors, and the uncertain effects of politics (viz. Brexit or the US-China trade war). To be an adaptive enterprise, business architecture is an indispensable discipline. Without an architectural approach to your business, you will quickly get mired in the myriad changes and effects, without a clear path forward.

Agile and EA

February 27, 2019/0 Comments/in Agile, Agile Development, BiZZdesign, Blog, Enterprise Architecture Software, Enterprise Architecture Tools /by Marc Lankhorst

It seems like an unlikely pair, doesn’t it – Agile and Enterprise Architecture? Yet, as Agile awakens to the reality of having to move fast but in concert with other parts of the organization, and EA itself becomes more engaging and business goals-oriented, it actually makes a lot of sense to want to combine the two. Both practices bring significant benefits to an organization. Together they promise to unlock efficiencies that would increase business performance to a whole new level. Who could say no to a mix of organizational agility and solid strategic decision making? That would boost any business or digital initiative.

How Enterprise Architects Can Contribute to Innovation

February 20, 2019/0 Comments/in Adaptive Enterprise, BiZZdesign, Blog, Business Model Management, Business Process Management, Business Process Modeling, Enterprise Architecture, Enterprise Architecture Tools, Innovation /by Marc Lankhorst

In our ongoing series on high-speed organizations and the Adaptive Enterprise, we have written several times about the need to foster innovation in your organization. So how can enterprise architects contribute to that innovation?

Analyzing and Changing your Enterprise – Game vs. Play

February 13, 2019/0 Comments/in ArchiMate, BiZZdesign, Blog, Business Process Management, Business Process Modeling, Digital Transformation, Enterprise Architecture, Enterprise Architecture Software, Enterprise Architecture Tools, Enterprise Studio, Resources /by Marc Lankhorst and Peter Matthijssen

Much of what we do in the world of enterprise architecture and business process management is based on pre-defined analysis and design techniques, like a game that has a well-defined set of rules and operates within a bounded, predictable universe. You know what the aim of the game is (check-mate your opponent, or reduce the cost of your application landscape, for example) and follow the rules to get the optimal outcome.

5 Biggest Mistakes EAs Make

February 7, 2019/0 Comments/in Adaptive Enterprise, BiZZdesign, Blog, Enterprise Architecture Software, Enterprise Architecture Tools /by Marc Lankhorst

Enterprise architecture done well holds terrific benefits for organizations dealing with the challenges of an increasingly digital world. All enterprise architecture initiatives are not created equal, however. While some grow and develop into important business success enablers, others may simply flounder after a while.

APIs – Managing Challenges with a Portfolio Management Approach

January 22, 2019/0 Comments/in API, API Economy, API Management, Application Portfolio Management, BiZZdesign, Blog, Digital Transformation, Enterprise Architecture Software, Enterprise Architecture Tools, Portfolio Management, Project Portfolio Management /by Nick Reed

Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) have emerged in recent years as a key enabler of digital transformation and enterprise agility.

Agile Architecture: Using ArchiMate® with the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe®)

January 9, 2019/0 Comments/in ArchiMate, BiZZdesign, Blog, BPM, Business Process Management, Business Process Modeling, Enterprise Architecture, Enterprise Architecture Software, Enterprise Architecture Tools, Gartner, TOGAF /by Marc Lankhorst

In the past I’ve written several blog posts on enterprise architecture in an agile world, most recently together with my colleague Fabian on our tool support for Agile and DevOps, and a bit longer ago on the use of ArchiMate in an agile context. In this blog post, I want to revisit the latter subject and add some newer insights and ideas with SAFe®.

The Digital Twin Organization: Can Enterprise Architecture Help?

November 21, 2018/0 Comments/in ArchiMate, BiZZdesign, Blog, BPM, Business Process Management, Business Process Modeling, Enterprise Architecture, Enterprise Architecture Software, Enterprise Architecture Tools, Gartner, TOGAF /by Raz Mitache

One of the more interesting developments in the tech space taking place right now is the emergence of digital twin technology. For those of you asking What is a digital twin? right now, allow us to elaborate.

Combining Structure and Data: Business Intelligence 2.0

November 15, 2018/0 Comments/in ArchiMate, BiZZdesign, Blog, BPM, Business Process Management, Business Process Modeling, Enterprise Architecture, Enterprise Architecture Software, Enterprise Architecture Tools, Gartner /by Marc Lankhorst

In previous blog posts, we have written about various analysis techniques that help you get more value from your models, as well as dashboarding techniques to visualize data in all kinds of ways. These two topics point to a more general theme: the new possibilities you get from enriching your models with various types of external data. We call this Business Intelligence 2.0.

100 Questions to Ace an Enterprise Architect Job Interview

November 1, 2018/0 Comments/in ArchiMate, BiZZdesign, Blog, BPM, Cloud, Enterprise Architecture, Enterprise Architecture Software, Enterprise Architecture Tools, Portfolio Management, Project Portfolio Management, Roadmapping, SaaS, Security Architecture, TOGAF /by Raz Mitache

Interviews are where jobs are won or lost. A résumé – especially a strong one – will ensure you get your foot in the door but to actually secure the position you need to shine during the interview, which means being prepared. Preparation makes you look knowledgeable and relaxed, two traits that people generally prize in their work colleagues.

Planning and Roadmapping: Advanced Functionality for Time-Based Analysis

October 24, 2018/0 Comments/in ArchiMate, BiZZdesign, Blog, Business Process Modeling, Enterprise Architecture, Enterprise Architecture Software, Enterprise Architecture Tools, Roadmapping /by Marc Lankhorst and Sven van Dijk

In the two previous installments, we discussed planning and roadmapping in the context of enterprise architecture, and how you can use the concepts of the ArchiMate language to model your roadmaps. We showed how you can model the evolution of your enterprise at coarse-grained level, using concepts such as ArchiMate’s ‘plateau’. In this installment, we will discuss more fine-grained modeling of change in Enterprise Studio. Specifically, we will show you how you can model the lifecycles of individual elements of your architecture. Moreover, our platform supports analysis based on life cycles and the dependencies between elements, for instance, to find conflicts in your transition plans.

Behavioral Economics & Enterprise Architecture (2): Improve Decision Making

October 17, 2018/0 Comments/in BiZZdesign, Blog, Business Process Management, Enterprise Architecture, Enterprise Architecture Software, Enterprise Architecture Tools /by Tim Vehof

The promise of enterprise architecture is that it helps improve decision making. Typically, the role of the enterprise architect is to advise and enable other stakeholders to make better decisions. Therefore, Enterprise Architecture – more than anything else – is a social discipline, in that it demands social skills and interaction in order for practitioners to successfully engage with stakeholders and change their behavior. Read more

Planning and Roadmapping : Modeling in ArchiMate

October 9, 2018/0 Comments/in ArchiMate, BiZZdesign, Blog, Enterprise Architecture, Enterprise Architecture Software, Enterprise Architecture Tools, Roadmapping /by Marc Lankhorst and Sven van Dijk

In our previous blog post on planning and roadmapping, we discussed the general idea of planning and roadmapping in the context of enterprise architecture and capability-based planning. We addressed different levels of roadmaps, ranging from short-term sprints of a few weeks to long-term, multi-year roadmaps. We also provided some first insights into the use of ArchiMate concepts for modeling roadmaps. In this installment, we want to go deeper into different ways of modeling the evolution of your architecture.

Planning and Roadmapping : Introduction

September 25, 2018/0 Comments/in ArchiMate, BiZZdesign, Blog, Business Process Management, Business Process Modeling, Enterprise Architecture, Enterprise Architecture Software, Enterprise Architecture Tools, Roadmapping /by Marc Lankhorst and Sven van Dijk

A key driver for management in general and enterprise architecture in particular is to get a better grip on the future, on the evolution of your enterprise. A common technique to support this is roadmapping. A roadmap is a strategic plan that shows the main steps or milestones needed to achieve a desired outcome. It articulates the strategic direction of your enterprise and shows the path forward. It helps you identify what is needed and what the main dependencies and priorities are, and serves as a communication instrument to align the organization along a common course of action.