Blog - BiZZdesign EA and Business Process Management Software

Process Optimization Challenges, Part 2: Know Your Audience

January 7, 2020/0 Comments/in BiZZdesign, Enterprise Architecture /by Raz Mitache

Welcome to the second part of this series on process optimization challenges. Last time we went over the importance of simplicity in process, and more specifically how looking at the big picture when affecting change can ensure that you make a more significant improvement.

Process Optimization Challenges, Part 1: Tackle the Root Cause

December 17, 2019/0 Comments/in Agile, Lean Management, Roadmapping /by Raz Mitache

Excessive complexity is something that most organizations over a certain size have to deal with. The more successful you are, the bigger the enterprise gets, and the farther removed it gradually becomes from the original core tenets that probably made it successful in the first place. So how does this hurt a company? Well, if we’re talking about the IT estate, erratic expansion and the resulting unmanaged complexity makes its presence felt in the form of higher IT management costs, increased risk, and a slow rate of innovation.

The Roles of Enterprise Architects in Innovation – Part 1

December 11, 2019/0 Comments/in Enterprise Architecture, Innovation /by Marc Lankhorst and Matthijs Scholten

Earlier this year, we published a blog about how enterprise architects can contribute to innovation. In this blog series, we want to further explore the different roles enterprise architects can play in innovation in their organization. In general, we see an increasing need for and contribution of an architectural perspective on innovation. That’s because most large organizations have become pretty complex beasts and innovating there is not always easy. Lots of moving parts need to be coordinated but not many people have the necessary overview. This is typically where enterprise architecture can add value.

Standards of Security for EA Vendors

December 4, 2019/0 Comments/in Blog, Enterprise Architecture, Security Architecture /by Raz Mitache

We’ve spoken about security on this blog before. We addressed how you can build a better protected organization with the help of enterprise architecture, for instance, and also collated our thoughts on improving cybersecurity with EA in a whitepaper (have a read if you haven’t already). That’s because we are genuinely preoccupied with the topic and we make it our business to not only adhere to high security standards ourselves, but also create awareness within our industry around this important subject.

Turn the Ship Around – Break Free from the Shackles of the Present

November 28, 2019/0 Comments/in BiZZdesign, Blog, Enterprise Architecture, Innovation, Roadmapping /by James Goodwin and Jan Jaap Elskamp

Background

Across the globe, Enterprise Architecture teams deliver three key organizational functions. Firstly, they provide understanding of their current organization; this enables the organization to effectively control and regulate its existing operating model. Secondly, those teams provide a window into the organization’s potential, insight into where value can be found and unlocked, and an insight into the future. Thirdly, EA teams drive, enable and support the iterative improvement of this direction setting insight, and with that they translate strategy into reality, creating real business value.

A Leading EA Tool Comes with Extras

November 20, 2019/0 Comments/in Blog, Enterprise Architecture Software, Enterprise Architecture Tools, Enterprise Studio /by Raz Mitache

The recent release of the annual Gartner MQ Report for Enterprise Architecture Tools provided all of us here at BiZZdesign with a very pleasant piece of news. For the fourth year in a row we were acknowledged as a Leader, and for the second time the vendor with the highest Ability to Execute score.

The Definitive EA Tool RFP Template

November 12, 2019/0 Comments/in Blog, Enterprise Architecture, Enterprise Architecture Tools /by Raz Mitache

A Request for Proposal (or Request for Information) is a critical stage in any business transformation process. With the need to procure a professional tool onto which to anchor the enterprise architecture practice clearly identified, the next step is just as important – but not so straightforward. It is at this junction point that one must ask themselves – How do we identify the best offer out there? What should/shouldn’t we prioritize? And is it possible to make it more difficult for ourselves, or perhaps even endanger the transformation initiative through our own fault?

ArchiMate 3.1: The New Version of the Standard

November 5, 2019/0 Comments/in ArchiMate, Blog, Enterprise Architecture, Gartner /by Marc Lankhorst

At the Open Group conference in Amsterdam in November 2019, the latest version of the ArchiMate modeling language for enterprise architecture was released. Version 3.1 is an update to the previous major version 3.0 (released in 2016). Despite being ‘just’ a minor version update, it holds a number of useful additions and improvements for EA practitioners.

Cloud Migration with the Help of EA

October 16, 2019/0 Comments/in Blog, Cloud, Enterprise Architecture, Enterprise Architecture Software, Enterprise Architecture Tools /by Raz Mitache

A great many organizations have migrated their workloads (databases, back office systems, web applications etc.) to the cloud over the last decade or so. A great many more have still to do so, either because they’re dealing with industry-specific regulatory requirements or, more likely, because of the disruption this change would cause. In any case, the benefits of a cloud migration are well-known at this point, so we won’t waste time talking about those.

On Layers and Abstraction Levels in the ArchiMate Language

October 9, 2019/0 Comments/in ArchiMate, BiZZdesign, Blog, Enterprise Architecture, TOGAF /by Marc Lankhorst

Our recent blog post on abstraction levels in architecture models resulted in a lively discussion on LinkedIn. As part of that discussion, the notion of layering was questioned, and in particular the layers that are built into the ArchiMate language. In this post I want to clarify the thinking behind the language structure.

Business Friendly Dashboards

September 25, 2019/0 Comments/in ArchiMate, Blog, Enterprise Architecture, Enterprise Architecture Software, Enterprise Architecture Tools /by Rob Kroese

One of the biggest challenges in making Enterprise Architecture successful is ensuring proper communication with business stakeholders. Enterprise Architecture is quite often perceived as a discipline of the IT organization (where unfortunately also many EA teams are operating), and the traditional EA diagrams are not always the best visualizations for business stakeholders. To create better alignment with the business organization, it is important to create business-friendly visualizations, both from format and content perspective. This will help in improving the maturity of your EA practice and establish it as an enabler of strategic decision making and continuous change.

Define and Assess Digital KPIs with Enterprise Architecture

September 11, 2019/0 Comments/in Blog, Digital Transformation, Enterprise Architecture /by Raz Mitache

Digital transformation initiatives are relatively commonplace these days. That’s because there is a pretty wide understanding that you can’t really keep doing what you’ve been doing and expect to be successful in the long run – not with technology advancing so quickly, consumers being so demanding, and a rapidly falling barrier to entry. That much organizations have internalized. Read more

An Overview of the Levels of Abstraction in Enterprise Architecture

September 4, 2019/0 Comments/in Adaptive Enterprise, Agile, ArchiMate, Blog, Enterprise Architecture, Enterprise Architecture Tools, Enterprise Studio /by Bernd Ihnen and Marc Lankhorst

Organizations today are faced with an ever-increasing speed of change. To enable faster transformation, they implement agile methods, which impact the whole enterprise. Obviously, change need to be communicated, but one cannot document all the details because otherwise they would be outdated the next week, or perhaps the very next day. Read more

Why a CMDB Cannot Power Your Digital Transformation

August 21, 2019/0 Comments/in Digital Transformation, Enterprise Architecture, Enterprise Architecture Software, Enterprise Architecture Tools, Gartner /by Raz Mitache

“Do I need an EA tool to deliver digital transformation, or can I just rely on a CMDB?”. Or, in the same vein “What is the difference between an EA tool and a CMDB?”. And “Why buy an EA tool if I have a CMDB?”.

Agile ArchiMate®: Intentional Architecture

August 14, 2019/0 Comments/in Agile, Agile Development, ArchiMate, BiZZdesign, Blog /by Marc Lankhorst

In my previous blog post on using the ArchiMate modeling language together with the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), I briefly mentioned the need for modeling the intent of the enterprise. In an agile context, this notion of intent and intentional architecture is quite important. In this blog, I want to explore that further.

EA and Security

July 31, 2019/0 Comments/in BiZZdesign, Blog, Enterprise Architecture, Enterprise Architecture Tools, Security Architecture /by Marc Lankhorst

How can Enterprise Architecture help your organization become more secure, reliable, and compliant? Read more

Finding and Unlocking Business Value

July 24, 2019/0 Comments/in BiZZdesign, Enterprise Architecture, Enterprise Architecture Software, Enterprise Architecture Tools /by James Goodwin

Decision making

Whatever your role, wherever you are, you are measured by the value that you bring. People interact with you because they derive some value from that interaction. That could be political, social, economic, intellectual or technical. To maximize your value, you need to understand how that interaction is measured.

EA and BPM

July 17, 2019/0 Comments/in Blog, Business Process Management, EA Business Case, Enterprise Architecture /by Marc Lankhorst

Enterprise Architecture and Business Process Management are two change disciplines often closely associated. But how exactly do they relate to one another? Read more

Customer Focus From Start to Finish: Delivering Business Change that Makes a Difference

July 10, 2019/0 Comments/in Adaptive Enterprise, BiZZdesign, Blog, Business Architecture, Business Model Management, Capability Based Planning /by Raz Mitache

Having the right focus

The customer is the most important variable in the equation of success. Please them and you’ll do well; ignore their needs and desires, especially in this age of speed and lower emotional attachment, and you invariably go out of business. Read more

EA and CX

July 3, 2019/0 Comments/in EA Business Case, Enterprise Architecture, Enterprise Architecture Tools /by Marc Lankhorst

The intersect between Customer Experience Design and Enterprise Architecture is an interesting development in the world of business transformation. To help our customers get a better understanding of this subject, we asked Marc Lankhorst, Managing Consultant and Chief Technology Evangelist here at BiZZdesign, to share his thoughts on this with us.