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.
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Why a CMDB Cannot Power Your Digital Transformation
/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?”.
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Agile ArchiMate®: Intentional Architecture
/0 Comments/in Agile, Agile Development, ArchiMate, BiZZdesign, Blog /by Marc LankhorstIn 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.
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EA and Security
/0 Comments/in BiZZdesign, Blog, Enterprise Architecture, Enterprise Architecture Tools, Security Architecture /by Marc LankhorstHow can Enterprise Architecture help your organization become more secure, reliable, and compliant? Read more
Finding and Unlocking Business Value
/0 Comments/in BiZZdesign, Enterprise Architecture, Enterprise Architecture Software, Enterprise Architecture Tools /by James GoodwinDecision 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.
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EA and BPM
/0 Comments/in Blog, Business Process Management, EA Business Case, Enterprise Architecture /by Marc LankhorstEnterprise 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
/0 Comments/in Adaptive Enterprise, BiZZdesign, Blog, Business Architecture, Business Model Management, Capability Based Planning /by Raz MitacheHaving 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
/0 Comments/in EA Business Case, Enterprise Architecture, Enterprise Architecture Tools /by Marc LankhorstThe 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.
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When “Data-Driven” Is Not Enough
/0 Comments/in Agile, Blog, Digital Transformation, EA Business Case, Enterprise Architecture, Enterprise Architecture Software, Enterprise Architecture Tools, Gartner /by Nick ReedAn enterprise architect friend of mine recently posed an interesting question: “I lead a relatively mature EA practice that delivers good value to our organization. We are digitally transforming the organization and adopting agile ways of working across the enterprise, which is improving our outcomes for individual initiatives. But I am worried these efforts are sometimes wasted on delivering capabilities managers tell us are important, rather than the ones that are truly game-changing. How do I get in front of this, and help lead us to the right strategic outcomes?”
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The 5 Best Pieces of Career Advice for Enterprise Architects
/0 Comments/in Blog, Enterprise Architecture, Enterprise Architecture Software, Enterprise Architecture Tools /by Raz MitacheA while back we put out a post meant to give enterprise architects a hand with successfully passing a job interview. In a similar vein, today we’re offering architecture practitioners some great pieces of advice that we’ve come by after consulting with some of the more experienced members of the BiZZdesign team, people who have counseled countless EA practices and successfully carried out a wide range of business change initiatives. Read more
Raise Model Quality – Conformance Checks
/0 Comments/in Adaptive Enterprise, ArchiMate, BiZZdesign, Blog, Business Architecture, Business Model Management, Business Process Modeling /by Henk Jonkers and Bernd IhnenArchiMate provides a powerful language to visually describe the architecture of an enterprise at different layers – from strategy to implementation. Read more
How to Mitigate Risk without Slowing Down Digital Transformation
/0 Comments/in Adaptive Enterprise, BiZZdesign, Blog, Digital Transformation, Enterprise Architecture, Enterprise Architecture Software, Security Architecture /by Raz MitacheCybersecurity 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.
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Architecture and Talent: a Path to Fostering the Right Skills and Expertise
/0 Comments/in Adaptive Enterprise, BiZZdesign, Blog, Business Capability, Enterprise Architecture, Enterprise Architecture Software, Enterprise Architecture Tools /by Raz MitacheTalent 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.
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Building a Digital Twin of Your Organization
/0 Comments/in Adaptive Enterprise, Agile, Application Portfolio Management, ArchiMate, Blog, BPMN, Business Process Modeling, Digital Transformation /by Marc LankhorstIn 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.
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A Solution for Ailing Retailers: Change Your Business Model
/0 Comments/in ArchiMate, BiZZdesign, Blog, Business Model Management, Digital Transformation /by Raz MitacheAll 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.
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How to Get AI Right Using Enterprise Architecture
/0 Comments/in Blog, Business Capability, Capability Based Planning, Enterprise Architecture, Enterprise Architecture Software, Enterprise Architecture Tools /by Raz MitacheArtificial 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.
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Making the Case for Enterprise Architecture
/0 Comments/in BiZZdesign, Blog, EA Business Case, Enterprise Architecture Software, Enterprise Architecture Tools /by Marc LankhorstMaking 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.
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Business Architecture with ArchiMate
/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 LankhorstToday, 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.
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Agile and EA
/0 Comments/in Agile, Agile Development, BiZZdesign, Blog, Enterprise Architecture Software, Enterprise Architecture Tools /by Marc LankhorstIt 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.
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How Enterprise Architects Can Contribute to Innovation
/0 Comments/in Adaptive Enterprise, BiZZdesign, Blog, Business Model Management, Business Process Management, Business Process Modeling, Enterprise Architecture, Enterprise Architecture Tools, Innovation /by Marc LankhorstIn 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?
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Analyzing and Changing your Enterprise – Game vs. Play
/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 MatthijssenMuch 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.
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