BPMN – Business Process
– Marc Lankhorst, Fabian Aulkemeier
In a previous blog post on the features of our collaboration platform, we have explained how you can support people in working together on architectures and other models via structured workflows. In that post, we looked ahead at future features to support this kind of collaboration. Time to update you on the latest developments!
In my previous blog post (https://bizzdesign.com/blog/a-pattern-for-sizing-archimate-diagrams) I described why it is useful to reduce complexity when creating architecture diagrams. It supports the architect by guiding the creation of diagrams and it supports the reader by not creating overly complex diagrams (too many different types of concepts). Each viewpoint addresses a specific concern, e.g. a capability map to show what the capabilities of a company are. In this blog I will focus on the application layer to provide practical examples using the viewpoint creation pattern described in the previous blog post. The examples are quite generic. They are meant to be used as a starting point for professionals looking to learn more on the subject so they appeal to a large audience.
Previously, I have blogged about stakeholder management and showed you some useful techniques to support this important part of enterprise architecture. In this blog post, I want to address different ways to share architecture information with different types of stakeholders involved in changing your enterprise.
Previously, I wrote about the need to digitize change capabilities and how enterprise architecture can support and provide value to your organization. I also discussed how to categorize architecture descriptions along different levels of abstraction. But there is one dimension I didn’t dive into: How generic or specific is the architecture description compared to your organization?
Over the past decade, reference architectures have been developed and many have been published. They are a very useful start describing an enterprise, and the architectures are more or less specific to our enterprise. I don’t want to lose myself in academic discussions about what should be classified as what, so I will focus on the big points of the idea behind. Read more
– By Marc Lankhorst and Fabian Aulkemeier
An enterprise architecture model, or any other model in your business design practice, contains input from numerous actors within your organization. Your architecture’s governance must continuously collect that input, validate its accuracy and retain a record of all interventions to ensure compliance with regulatory requirements, architecture principles, technology standards and other constraints.
In my two previous blog posts, I described dependency analysis and impact analysis. These two kinds of analysis focus on what you might call the steady state of your enterprise, or the enterprise at rest. But there is also the enterprise in motion, where we look at the behavior of the enterprise, in particular its business processes.
When we think about supporting Business Transformation, we immediately start with the detail. Architects and analysts dive into the nuts and bolts, create some brilliant ‘technical designs’ and models but to non-architects, it often appears as “just boxes and lines”. In this blog I will explain some simple techniques to help bridge the gap.
Software platforms such as BiZZdesign Enterprise Studio are powerful tools that can support transformation activities if used in the right way. Otherwise there is a risk it becomes shelf-ware. As the saying goes: “With great power comes great responsibility” Read more
In a previous blog post I wrote about setting the foundations for data collection and management, ensuring the right metadata is available for effective contributions and reporting activities. In this post, I will describe how, if the information is readily available, can be brought into Enterprise Studio. Read more
Since the release of ArchiMate 3.0 last June, my colleagues and I have written a series of blog posts about combining ArchiMate with other standards, methods and modeling techniques. This post summarizes what we have shown you.
In the past, my colleagues and I have written several blogs on the combination of enterprise architecture and agile ways of working (e.g. Enterprise Architecture and Agile Development: Opposites Attract?, Enterprise Architecture and Innovation: A cultural change, Escaping the Jaws of the Project Monster). In this blog, I want to focus in more detail on the use of the ArchiMate language in the context of agile methods, in particular the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe). Read more
As we stated in the introduction to this blog series, ArchiMate models can usefully be combined with models in other techniques, in order to zoom in on specific aspects of your enterprise. If these models are tied in to an overall enterprise architecture model in ArchiMate, an integrated model of the enterprise can be constructed that relates (sub)models from formerly separate domains in a meaningful way.
As we explained in the first blog of this series , the ArchiMate language is not intended to replace other standards and modeling approaches. For many domains, there are languages and techniques available that provide more detailed descriptions. Read more
As we have described in our previous blog , the ArchiMate language is not intended to replace other standards and modeling approaches, but rather to connect them. In this blog, we will focus on relating ArchiMate to several management-oriented techniques: The Business Motivation Model, Balanced Scorecard, and Business Model Canvas.
The ArchiMate language is not intended to replace other standards and modeling approaches. For many domains, there are languages and techniques available that provide more detailed descriptions. Those languages, such as UML, BPMN and others, have a narrower scope (e.g. UML for specifying software, BPMN for business processes) than ArchiMate, but they lack concepts for relating these to other domains. Read more
As we have seen in the previous blog, ArchiSurance wants to establish several new capabilities to support its ‘Digital Customer Intimacy’ strategy, such as Digital Customer Management, Data-Driven Insurance, Data Acquisition, and Data Analysis. Positioning these in the context of its current capabilities leads to the following figure, using the ‘highlight’ function of BiZZdesign Enterprise Studio to emphasize these new elements. Read more
There is a lot of power in Business Process Management (BPM) and process thinking. Our process flow diagrams describe ‘what is done’, and support us in designing, improving and controlling our processes. The results of processes should be of value to our customers. But how do our customers experience our processes? A very powerful technique, aimed at customer experience, is the Customer Journey. It is a must-have technique for your BPM/Lean toolkit!
Most enterprise architects believe that Enterprise Architecture is a relevant discipline for members of the board. However, CxO’s often aren’t really of the same opinion. We believe that is because they do not usually experience the true value of architecture. What can an architect do to improve this? Below we present seven useful tips.
Business models are a helpful way to define a business strategy and steer an organization in the “right” direction. Furthermore, business models foster discussions on the way organizations want to deliver value to their customers. Building business models is fun! Thinking about your organization and its future in an abstract manner is addictive, since there is no chance of failure…
The Decision Model (TDM) is a rapidly growing framework for modeling and executing the business logic behind business decisions. When I first read the book “The Decision Model – A Business Logic Framework Linking Business and Technology” by Larry Goldberg and Barbara von Halle, I was impressed with how TDM models the business logic behind operational business decisions. Read more