Understanding Business Architecture: Domains, Techniques, and Modeling with BIZBOK and ArchiMate

In recent years the audience and attention for business architecture have steadily increased; it provides a business‑oriented enterprise abstraction that aids decision‑making and direction‑setting, making model‑based design, analysis, and decision support increasingly important.

Business architecture has developed its own methods and knowledge bases, such as the Business Architecture Guild, the Open Business Architecture (O‑BA) standard, and the BIZBOK® Guide, which is currently being developed by The Open Group.

Within the broader scope of enterprise architecture, business architecture is considered a key domain. ArchiMate 3.0 incorporates business concepts (functions, results, and action plans) for enterprise‑architecture modeling, while some view it as an IT‑focused EA view, a separate discipline, or even synonymous with enterprise architecture.

Regardless of one’s stance, the techniques used in this field constitute a valuable toolbox for designing and managing enterprises, offering a technology‑agnostic view that links high‑level strategic and business‑model descriptions with detailed EA domains such as processes, applications, and infrastructure.

Business Architecture Domains

The typical domains or aspects of business architecture are illustrated in a diagram that highlights four core, relatively stable domains together with several more volatile ones; all can be represented directly or indirectly in BiZZdesign Enterprise Studio.

The diagram does not show all inter‑relationships. The BIZBOK® Guide connects them through blueprints ("cross‑mapping"). We prefer using formal semantics to establish direct relationships between instances, a task where ArchiMate can help; this requires a mapping meta‑model between BIZBOK® and ArchiMate concepts, which will be discussed in a later blog.

Business Architecture and Other Domains

Key inputs to business architecture are the organization’s strategy and business model; portfolio management, risk analysis, and capability‑based planning support analysis and decision‑making within the architecture.

Other common design techniques include describing value networks and value streams, developing and improving customer journeys, and creating service blueprints.

9 Useful Business Architecture Techniques

BIZBOK® describes a set of widely used and useful business‑architecture modeling techniques. Previous blogs have shown how to create some of them in Enterprise Studio; future posts will provide additional examples.

Business Strategy Mapping (see earlier posts on business model canvas and strategy modeling)

Capability Mapping (see earlier posts on capability mapping, analysis, and implementation)

Value Mapping (see our posts on modeling value networks and value streams)

Organization Mapping

Information Mapping

Initiative Mapping

Product Mapping

Stakeholder Mapping

Strategy Mapping

In the coming weeks we will demonstrate how to create additional business‑architecture diagrams and use these models to guide enterprise direction, revisit value‑stream modeling in ArchiMate 3.0, and discuss how the language might evolve to provide optimal support.

If you are eager to learn more about BIZBOK® and its practical applications, you can register for our practical Business Architecture course and become a Certified Business Architect®.

For further resources, community discussions, and training, see the promotional links and contact information provided at the end of the original article.