Business Architecture versus Enterprise architecture (Technical)

Business Architectural Frameworks differ slightly from regular EA Frameworks (TOGAF).   At a high level, the BAF is agnostic of specific I.T. lifecycle or methodology requirements. A regular EA framework needs to account for all things I.T and business processes as they relate to I.T.

Business Architectural Frameworks

The most popular one is TOGAF (by the Open Group), For Business Architecture, think ‘Processes, Business Processes and Governance’ (e..g Financial Services – credit background check processes)

Executable UML is another specific approach to implement MDA

Open Group versus Object Management Group

Open Group – TOGAF (Business Arch Framework), OMG (UML, MDA..executable UML)

Industry Reference Models

Off-the-shelf set of best practices and processes for an industry – e.g.The Business Process Framework (eTOM)

Zachman Framework

Who (People)?, What (Data)?, Where (Network)?, Why (Motivation)?, When (Time)?, How (Function)?

TOGAF Framework – Business Views

• The Business Strategy view captures the tactical and strategic goals that drive an organization forward…
• The Business Capabilities view describes the primary business functions of an enterprise and the pieces of the organization that perform those functions…
• The Value stream view defines the end-to-end set of activities that deliver value to external and internal stakeholders…
• The Business Knowledge view establishes the shared semantics (e.g., customer, order, and supplier) within an organization and relationships between those semantics (e.g., customer name, order date, supplier name)…
• The Organizational view captures the relationships among roles, capabilities and business units, the decomposition of those business units into subunits, and the internal or external management of those uni

TOGAF versus Zachman

1. Togaf fits into the first row of Zachman above.
2. Togaf provides the right architecture for the I.T. lifecycle – e.g. Agile vs. Waterfall. Agile would have a strong CI , CD and devops component. Waterfall would have a strong QA component. See also QA versus Devops.
3. Zachman ensures that the infrastructure is created from the right stakeholders. E.g. your network level architecture input needs to come primarily from the Network Operations Team.