Editor's lead: Enterprise architecture can assist enterprises to complete business and IT strategic planning, and it is also the core of enterprise information planning, and it is also conducive to the healthy and long-term development of personal careers. The author of this article analyzes the panorama of enterprise architecture and business architecture design. Interested friends, let’s take a look.
1) For the company
Enterprise architecture can assist enterprises to complete business and IT strategic planning. In terms of business strategy , it defines the vision/mission, goals/purposes/driving forces, organizational structure, functions and roles of the enterprise ; Guidance on best practice.
Enterprise architecture is the bridge and standard interface between enterprise business strategy and IT strategy, and is the core of enterprise informatization planning.
2) Personally
Contribute to the healthy long-term development of the profession, such as becoming a CIO, the chief information officer supports the company's goals by guiding the use of information technology, has knowledge of both technology and business processes, and often aligns the organization's technology deployment strategy with business strategy The best candidate for a tight fit.
1. Panoramic view of enterprise architecture
1. Module division and main work content of enterprise architecture
Enterprise architecture includes four parts, BA (Business Architecture, business architecture), DA (Data Architecture, data architecture), AA (Applications Architecture, application architecture), TA (Technology Architecture, technical architecture).
Enterprise architecture is driven by overall strategic planning. Let's take a look at the relationship between strategy, BA, DA, AA, and TA.
Figure 1-1 Execution sequence of strategy, BA, DA, AA, TA
As shown in the figure, strategy, BA, DA, AA, and TA are actually located at the following three levels:
- company strategy
- business structure
- Solution Architecture
The core relationship between these five can be summarized as follows:
- Strategy is the high-level design of the company, and the construction of strategic capabilities is the demand of business architects
- The work of business architects is "strategy in, business architecture out"
- Business architecture is the design of business architects, but it is the needs of data, application, and technical architects
Interlocking, the upper layer drives the lower layer, and the lower layer supports the upper layer.
Figure 1-2 Relationship among strategy, BA, DA, AA, and TA
2. The actual process from strategy to architecture to implementation
Through the above content, we know the relationship between strategy, business architecture, and solution architecture. Next, let's see how the architecture roadmap and implementation planning links operate in actual work.
Figure 1-3 Implementation process from strategy to architecture
The key points of execution are nailing to the post (left side), falling into the document (right side), and detailing work packages such as organizational adjustment, technology procurement, and project research and development. There are mainly the following links:
- Strategy: Led by the company's management, supported by the Planning and Development Department throughout the process, output: "Strategic Plan for xx-xx Years"
- Business architecture: The business architect in the architect team of the Information Technology Department is responsible, the output: "Business Architecture Book"
- Solution architecture: The architect team of the Information Technology Department is in charge, the output: "Technical Solution Book"
- Architecture roadmap: involves budget, CI0 takes the lead in formulating, approved by the board of directors, output: architecture roadmap
- Implementation plan: CIO takes the lead in formulating, output: implementation plan
- Project management and control: PMO is in charge of R&D projects, and general manager office is in charge of purchase projects
What needs to be added here is that the implementation plan is not only a plan from "architecture blueprint to R&D", but also from "architecture blueprint to all aspects of IT and non-IT".
- On the IT side: what are all the "IT capabilities" needed to support the business architecture blueprint? Is the project a research and development or a purchase? Correspondingly identify technology procurement work packages and personnel training work packages.
- Non-IT aspects: What are the "organizational capabilities" required to support the business blueprint? Corresponding identification agency adjustment work package, new department work package, personnel training work package.
2. Strategy-driven business architecture design
1. What is Business Architecture (BA)?
For business architecture, the OMG business architecture group has given the following definition: business architecture is the formal blueprint of corporate governance structure, business capabilities and value streams. The business architecture clearly defines the governance structure, business capabilities, business processes, and business data of the enterprise. Among them, the business capability defines what the enterprise does, and the business process defines how the enterprise does it.
Specifically, it is:
- Business functions are implemented by business processes
- A business process consists of business steps, business roles, business data, business events, and business rules.
2. The background of business architecture
Let's learn about the background of business architecture from abroad and domestically, so that we can better understand the usage scenarios of business architecture. Business architecture is the business requirement of cross-department and cross-organization. There is no business architecture at all in the life cycle of a single small system. links.
1) Cross-system planning - the background of business architecture emerging globally
After long-term development of foreign software systems, after years of practice, the article "Information System Master Plan" published in Harvard Business Journal in 1962 opened the prelude to cross-department and cross-organization demand planning. In the following years, companies such as IBM have carried out many practices.
In 1982, IBM announced the Business System Planning (BSP) methodology. It was an important event that had a large and lasting impact on the industry.
In the following years, the business architecture developed rapidly, such as Togaf, FEAF, etc.
The above history tells us that business architecture is born out of cross-systems and pays attention to cross-system requirements. From a developer's point of view, business architecture is the cross-departmental and cross-organizational business requirements.
2) Information isolated islands - an opportunity for business architecture to "fire" in China
There is a phenomenon in China that when it comes to business architecture, information islands are talked about. Why is this? Because the country really began to pay attention to business architecture design, it started from solving the pain points of information islands.
At the beginning of the 21st century, the domestic informatization process has advanced from departmental informatization to enterprise informatization. The demand for synergistic linkage among enterprise departments (among subsidiaries of the group) drives the demand for information sharing and synergistic linkage among IT information systems—and at the same time, the problem of information islands (financial, human resources, procurement, sales, OA, CRM, etc.) for war).
Because of the three major disadvantages of the information island, the business structure has become popular in China. The following are the three major disadvantages:
- Uncoordinated - Inefficient
- Redundant construction - a waste of corporate resources
- Delayed development opportunities—this has the greatest impact, and leading companies will be overtaken and lag behind if they miss the opportunity
So how to solve the problem of information islands?
Before building a series of systems separately, it is fundamental to design the business architecture and define a unified blueprint. One map of data, data sharing, process integration, and service orchestration are all carried out around a unified blueprint.
The business architecture is cross-system, so what is the relationship between it and the subsystem?
Figure 2-1 Relationship between business architecture and subsystems
What do the big V and small V in the picture mean?
- A big V represents the business structure, staged implementation, and online acceptance of the solution.
- Two small Vs represent subsystem requirements analysis, program development, and system testing.
The big V part is the life cycle of the overall plan. In the requirements stage of the big V, it is necessary to research and define clear cross-departmental and cross-organizational business requirements, which are often cross-system. For example, the business function of customer repair service obviously requires the coordination and linkage of the call center system, CRM system, and work order system to support the series of operations of customer service answering calls, confirming customer information, recording the content of the repair report, and dispatching maintenance engineers to the door.
The small V part is the life cycle of a certain system. In the requirements stage of the small V, the requirements of this system must be analyzed and clearly defined, and these requirements are often within the system. For example, a CRM system is responsible for customer profile management.
To sum up, the two levels of life cycle, scheme level and subsystem level, exist at the same time. To give a typical example, what would a company do if it wanted to build an ERP system?
1) Project approval stage
Since the program involves a wide range and many departments, it is necessary to do business architecture design. At this time, the business architect is responsible for the business architecture design and submits the "Business Architecture Book".
2) The first phase of the project
The assumptions mainly relate to the requirements, development, testing, etc. of system A.
At this time, the requirements analyst rushed forward and was responsible for the "System A Requirements Specification". Of course, the requirements analyst should refer to the overall agreement of the upstream "Business Architecture Document".
Note: This is only a hypothesis, because in actual operation, it may be necessary to develop some functions of system A, system B, and system C at the same time to realize a certain business function. It does not mean that all functions of the first phase of the project must belong to the same system .
3) Phase II and Phase III functions
The assumptions mainly concern the requirements, development, testing, etc. of System B.
At this time, the requirements analyst rushed forward and was responsible for the "System B Requirements Specification". Of course, the requirements analyst should refer to the overall agreement of the upstream "Business Architecture Document".
3. Practical strategy: the actual work content of business architecture
For business architecture to succeed, the first thing that must be done is that the architect must do the right thing, that is, have sufficient experience in the actual work content of the business architecture, which cannot be missed.
On the contrary, the absence of business architect analysis means the absence of business architecture blueprint planning items, which affects all follow-up work from investment roles to program design, implementation planning, and identification of IT work packages and non-IT work packages.
Business architecture = business function + organizational structure + business process + business data
What is the actual work content of business architecture?
The predecessor of business architecture was the cross-system planning methods such as BSP released by IBM in 1982. Therefore, business architecture is essentially cross-system planning.
However, the content of business architecture far exceeds the scope of cross-system requirements analysis and covers a larger scope of cross-system business architecture blueprint planning. The reason is that the business architecture must play the role of a bridge from strategy to implementation—the company's strategy on the street, followed by IT implementation and non-IT implementation .
Yes, business architecture covers the blueprint for the non-IT parts too!
Let's take a look at the actual working model of the refined business architecture.
Figure 2-2 Business Architecture Blueprint
In broad terms, business functions define what a business does? Who will define the organizational structure? How to define business process? Business data provides the necessary support. Therefore, business functions, organizational structure, business processes, and business data constitute the core of the business architecture blueprint.
At the same time, the business model reveals the essential relationship among enterprise products, enterprise core resources, customers, partners, channels, costs, and profits. The business model, a modern tool, is also a necessary planning item for the business architecture blueprint.
In terms of small aspects, first, where are the business channels? The organizational structure revolves around departments, roles, and functions, and the organizational structure, business channels, and partners are closely related. Therefore, while sorting out the organizational structure, business architects should combine channel strategy and partner strategy to define business channel planning and partner planning. These are "first-class citizens" of the business architecture blueprint.
Second, where is the value chain? The value chain model is an overall description of all business activities of an enterprise, and it is a must-do item when planning a business architecture blueprint. Business functions can be divided into three levels and decomposed layer by layer:
- Top-level decomposition - make a value chain model
- First level decomposition - do functional domain decomposition
- Two-level decomposition - do functional sub-domain decomposition
Third, business process = main process + branch process + business rules:
The main process has strong versatility and is not easy to change. For example: when buying a train ticket, the process of "vote-ticket grabbing-payment" is stable.
The branch process is highly personalized and often changes. For example, the branch process of seat selection, window seat, not seat seat, sleeper (upper and lower middle berth), child ticket, adult ticket, student ticket also enters the branch process.
Business rules are highly detailed and fragmented, so it is recommended to define business processes while defining corresponding business rules.
In summary, the content of the business architecture blueprint should be clear! comprehensive! Intuitive! detailed!
Above we have learned the content of the business architecture, which may not be intuitive enough. We use cases to deepen our understanding of each module.
1) Five elements of business architecture blueprint
With the help of the five elements of the business architecture blueprint, we have a glimpse of the business architecture of the China Railway 12306 platform.
- Target business functions: online ticket purchase, online payment, online refund, etc.
- Target organizational structure: On the basis of the original organizational structure, build a new IT operation and maintenance center
- Target business process: log in first, then grab tickets, then pay, and release the ticket source if the payment is overtime
- Target business model: online ticket purchase, saving trouble and effort (this is only a value proposition)
- Target business data: user accounts, train schedules, seat data, orders, payment records, etc.
2) Business channels, partners, value chain
The following figure analyzes the business functions and corresponding business channels of securities companies:
Figure 2-3 Analysis of business by value chain
The value chain includes the core business layer and the support layer. The core business layer here belongs to the top-level decomposition of business functions and services in the value chain.
Brokerage business includes customer development, trading functions, and customer service. Business functions are divided into three levels, top-level decomposition, first-level decomposition, and second-level decomposition. These three are the top-level decomposition of business functions.
From the figure, we know that the securities company has four core businesses, namely brokerage business, self-operated business, asset management, and corporate financing.
Relevant traditional channels are mainly the counters of the business department; relevant electronic channels can be comprehensive service portals, client terminals, mobile APPs, etc.; company employees can complete daily work and coordination through the comprehensive management portal.
4. Practical strategy: the steps of a strategy-driven business architecture
When planning, we often use the GAP analysis method to first determine the current status, then give our expectations, and analyze the gap between goals and expectations. If someone says this to a novice, it may not be enough, you need to answer at least the following questions:
- What exactly does a business architect need to analyze? What counts as a strategic drive? ——Can you specify the policy document? Strategic approach? market research? Benchmarking with friends?
- From strategy to blueprint, what is the logic in the middle? ——Can it be broken down into small goals? Little strategy making?
- What should we do first? ——Even a small invoicing system requires business research first, doesn’t it?
1) Landing: design steps
Let's take a look at the three-step method of strategy-driven business architecture (BA) design shared by the author.
Figure 2-4 Design steps of business architecture
The three major steps in the figure are clear and very close to reality.
Advantage 1: A clear strategy-driven starting point. In the method, three types of strategic driving factors (Drvier) are clarified, because in practice, it is one of the three that triggers the follow-up research, planning and implementation.
Advantage 2: A clear research link, including the research link in the first step.
Advantage 3: It emphasizes the transition logic from strategy to blueprint. In the second big step, only by solidly planning the business architecture goals/strategies can the blueprint fully support the strategy. This step belongs to the high-level business architecture design.
Advantage 4: Pay equal attention to target blueprint and Gap analysis, which is the third big step.
The step of designing the BA target blueprint belongs to the low-level business architecture design, in which the gap link is a necessary link. We must identify the increments of the business architecture and give corresponding implementation measures.
The value of Gap analysis is that it is necessary for continuous architecture governance. In addition to the application in BA planning, it is also applied in AA, DA, and TA design.
2) Main points: clear the Driver and do a good job of research
The first thing that must be done well in business architecture design is to be 100% clear about what the strategic drivers are.
The second thing that business architecture design must do well is research. Through research, we can broadly understand the macro-environment and industry trends of the enterprise, understand the cause and effect of the strategy, the ins and outs of the strategy in depth, and understand the competitive landscape of the enterprise and the trends of friends and businesses horizontally.
At first glance, the research scope is very wide, which makes people confused. If you look closely, there are rules. There are three main lines, which are management interviews, the ins and outs of the strategy, and examples that can be used for reference.
Figure 2-5 Content categories that need to be researched in business architecture design
3) Key points: internal logic from strategy to blueprint
The internal logic from strategy to blueprint is a skeleton supported by four concepts:
- Driver: strategic driver
- Goal: business architecture goals
- Strategy: business architecture strategy
- Blueprint: Business Architecture Blueprint
This is a large enterprise, how to promote digital procurement transformation from strategy to blueprint construction logic, I believe it will help us understand the following points.
Figure 2-6 Internal logic from strategy to blueprint
- From top to bottom in the figure is the four-layer system of Driver, Goal, Strategy, and Blueprint
- Driver layer: 1 strategic driver, the company's transformation to digital
- Goal layer: 3 business architecture goals, which can be understood as the specific goal decomposition of digital transformation
- Strategy layer: 10 business architecture strategies, understood as 3 goals that need to be improved. The most critical point is that the 10 strategies are completely developed around the 5 elements of the business architecture blueprint, such as the improvement of organizational business structure, business function improvement, etc.
- Blueprint layer: Define the blueprint according to the five elements of the business architecture blueprint, which is the main work of the business architect
To sum up, the internal logical main line from strategy to blueprint is: Determine Driver—Target Decomposition—Strategy Design—Blueprint Definition . The logic is clear and the innovation is well-founded.
Only when the business architect has a real insight into the strategic intent and accurate understanding of the strategic motivation, the subsequent business architecture design work will be traceable, no matter how heavy the workload is, it is not terrible.
4) Tool: GAP analysis
- Content 1: List the baseline business architecture and a high-level description of the target business architecture
- Content 2: Comparative analysis, identification of GAP - business capability gap, IT capability gap
5. Practical cases
1) Digital transformation – determine the driver and do a good job of research
① Advance: Determine the Driver
The project is assumed to be: a railway digital service transformation project.
The business architect (Zhang San) knows that the driver of the business architecture is the starting point of the entire business, and must be identified and thoroughly understood.
Zhang San learned that the driver of the digital transformation project is the "Corporate Strategic Plan" just formulated by the company.
The "Company Strategic Plan" expounds the background of digital service transformation: In recent years, the development of Internet technology has improved the service level of all walks of life and greatly facilitated the people's clothing, food, housing, transportation, medicine, learning, play etc. From the perspective of enterprises, with the help of technologies such as the Internet and big data, actively promote digital transformation and embrace a customer-centric service model, which can improve customer satisfaction and corporate competitiveness.
The core expression of the digital transformation strategy in the "Company Strategic Plan" is: establish a people-oriented and customer-oriented service concept, innovate service methods, improve service standards, promote digital service transformation, and improve service levels.
②Promote: Do a good job in management interviews for research
Management interviews are not for business architects to understand the industry, but to understand the management's concerns and main views.
Through the interview, the Business Architect should understand:
- Current status: Where does management see the main current deficiencies? For example, it is inconvenient to book a ticket
- Goals: What does management want the change to achieve? For example, the management wants to establish an online comprehensive service portal
- Actions: What actions does management consider possible? such as using the Internet
- Policies: What relevant policies are management paying close attention to?
- Benchmarking: Who is the benchmarking company that the management pays special attention to? Such as: the practice of foreign companies selling tickets
- Others: Other concerns of the management, such as: enhancing corporate image
③Promote: case studies that can be used for reference when doing research well
Research on best practices and best cases that can be used for reference is also a must for research.
The reason is that the best practices and best cases in each stage of the industry reflect the actual level of the industry at that time. Therefore, if the business architect collects and divides the current best practice cases in the industry, he can better grasp the design direction and formulate design standards in the architecture design he is responsible for.
2) Digital service transformation - determine BA goals and strategies
Business architecture goals and strategies include the following two aspects:
- Content 1: Explain the shortcomings of business capabilities and determine the goals of business architecture
- Content 2: Describe the specific strategies in terms of organizational structure, business process, business function, business model, channel innovation, etc. And explain the basis, such as foreign standards, benchmarking analysis, user surveys, user portraits, data statistics, technology trends, opportunity nodes, etc.
① Advancing: Gap Analysis
Baseline Business Architecture：
Figure 2-7 Baseline Architecture
Target Business Architecture：
Figure 2-8 Baseline Architecture
In the above case, we identified gaps in business capabilities and shortcomings in IT capabilities through GAP analysis, thereby identifying business architecture goals and strategies. This is a bottom-up approach.
To prepare for our follow-up links, for example, we have identified core businesses that need to be enhanced, including sales, passenger transportation, freight, liquidation, and after-sales, and new additions include value-added services. The business model module gives the corresponding strategy.
For example: From the value chain analysis in the above figure, we can see that our new business needs are value-added services, which can be realized through e-commerce business and travel agency. If you think about it further, you will know that our goal is to increase revenue, and then we can top it up. Thinking downwards, in addition to e-commerce business and travel agency, we can also be an insurance agency to reach users through the channel of service portal.
② Promotion: Determining goals and strategies
Only by solidly planning the business architecture goals and strategies can we ensure that the follow-up business architecture blueprint definition fully supports the strategy.
Determining business objectives and strategic links is the high-level part of business architecture design. The subsequent business architecture blueprint definition is the low-level part of business architecture design. The former leads the development direction of the latter, which shows the importance of the link of "determining business architecture goals and strategies".
In this step, there are three approaches:
- Top-down: Decompose Driver into sub-goals, and map sub-goals to business architecture strategies
- Bottom-up: through Gap analysis, find the weak board, and then identify business architecture goals and strategies
- The above two methods are combined, and the cycle is expanded to verify each other.
The digital transformation of the railway system and the improvement of service levels are the drivers. How can we achieve this ultimate goal?
the answer is:
- Convenience: such as providing online ticket booking service, call center service
- Efficiency increase: Use ticket collection machines and ticket inspection machines to improve detection efficiency and accuracy, and also reduce employment costs
- Adding Revenue: Providing a Service Portal
Figure 2-9 Determining goals and strategies
3) Digital service transformation - define BA blueprint (organizational structure)
Figure 2-10 Contents of the organizational view
The organizational structure view includes three modules, organizational structure, business channels, and partners.
Organizational structure and improvements mainly describe department settings, job settings, job responsibilities, etc.; partners and improvements mainly describe strengthening relationships with upstream and downstream partners in the supply chain. Business channel innovation is also a common strategy in business architecture design, as illustrated below.
Organizational structure: The figure below uses the method of GAP analysis to draw the current organizational structure and target organizational structure, and shows the change points.
Figure 2-11 GAP analysis of organizational structure
Novice business architects often think that there is nothing to design in the organizational structure. In fact, on the contrary, once the organizational structure needs to be changed, it will inevitably have a major impact.
From the picture above, we can see that the company used to do IT development by itself, but now the company plans to do IT operation and maintenance by itself while doing development. Correspondingly, an IT operation and maintenance center has been added to the organizational structure of the enterprise.
Business architects should identify possible changes to the organizational structure early on. Because whether it is a new department, department enhancement, or personnel capability enhancement, they all belong to the capability increment in TOGAF and need to be realized by subsequent non-IT work packages.
Not only that, changes in the organizational structure also affect the governance structure of the entire enterprise, from operation and management, to control and supervision, to performance appraisal.
In short, although business architects are often downgraded as cross-system software requirements analysts, business architects who really undertake the task of business architecture blueprint planning must be able to carry a lot of "non-IT" planning.
4) Digital service transformation - define BA blueprint (business channel)
Channels are explained on Baidu Encyclopedia as "a metaphor for a way to achieve a certain purpose", and a business channel is a way for users to achieve business goals. As shown in the figure below, the train conductor helps the user to complete the fare replacement through the channel of the ticket replacement terminal, and the passenger transport company informs the passengers of the train number information through the large screen.
Examples of business channel innovations:
Figure 2-12 Case study of business channel design
The website, mobile app, fare replenishment terminal, and large screen realize the online and offline linkage of ticket purchase, fare replenishment, and train number viewing, which improves user experience and internal efficiency of the company.
As can be seen from the above figure, the business channel is not a completely isolated business architecture blueprint planning item, it echoes with the business process, business function, and organizational structure. Therefore, these should also be considered when we plan our business channels.
With regard to channel linkage, some peers summed it up like this:
- Low level: isolated islands of information, numerous silos, customers bought tickets on their mobile phones, but they couldn’t find them on their PCs
- General level: information sharing, multiple front-ends share a unified background system
- High-level: channel linkage, process integration, smooth process collaboration between multiple positions, multiple front-ends, and multiple applications
5) Digital service transformation - define BA blueprint (business function)
Figure 2-13 Business function view
An enterprise is composed of a series of activities and functions that create value for customers. Our business functions are derived from activities and functions that can create value for customers.
The value chain of an enterprise shows the connection between a series of activities, functions, and business processes that create value for customers such as design, production, marketing, and transportation. The value chain has two main components:
- Core business: create major customer value
- Supporting activities: provision of support services to the core business
Continuing to look at the case of the digital service of the transportation company, the business architect faced the task of transforming the digital service of the transportation company, after painstaking research, he gave the value chain division structure in the figure below.
Figure 2-14 Analysis of business functions using the value chain
Some students may have doubts, why are there two different business types, passenger transport and freight transport, in the core business module? In actual work, it may only be responsible for one of the modules of passenger transportation and freight transportation.
The background of our business architecture has also been mentioned above. In China, business architecture was developed to solve information islands. Business architects need to make overall planning instead of sorting out individual systems.
We have sorted out the value chain above, and now we need to decompose the functional domain. The following figure is the decomposition diagram of the first-level functional domain:
Figure 2-15 First-level functional domain split
Next, do business capability gap analysis, we can see that there are 4 new first-level functional domains and 13 enhanced first-level functional domains.
Through the transformation of value chain analysis to the division of first-level functional domains, we will have the following gains:
① The value chain analysis model laid the foundation for the subsequent functional domain division. The business function domain division framework of management support + core business is really easy to use and widely recognized by the industry. It is naturally easy to be accepted by others during the communication process.
② Timeline thinking similar to "before boarding, during boarding, and after getting off" is a necessary analysis skill for business architects, and it is also an analysis habit often used by experts in the field of Party A's enterprise.
Business architecture design must not only define the target architecture, but also use the GAP analysis method to identify the architectural capabilities that need to be enhanced to prepare for subsequent implementation. Specifically, it includes business function changes and increments, organizational structure changes and increments, business process changes and increments, and business data changes and increments.
6) Digital service transformation - define BA blueprint (business model)
The business model reveals the essential relationship among enterprise products, enterprise core resources, customers, partners, channels, costs, and profits. To put it simply, it is why some companies can do the same thing, but some companies can't.
When formulating a business model, it does not mean that there is only one business model overall. We can formulate business models according to our goals. For example, in the above case, the railway transportation company has three goals: convenience, income increase, and efficiency increase. We can design three a business model.
As far as the digital service transformation of railway enterprises is concerned, in order to facilitate the people, they should support obtaining enterprise services through the Internet, telephone, and mobile apps at any time.
Figure 2-16 Business model when the goal is convenience
As far as the digital service transformation of railway enterprises is concerned, in order to increase efficiency, hardware equipment and intelligent control systems can be used to promote the digital transformation of cancellation, ticket checking and other links and improve efficiency.
Figure 2-17 Business model when the goal is to increase efficiency
The business canvas, with the help of nine small grids, constructs a brief and efficient systematic thinking environment, which is a remarkable invention.
As can be seen from the above examples, the business model has the following advantages:
- It is conducive to effective design and can stimulate good ideas such as service innovation, process innovation, and cross-border cooperation
- It is conducive to effective reporting, and the business model highlights the internal logic of "why do you do this?"
In my opinion, the business model combines the contents of BRD and MRD:
- BRD: Business requirements document, focusing on who (customer segmentation), what problem to solve (value proposition), what needs to be done (key activities), what resources to spend (key resources), and cost performance (cost/income)
- MRD: market demand document, focusing on how consumers reach (channel access) and how to obtain partners
7) Digital service transformation - define BA blueprint (business process)
The business process view is the input of the application architecture, and it is also the most practical and the largest chapter in the business architecture.
In the article, the author discusses the collaboration method of business processes. The conclusion is that simple business processes can be drawn in the form of flow charts, and it is strongly recommended to use text descriptions for business processes with many branches and complexity.
Business process definition specification:
- Part 1: Overview of business functions. Business functions are realized through main processes and branch processes. The main point is the process decomposition of "1 main body + N branches"
- The second part: the main process, the main point is "staged + step-by-step", with business or data model rules for each step
- The third part: the branch process, the main point is "indicate the fork position in the main process", and attach the business or data model rules of each step
- The fourth part: key UI prototype/UI process, this part is optional
Figure 2-18 Overview of business functions
Figure 2-19 Main process
Figure 2-20 Branch process
Figure 2 – 21 Key UI Prototypes: UI Flow
This part is very important. As mentioned above, the business process view is the input of the application architecture, so let’s summarize this part again.
We found that there is a perfect correspondence between branching processes and business scenarios. Identifying branch processes is scene-based thinking. On the contrary, if you do not distinguish between the main process and the branch process, subsequent changes in business requirements will affect a large area, rather than changing a branch process as simple as this, which is too unprofessional.
There are many business functions and business scenarios. What is the definition of business process? A business process defines a business function, which includes multiple business scenarios. For example, buying tickets includes buying tickets for multiple people, buying tickets for children, and so on.
There are so many business rules, how to avoid fragmentation of business rules? Business rules are defined around business steps, which can be main process steps or branch process steps.
Regarding whether to use a business flowchart: the more core the business process is, the more branches and business rules there are. At this time, it is recommended to use textual specifications, so that the information presented is more comprehensive. For uncomplicated business processes, the flow chart can be followed.
3. Summary
This article gives an overview of enterprise architecture, details the background and practical strategies of business architecture, and deepens our understanding of business architecture through actual cases.
Let's review the relationship between the concepts involved in the article.
- Enterprise Architecture = Business Architecture + Application Architecture + Data Architecture + Technical Architecture
- Business architecture = organizational structure + business function + business process + business data + business model
- Business function = top-level value chain + first-level functional domain decomposition + second-level functional sub-domain decomposition
- Business Model = Business Model Canvas Analysis
- Business data = data domain + data model + data rules
The essence of the practical steps of strategy-driven business design is that the span from strategy to business architecture blueprint is too large, and the logical chain cannot be connected, so it is divided into two steps:
- From strategy to strategy
- From strategy to blueprint