Enterprise Business Architecture Definition

Source: Mike the Architect Blog
URL: http://www.mikethearchitect.com/2013/09/defining-business-architecture.html

The author of this article lists the definition of Business Architecture from multiple sources then presents his own.

A formal method and a set of descriptions that distill the business environment and the needs of a business into set of models representing business information,concepts, value and risk that are expressed through an architectural view of a business.

I think the author comes up with a pretty good definition, I like the fact that he pulls certain words then further defines his use of these words in the article.

I think looking at his further definition of distill is very important.

 Business Architecture does not create business strategy but rather it serves to understand it.

Business Architecture is a critical component of Enterprise Architecture.  You need to understand what the business is doing, what are its goals, vision and concepts.  If you do not understand this it would be very difficult to ensure that IT is aligned with the business processes.

So in his definition he brings up the fact that the purpose of BA is to understand business strategy, not create it.

In his definition of "Architectural view of Business" the author discusses that BA is created for the architect to use to understand the business, not necessarily something to be used directly by the business.  He does bring up the fact that it should be developed in such a way that should be presentable to business leaders.

I think that the effort that will go into understanding the business processes will create very useful artifacts that would be of great importance to the organization so the architect in this section should keep that in mind when creating BA artifacts.