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Stay in touch with the news affecting enterprise architecture and business architecture, and how Business Architecture Info’s services are being used to deliver value to enterprise architects and business architects in various industries, with our newsletter published at least every month.
Seven Business Concepts Enterprise Architects Should Master
Enterprise architects occupy a unique position. They sit at the intersection of strategy, business operations, and technology. While an IT architect primarily designs technical systems, an enterprise architect must understand how the business operates, how it creates value, and how technology enables strategic success. The differentiating factor between enterprise architecture and IT architecture is business architecture, an essential domain for aligning strategy with execution. The following concepts outline what every enterprise architect should master to excel in this strategic role.
Our New Enterprise Architecture Platform Partner: Ardoq
Business Architecture Info is now an Ardoq partner. Ardoq is the most flexible and intuitive Enterprise Architecture platform, built to help IT leaders map, analyze, and optimize their technology landscape. Ardoq's AI-powered automations, real-time insights, and dynamic visualizations replace static diagrams, enabling smarter, data-driven decisions.
Using Ardoq, Business Architecture Info helps organizations translate strategy into execution. We specialize in capability and value stream mapping, operating model design, and roadmap development that align change initiatives with business outcomes. Our team equips enterprises to prioritize investments, de-risk transformations, and deliver measurable value—faster.
Together, Ardoq and Business Architecture Info make a great team to increase the value of your enterprise architecture team.
Reducing IT Complexity with Enterprise Architecture
Complexity will always be part of modern enterprise IT, but unmanaged complexity is optional. Enterprise Architecture gives organizations the visibility, structure, and governance needed to manage it intelligently. By focusing on custom-fit business capabilities, EA ensures every technology decision reinforces business strategy, not just technical convenience. It aligns people, processes, and platforms into a coherent whole that supports both operational efficiency and competitive advantage.
The message for executive leaders is clear. Simplification is not about doing less. It’s about doing what matters most, better and faster. Enterprise Architecture is the strategic instrument that turns IT complexity into clarity, priorities, control, and enduring business value.
How to Build a Unified AI Strategy with Multiple Vendors Using Enterprise Architecture
If you want a unified AI strategy with multiple vendors, do not treat each vendor as a one-off. You need enterprise architecture as the backbone to align business goals, design interoperable layers, enforce governance, and provide a roadmap and flexibility to evolve. Be disciplined. Build for interchangeability. Monitor relentlessly. And ensure every vendor decision serves the business architecture, not the other way around. You’ll then convert vendor multiplicity from a risk into a strategic advantage.
Why Enterprise Architecture Needs to Support Your Procurement Team
In digitally mature organizations, procurement of IT applications, hardware, data, and services is often treated as a purely tactical exercise. Yet business and enterprise architecture (EA) must be part of the conversation, or risk undermining long-term agility, coherence, and value. Many EA thought-leaders emphasize the discipline as a decision lens, not just modeling. By embedding EA into procurement, you turn purchases from discrete ballots into portfolio investments shaped by strategy, risk, and architectural consistency.
The Blind Spot of Application-Centric Thinking: Business Capabilities Matter
Application architecture remains vital, but it must support, not define, the enterprise. Without grounded capabilities, organizations risk investing in technology without achieving transformation. Linking applications to business capabilities, as shown below, creates transparency, strategic alignment, and measurable value. It shifts enterprise architecture from a technical exercise to a business discipline. In the end, sustainable success depends less on the software we deploy and more on the capabilities we choose to strengthen.
Gartner 2025 Hype Cycle: Why EA Without Value Streams Risks Obsolescence
In Gartner’s 2025 Hype Cycle for Enterprise Architecture, value streams emerge as the essential bridge between strategy and execution. Far from static blueprints, EA is now about influencing outcomes and shaping investments. Frameworks like SAFe® reinforce this shift, making value streams the backbone of planning and delivery. By focusing on value, enterprise architects can align technology with strategy, reduce friction, and embed themselves directly into agile business value realization.
Why Your Business Capabilities Are Superficial — And What It’s Costing You
Superficial business capabilities carry hidden costs—failed transformations, duplicated systems, wasted investments, and eroded trust. To succeed, organizations must ground their capabilities in strategy, validate them with experts, and decompose them to actionable levels. Done right, capabilities drive alignment, sharpen execution, and create the foundation for sustainable competitive advantage.
Strategic Planning Through the Lens of Enterprise Architecture
Customer-driven enterprise architecture (CDEA) integrates strategy, goals, business capabilities, and IT to deliver customer value and measurable outcomes. It begins with defining strategic direction, measurable goals, and business architecture as the bridge to execution. Strategic initiatives, customer journeys, value streams, and capabilities translate into projects—commercial, IT, and operational—supported by target IT architectures and operating models. This alignment fosters agility, efficiency, and innovation while improving customer satisfaction. Though implementation requires overcoming silos, resistance, and capability gaps, CDEA enables sustainable growth and competitive advantage.
Transforming Enterprise Architecture for Modern Digital Business Execution
In the face of accelerating digital disruption and rapidly evolving customer expectations, enterprise architecture (EA) practices are under pressure. Many remain constrained to rigid frameworks and centralized control models, resulting in operational stagnation and a lack of responsiveness. To stay relevant and add tangible value, EA must evolve. This means transitioning from static governance structures toward a dynamic, data-driven, and decentralized model, which needs to be embedded in the organization’s digital DNA and accelerates both strategic change and operational excellence.
This article outlines a three-tiered maturity model for transforming EA, progressing from basic operational governance to strategic transformation and ultimately enabling continuous innovation and improved ways of working.
10 Reasons Why GenAI Projects Fail - and How Enterprise Architects Can Fix Them
Generative AI (GenAI) holds immense promise for enterprise transformation, yet many initiatives falter due to common pitfalls. Enterprise Architects (EAs) are uniquely positioned to navigate these challenges by aligning GenAI projects with strategic objectives, ensuring robust data governance, and fostering cross-functional collaboration. By proactively addressing issues such as unclear goals, data quality concerns, and integration complexities, EAs can steer GenAI initiatives toward successful outcomes.
Leveraging Enterprise Architecture in IT Portfolio Management
In today’s fast‑paced business landscape, enterprise architects (EAs) hold a pivotal position in steering organizational priorities, ensuring that technology investments are not just reactive “nice‑to‑have” projects but strategic enablers that directly support business goals. Through structured frameworks, governance, and continuous evaluation, EAs optimize IT portfolios to deliver measurable value consistently.
The Architecture of AI Agents
The future of AI agents is not just a smarter version of today’s tools. It represents a fundamental shift in architecture, capability, and strategic value. With intelligent orchestration, continuous learning, advanced data integration, and human-centric design, these agents form adaptive ecosystems ready to operate at enterprise scale. As the speed of innovation outpaces internal development cycles, organizations are increasingly turning to specialized vendors for ready-to-deploy solutions. This shift is driven by the need for reliability, scalability, and strong ROI. To thrive in this AI-powered era, companies must embrace transformation, not through experimentation, but through architecture built for impact and sustainability
Crafting a Business Technology Use Case Using AI Agents
In today’s digital era, strategic business transformation through technology is not a luxury. It’s a necessity. As markets evolve and competition intensifies, organizations seeking innovation, agility, and operational efficiency must harness the power of artificial intelligence (AI), particularly AI agents. These offer a powerful means to enhance strategic planning and accelerate decision-making. This article presents a structured, three-phase methodology for crafting a business technology use case using our AI agents. Each phase guides organizations in stages from high-level corporate strategy to concrete delivery and execution, ensuring alignment between business objectives, customer value, capabilities, and technology solutions for impactful, customer-driven transformation.
Strategy Execution Operating Model
In today’s dynamic business environment, flawless execution is the bridge between strategy and sustainable success. Our Strategy Execution Operating Model provides a comprehensive framework to ensure strategic clarity, operational efficiency, and agile adaptability. By aligning strategy, operating models, and execution practices, organizations can achieve cohesive action across all levels. Through disciplined planning, cultural reinforcement, performance management, feedback loops, and risk mitigation, enterprises can confidently navigate complexity, drive continuous improvement, and realize their long-term vision with resilience and precision.
Enterprise Architecture Involvement Across the 7 Layers of AI Model Architecture
Business and enterprise architects play a pivotal role in shaping how AI is integrated and governed across the enterprise. Their involvement spans in all seven layers of AI model architecture from infrastructure to end-user applications, as shown in Figure 1. While their influence is limited in the more technical, infrastructure-focused layers, it becomes increasingly strategic as AI moves closer to business-facing domains. Architects need to align AI systems with business strategies, ensure interoperability, uphold ethical standards, and support scalability and compliance. By guiding AI development with a focus on value, usability, and trust, they ensure that AI investments drive meaningful outcomes and long-term business success.
Implementing Zero Trust Security with Enterprise Architecture
In today's complex digital landscape, traditional security models are no longer sufficient to protect against sophisticated cyber threats. As organizations expand their networks, adopt cloud solutions, and enable remote workforces, the attack surface increases, making security breaches more likely and potentially more damaging. This is where the Zero Trust Security framework becomes critical. Based on the principle of "never trust, always verify," Zero Trust requires strict identity verification, continuous monitoring, and least-privilege access controls. Implementing Zero Trust is a strategic move that not only enhances security but also supports organizational resilience and regulatory compliance. However, deploying Zero Trust is a multifaceted process involving significant planning, investment, and cross-functional collaboration that can be facilitated with enterprise architecture. This article explores the essentials of Zero Trust Security, the advantages and challenges it presents, the total cost of ownership, and the pivotal role that enterprise architects play in its successful implementation.
Addressing Technical Debt with Enterprise Architecture
Technical debt is an unavoidable aspect of modern software and IT systems, resulting from quick fixes, outdated technology, or suboptimal solutions that prioritize speed over long-term stability. While it can enable faster innovation in the short term, unresolved technical debt can lead to inefficiencies, higher operational costs, and security vulnerabilities. Organizations must find a balance between addressing technical debt and continuing to drive business growth. Enterprise Architects (EAs) play a key role in identifying, managing, and mitigating technical debt, ensuring it aligns with strategic business objectives. This article explores the impact of technical debt on operations, the reasons organizations accept it, and the best strategies for managing and mitigating its risks.
The Elaboration of a Modern TOGAF Architecture Maturity Model
Enterprise Architecture (EA) maturity is a critical factor in driving organizational success and alignment with business objectives. This paper presents a modern TOGAF Architecture Maturity Model, refreshing traditional approaches by assessing 10 key domains, as shown in Figure 1. Each domain progresses through five maturity levels, from initial, under development, and defined, to managed and measured. By integrating structured EA practices, strategic alignment, governance, security, and solution delivery, organizations can systematically improve their architecture capabilities. As businesses need to become more agile, this model enables them to evaluate, optimize, and measure their EA effectiveness, ensuring sustainable growth, agility, and adaptability in an increasingly complex and changing digital landscape.
A Comprehensive Approach to Enterprise Architecture and Solution Delivery
In today’s rapidly evolving business landscape, organizations must be adaptable and innovative to stay competitive. Enterprise Architecture (EA) and business architecture serve as the foundational framework for aligning business strategy with operational execution, providing a roadmap to deliver value and solve complex problems effectively. This article delves into the four key stages of EA and solution delivery, as shown in Figure 1 below: Enterprise Architecture, Solution Development, Implementation and Operation, and Continuous Improvement. Each stage plays a vital role in ensuring organizational success.
The Full Spectrum of Enterprise Architecture
Enterprise Architecture (EA) is a critical discipline that aligns business strategies with information technology, ensuring that organizations achieve their goals efficiently. The "full spectrum" of Enterprise Architecture provides a structured framework to connect strategic objectives with operational execution. It achieves this by bridging the gap between business and technology through distinct layers, each addressing specific aspects of organizational capabilities. This article explores these layers and their interconnections, focusing on the key elements of Business Architecture and Information Technology Architecture.
Your First 90 Days as Director of Enterprise Architecture
Taking on the role of Director of Enterprise Architecture (EA) in a 5,000-employee private organization is both a significant opportunity and a formidable challenge. The first 90 days are critical for establishing your credibility, understanding the organization’s landscape, and setting the stage for strategic, impactful, profitable, and transformative initiatives. This period should be focused on 10 main activities to learn, build relationships, and develop a clear vision and roadmap for your EA practice.
Selecting the Right Applications for Your Business Capability
In today’s fast-evolving business environment, the selection of the right application is critical for enhancing productivity, efficiency, and innovation for your organization. Applications are tools that allow businesses to execute tasks, manage data, and deliver products or services. However, the challenge of selecting and managing the right applications for your business capabilities can vary significantly depending on your situation. Here, we will explore how to select applications for your business capability under three common scenarios, 1- no application is currently supporting the business capability, 2- too many applications are supporting the business capability, or 3- there are not enough, or not the right, applications supporting the business capability.
How to Calculate Precisely the ROI of Your Enterprise Architecture Practice?
Calculating the Return on Investment (ROI) of an Enterprise Architecture (EA) practice can be challenging due to the complexity and indirect benefits it provides. However, a structured approach can help you quantify the ROI effectively. Read this article about the seven steps to calculate the ROI of your EA practice over a year.
Finding Quick-Wins Using Enterprise Architecture
While examining projects, it's tempting for enterprise architects to focus on major, complicated initiatives. However, pursuing quick wins is often a safer and more effective approach. Major projects frequently face delays, budget overruns, and often fail to achieve their initial business objectives. In the complex and rapidly evolving landscape of enterprise management, identifying opportunities that yield quick wins is a strategic imperative. These projects can deliver immediate value with minimal effort and resources, catalyzing broader organizational improvements. Enterprise architecture offers a powerful framework for pinpointing these opportunities, enabling organizations to align their initiatives with business objectives, optimize resource utilization, and enhance overall efficiency.
The Importance of a Modern Data Architecture for Successful AI Projects
Organizations are not limiting themselves to static IT-driven data architectures anymore, called data warehouses. They take too many resources to implement and change. Today’s data architecture needs to be ready for speed, flexibility, and innovation. The key to a successful data architecture upgrade is agility. As shown in Figure 1 below, modern data architecture may still include a data warehouse and data marts, but they need to be more flexible, adaptable, and agile. Read and learn more here.
Crafting Valuable Requirements Using Business Architecture and Artificial Intelligence
Planning, managing, and delivering business requirements are daunting undertakings in any organization. It requires a lot of human resources and despite great efforts, the success rate of digital transformation project delivery is usually very low in most organizations. In this article, we’ll touch base on two methodologies that address today’s challenges of managing and crafting valuable business requirements, one of which is based on generative artificial intelligence.
The Place of Business Architecture within Enterprise Architecture
Business architecture, one of the four foundational domains of enterprise architecture, is too often neglected and even dismissed altogether in budget constraints. Rarely do enterprise architecture initiatives start with business architecture as they should. To succeed, an organization and its CIO(s) need to focus more resources on building and communicating business architecture change maps that will involve not just its enterprise architects, but also its business executives, its business architects, its product managers, IT portfolio managers, obviously its CIO(s), and all its short-term and long-term planning ecosystem.
Providing Value with Business Architecture and IT Architecture
Enterprise architecture needs sufficient resources to plan and map proper customer-driven business architecture, but the 3 domains of IT architecture should not be neglected, which are application/service, information/data, and technology/infrastructure.
Using Enterprise Architects to Increase the Success Rate of SAFe® Project
Any organization with a digital transformation success rate lower than 50%[i] will find that they can improve this ratio substantially if they start using their enterprise architecture task force differently. To increase their value in an organization that uses SAFe® or any other sophisticated agile methodology, enterprise architects need to get a lot better at focusing on providing value to clients, patients, partners, key managers, and key employees using detailed value streams with identified participating stakeholders, enabling business capabilities, and last but not least required information concepts.
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How to Build a Grounded Capability Model
Business Capabilities are at the heart of an organization’s planning ecosystem. Capability mapping serves many purposes, two of which are critical. First, business capabilities are instrumental in setting priorities more quickly focusing on the most profitable initiatives first. Second, well crafted and grounded detailed capability-based roadmap allows agile project planning that is more accurate, less risky, and takes less time.
The 7 Phases of Strategy Mapping
Well-crafted strategic plans are mapped in detail from business design to agile solution delivery and execution to enable the necessary changes within an organization in response to customer needs, competition, and innovation. To achieve its strategies and goals, a firm needs to map and disseminate them cohesively throughout its organization using its entire planning ecosystems from executives, mid-level managers, strategists, business architects, enterprise architects, change managers, process experts, business analysts, and agile experts using the 7 phases of strategy mapping.
4 Steps to a Successful Digital Transformation Project Using Business Architecture
Following the 4 steps of a well-crafted business architecture practice will increase the cohesion within the planning ecosystem of your organization and significantly improve the rate of success of your digital transformation projects.
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