Thoughts on Lesson 6 reading

As I read through this week’s material on Enterprise Business Architecture (EBA), I can see the theoretical value of creating Business Architecture models/documentation.  Defining a model of the business, linked to the Business Context can inform the company of how the architecture of their business supports their goals in interacting with the world around it (my definition of Business Context).  However, it seems to me there are two topics missing from the discussion

1. Cost impact analysis


This is mentioned briefly, in respect to helping guide investment dollars to the most positive impact to the business.  However, I think there is a potential for additional benefit.  With the business context defined and linked to the EBA, ETA, EIA and ESA, current state expense analysis could be performed.  I believe this would allow current expenses to be analyzed to see if the ongoing cost of supporting various ongoing operations would provide useful information.  For example, if a sales channel is identified to only support one product, if the product profit does not support that expense, perhaps the product should be dropped.  However, it could also highlight a other corrective action such as opening the channel to other products, or combining to channels.  This type of analysis is of course already done, but having additional viewpoints on the relationships of expenses informed by the linked architectural viewpoints are another benefit of the EBA efforts.


2. Business Architecture knowledge is already possessed by the business


One of the challenges I see with defining the benefit of EBA efforts is much of the information is already known by individual people within the organization.  I believe some of the resistance to these efforts is the fact that when results are presented, individuals state something along the lines of, “you aren’t telling me anything I don’t already know”.  It seems to me that there is some validity to this feedback.  However, the benefit is realized in how the information can be more easily understood by all staff within the company.  This enables more people within the organization to take advantage of it.  I think this is one aspect that is missed in value analysis. 




I also still see a struggle between openly sharing information and keeping close hold of information.  This, strictly speaking, is not a problem specific to EBA efforts, but is one way that EBA efforts can add value by assisting in broader distribution of knowledge.