Techniques and Deliverables of Business Architecture
Audience and Benefits
The course is designed for senior business analysts, enterprise architects, strategists and executives who are, or who will become, actively involved in modeling, analysing and shaping the future of businesses and their strategic use of Information and Communication Technologies. Programme and portfolio managers are also potential candidates. It is a skills course rather than a methodology course, designed to expose participants to leading techniques and ways of presenting models and results of analyses. It draws on our 25+ years experience in business and academia as well as industry best practice to deliver a valuable set of tools to equip business architects.
Many courses teach the overall agenda or approach to business architecture (what you should do), but there are precious few that show you how!
This course:
Equips you with real skills to tackle challenging business architecture projects
Provides state of the art techniques that deliver results and helps organisations leverage powerful concepts, models and modes of presentation
Facilitates better decision-making, using evidence and persuasive presentation
Allows you to take advantage of opportunities presented in your context and by technology
Promotes innovative thinking in terms of business models and product/service offerings
Helps you to minimise risks
Drawing upon strategic planning, enterprise architectures, design concepts, organisation design, learning organisations and several other disciplines, the course provides a set of techniques which assist the business architect in understanding the context, the challenges, the opportunities, the risks and the strategic options of an enterprise and fashioning a coherent architecture and plan to realise the organisation’s vision.
What is Business Architecture?
Business Architecture is concerned with the modeling, analysis and design of the business domain of the enterprise. It includes the context in which the enterprise operates, the products and services offered, the stakeholders we deal with, the value chains and networks, business functions, processes and organization structures. It can also include analysis of costs, risks and quality aspects. It is essential to the understanding of business to successfully transform to meet challenges and opportunities in the future as well as to communicate and transfer the strategic thinking to the implementation and operational levels of the business, including information technology functions.
Excerpt from Inspired Architecture Frameworks (c) 2019
Why Inspired?
Delegates will benefit from the expertise of the course leader and his team at Inspired. The course will be led by Graham McLeod, Owner and Chief Architect of Inspired.org. Graham has worked in industry for 40 years and academia for 12 (in parallel). He has experienced first hand the difficulties of really doing thorough analysis under pressure in many industries globally, including banking, assurance, healthcare, telecoms, education, administration, retail, services and others. He has taught strategy, business and enterprise architecture and other techniques at leading universities and international conferences. He has led the development of unique techniques, models and tools at Inspired for over two decades. He is uniquely qualified to share experience and techniques that you can rapidly apply. He is passionate about his subject and a great teacher. We may also have expert guest lecturers on selected topics. These are carefully chosen to ensure high levels of expertise and stimulating delivery.
Unique Content Shared
Holistic Architecture Language meta model which unifies business and other domains
Stakeholder value exchange modelling
Process Architectures and process improvement levers
Strategic Contextual Analysis
Ways to foster innovation, including: design thinking, blue ocean strategy, a unique Inspired model to balance innovation and improvement activities
Taking advantage of digital disruption, convergence and exponential effects
Comments from Past Attendees
““TOGAF might give you the roadmap, this teaches you how to drive”
“Great to finally understand how to do it”
“Multiple perspectives well explained. Now we can stop arguing over whether SOA or Process Modeling is the ‘right’ way - they are sides of the same coin”
“My head is full - in a good way”
“Gives me confidence to work with senior managers - can now talk business and draw the picture”
“Design thinking holds great promise for innovative solutions”
“Excellent and dynamically presented. Thanks!””
Content and Structure
The course features live lectures, in-class assignments, group work and feedback to apply techniques. Case study work in small teams will allow delegates to perform analysis and come up with architectures and strategies. Teams will compete and learn from each other before experiencing another facet of the challenge. The course stresses holistic consideration and interplay of the many facets that affect the outcome of an architecture.
Course content includes (subject to change)
The scope, content and contribution of Enterprise Architecture
The scope, content, positioning and contribution of Business Architecture
Design thinking
Industry developments, available methods, techniques and notations
Understanding the context and the scope
Context and Stakeholder Analysis
Value Chain and Value Network Analysis
Capabilities and Health Checks
Understanding the Interaction and Value Exchange
Customers, Markets and Brands
Products and Services
Channels and Interfaces
Customer Experience
Understanding the Dynamics
Business Events
Business Services
Business Fuctions
Business Processes
Business Models
Change and Agility
Optimization and Efficiency
The Human, Political and Fiscal Dimensions
Organization structures and models
Analysing Politics and Agendas
Costs and Investment
Risk and Governance
The Static Dimension
Business Object Domain Modeling
Meta Data
Content Architecture
Initiatives and Portfolios
Scoping and defining initiatives
Selecting and prioritising
Marketing and Communication
Facilitation
Certification
Delegates may do an optional examination following attendance of the course, scheduled at mutual convenience. This is charged at R2750 plus VAT (US$175). Those passing the exam will be certified as Inspired Business Architects (Probationary).
Probationary qualification can be upgraded to Certified following:
- Minimum six months application of the business architecture techniques
- Submission of a portfolio of business architecture deliverables produced
- Interview with respect to business architecture knowledge and application
Provided Materials
Delegates will be provided with:
Access to supporting notes, documents, examples and videos to enhance learning.
Access to live session recordings for ease of review.
High quality notes and links to media and references to pursue further investigation
An electronic copy of the book: Enterprise Architecture as Strategy by Jeanne Ross, Peter Weill and David Robertson
Platform
To support learning, we use the Ruzuku course delivery platform. This allows us to provide course overviews, online enrolment and payment, online course structure and progress tracking, forums for student collaboration, recorded session videos and support materials such as white papers, readings, example models and video clips.
We make use of Zoom for live lectures with rich student interaction via video, audio, screen sharing, break-away rooms and chat facilities. Students will need a PC / Mac / high end tablet and a reliable Internet connection to participate.
We will share examples in our enterprise level enterprise modelling and knowledge management platform: Enterprise Value Architect (EVA) to demonstrate what an integrated tooling environment can achieve. Of course, techniques can also be supported by other competent toolsets.
Pricing
Being based in a developing economy region (South Africa) we are acutely aware of the difficulty of paying for world class tuition in devalued currency. Accordingly we have two tier pricing for the course:
| Location | Cost (before taxes) |
|---|---|
| Developing Economies | ZAR 21 000 / USD 1 430 |
| Developed Economies | USD 2 150 |
If you are unsure of your current economy’s status, please refer to the full country lists.
Both of these provide exceptional value when you consider the career development and improved strategic decisions that result.
Enrol Now
If you are interested, please let us know with the form below and we will notify you when the next instance is scheduled!
Due to the ongoing COVID19 pandemic, we are currently not scheduling face-to-face courses on location.
Please contact us if you want to arrange an in-house course and we will review the situation.
Still Have Questions?
Please use the form below to ask us anything, express interest or have us contact you for a discussion. Not sure whether this training is suited to your role/organisation/experience? Book a call and we can discuss further, and find the right match for your needs.