Call them frameworks, artifacts or blueprints, Business Architecture templates provide organization-wide insight on how strategies and transformations impact an organization and are the guiding stars throughout any change initiative. They support successful execution, realization, and operationalization of business strategies.
Here are few examples of Business Architecture templates.
Business Capability Models are what a business does and is an ability at a certain capacity to deliver an outcome. Capabilities are the building blocks of the organization, the core of the core! They are the focal points in understanding and defining the interrelationships among different aspects of the business. Synthesizing these insights into a Business Capability Map is the representation of all the capabilities in an organization.
Value streams are capabilities as the building blocks of a Lego house. They are instructions on how to connect these building blocks in order to build the Lego house (i.e. value proposition). In other words, value streams illustrate how an organization orchestrates its business capabilities to deliver value to its stakeholders.
Organization Model is simply an illustration of how an organization decomposes into different business units. It does also presents how these business units are interrelated among themselves and other business architecture aspects.
Information Map provides a common vocabulary for the organization by defining business objects and concepts.
Strategy Map illustrates the mission & vision, strategic intents, goals, and objectives of an organization. It also identifies the interrelationships among these strategic elements.
Business Model Canvas provides a big picture view of the business, including mission & vision, value streams, stakeholders, cost and revenue models, etc. We populate this Canvas with other business architecture blueprints to build a “meta-blueprint” of the business (i.e. a blueprint representing other blueprints).
Stakeholder Model represents the ecosystem of stakeholders for an organization from both internal and external perspectives.
Initiatives Map describes the mapping among in-flight and planned initiatives with other aspects of the business. Initiative maps are mainly used to understand the scope of the transformations and therefore pinpoint any potential duplication, overlap, or opportunities for consolidations.
Business Interaction Model illustrates how stakeholders exchange values through various tangible and intangible interactions. Although this model could be built as a foundation blueprint, we find it more useful as a transformation view.
Business Footprint Diagram identifies areas of the business that is being touched and impacted by the transformation initiative. It does also show the relationships among these areas and therefore it is a very powerful artifact to understand the extent of the impact of a transformation to the business. Business Footprint Diagram usually reveals elements and relationship that are easily overlooked and/or not well understood.
Transformation Framework illustrates the current and future vision of the business and information technology. The framework informs the transformation scope, goals, and objectives and acts as an alignment tool for business and technology strategies, ensuring a business-driven solution delivery. The concepts, as identified in the framework, guide the transformation effort from solution design and delivery approach to implementation.