This tutorial is adapted from Web Age course Business Architecture Foundation Workshop

1. 1 What are BIZBOK and BIZBOK Guide?

 BIZBOK™ stands for the Business Architecture Body of Knowledge™. BIZBOK comprises the core set of Business Architecture concepts and artifacts that enable every organization to create, communicate and manage their respective Business Architecture. The BIZBOK™ Guide is a handbook that provides business architecture practitioners and other individuals interested in this discipline with comprehensive coverage of BIZBOK. The Guide comprises a growing collection of concepts, disciplines, and emerging best practices used by many business architecture practitioners in various industries. The Business Architecture Guild, the sponsor of the BIZBOK Guide, promotes the Guide as the emerging standard for building, deploying, and leveraging business architecture within an organization.

1.2 The Business Architecture Guild

The Business Architecture Guild is a not-for-profit organization of business architecture practitioners dedicated to advancing the discipline of business architecture.  Best practices emerging in the field of the business architecture discipline are contributed through membership participation. The Guild sponsors the BIZBOK™ Guide which represents the consensus, formalization, and documentation of best practices and knowledge from active members of the Guild.

1.3 The BIZBOK Guide Make Up

 The BIZBOK™ Guide is organized into the following major parts:
◊ Business Architecture Blueprints (Views of the Business )
◊ Business Architecture Practice
◊ Business Architecture Scenarios
◊ The Business Architecture Knowledge base
◊ Business Architecture and IT Architecture Alignment
◊ Industry Reference Models

1.4 BIZBOK's Definition of Business Architecture

 BIZBOK defines business architecture as  "A blueprint of the enterprise that provides a common understanding of the organization and is used to align strategic objectives and tactical demands."  According to BIZBOK Guide, a business architecture is not confined by the Enterprise boundaries and must also provide for the interests of the external stakeholders (partners, clients, etc.)

1.5 Business Architecture Characteristics

Business Architecture blueprints use a common vocabulary, standardized framework, and shared business knowledge base of business artifacts and elements. The common vocabulary includes such terms as capabilities, value streams, information views, etc. which helps eliminate much of the confusion often found across business units. The above arrangements form the following characteristics of a Business Architecture:
◊ It is about the business
◊ It's scope is the scope of the business
◊ It is not prescriptive
◊ It is iterative
◊ It is reusable

1.6 Who, What, Where, When, Why, and How

Business Architecture helps executives answer commonly asked questions: who, what, where, when, why, and how


Fig 1. Aspects of the Business Represented by a Business Architecture
Source: BIZBOK Guide, v 3.5, 2014, p. 2

1.7 What are a Capability and Value Stream?

These are core BIZBOK Guide's business architecture concepts and blueprints.  Capabilities are what a business does; it is an ability or capacity that a business may possess or exchange to achieve a specific purpose or outcome. For example, an insurance company will have such capabilities as Claims Management and Policy Management. A value stream defines the major stages involved in delivering value to the internal and external stakeholders. In an insurance business, the Process Claim business process represents a value stream. Capabilities enable each stage of the value stream. The BIZBOK™ Guide assists practitioners with the creation and use of these business blueprints.

1.8 BIZBOK Common Blueprints

Adapted from: BIZBOK Guide, v 3.5, 2014, p. 4

1.9 The BIZBOK Business Architecture Framework

There are three important components within the Business Architecture framework:
◊ Business blueprints
◊ Business Architecture scenarios
◊ Business Architecture knowledge base

1.10 The BIZBOK Business Architecture Framework Diagram


Source: BIZBOK Guide, v 3.5, 2014, p. 5

1.11 Business Architecture Scenario Topics

The BIZBOK Guide covers the following business architecture scenario topics which include initiatives, programs, and projects:
◊ Investment Analysis
◊ Shift to Customer Centric Business Model
◊ Merger & Acquisition Analysis
◊ New Product/Service Rollout
◊ Globalization
◊ Business Capability Outsourcing
◊ Supply Chain Streamlining
◊ Divestiture
◊ Regulatory Compliance
◊ Change Management
◊ Operational Cost Reduction
◊ Joint Venture Deployment

1.12 Summary

In this tutorial, we reviewed the organization of the BIZBOK Guide sponsored by the Business Architecture Guild
 We reviewed the definition of the Business Architecture
 We defined the Capability and Value Stream blueprints
 The BIZBOK Business Architecture framework was introduced