Transcript of a BriefingsDirect podcast from The Open Group Conference on defining the role and scope of the business architect.

1. Exploring Business-IT Alignment: A 20-Year Struggle
Culminating in the Role and Impact of Business Architecture
Transcript of a BriefingsDirect podcast from The Open Group Conference on defining the role
and scope of the business architect.
Listen to the podcast. Find it oniTunes/iPod and Podcast.com. Sponsor: The Open Group
Dana Gardner: Hi. This is Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions, and you're
listening to BriefingsDirect.
Today, we present a sponsored podcast discussion in conjunction with The Open Group
Conference in Austin, Texas, the week of July 18, 2011.
We've assembled a distinguished panel to delve into the role and opportunity for
business architecture. We'll examine how the definition of business architect has
matured and we'll see why it’s so important for this new role to flourish in
today’s dynamic business and IT landscapes. We'll also see how certification and
training are helping to shape the business architecture leaders of tomorrow.
[Disclosure: The Open Group is a sponsor of Briefings Direct podcasts.]
Here to help better understand the essential impact of business architecture on business success,
is Harry Hendrickx, the Chief Technology Officer, CME Industry Unit, HP Enterprise Services
and a Certified Global Enterprise Architect. Welcome, Harry.
Harry Hendrickx: Thank you, Dana.
Gardner: We're also here with Dave van Gelder, Global Architect in the Financial Services
Strategic Business Unit at Capgemini. Welcome, Dave.
Dave van Gelder: Thank you, Dana.
Gardner: And we're also here with Mieke Mahakena. She is the Label Leader for Architecture
in the Training Portfolio at Capgemini Academy and also a Certified Architect. Welcome, Mieke.
Mieke Mahakena: Thank you.
Gardner: Also, Peter Haviland, head of Architecture Services in the Americas for Ernst &
Young. Hello, Peter.
Peter Haviland: Morning, Dana.
Gardner: And last, Kevin Daley, Chief Architect in the Technology and Innovation Group at
IBM Global Business Services. Hello, Kevin.

2. Kevin Daley: Hello, Dana.
Gardner: Let me start by addressing both Harry and Kevin. There’s been a new paper that you
are working on refining the definition of business architecture, but I'm interested why this is so
important now.
We see that CEOs around the world really are seeking fundamental change. They recognize that
we're at an inflection point. Why is that the case? Why is the role of business architect so
important now? Let’s start with Harry, please.
Business-IT alignment
Hendrickx: Thank you very much, Dana. Yes, it is a very important question, of course. Why
are we putting so much effort in getting business architecture on the scene? Over the past one or
two decades, business-IT alignment has been number one on the CIO agenda, and apparently the
organizations have increasing difficulty getting business-IT alignment
resolved.
There are quite a few people pioneering in business-IT alignment, but
apparently there was no urgency yet to recognize this role more specifically.
HP, in the past two years, interviewed CIOs worldwide, and they all indicated
that they face quite large and complex transformation processes. They also
recognize that business-IT alignment is one of key issues. We think that the business architect
really can provide some resolution to get those processes in better shape and more successful.
Gardner: Kevin, your thoughts. Why is it so important right now?
Daley: At IBM, we have a CEO study and a CIO study that come out in alternating years. One of
the things that started coming out loud and clear in 2010 was that managing complexity and
building operating dexterity required a better understanding across the entire company.
We've started seeing a trend to move not just from business IT alignment, but
to business and IT convergence. There's an understanding more and more that
information technology, and technology in general, is a core part of the
business model now. There's an understanding that now we have a situation
where business and IT aren’t so much aligned, because of the fact that IT is
part of business.
Where we did interviews and surveys and then compiled them for thousands of CEOs, we came
up with three key elements. Amongst those was managing and taking advantage of complexity
while building operating dexterity. That’s the key theme.

3. One of the problems that we're seeing from the CEOs is having for decades separated IT as if it
was its own business unit, instead of part of the true sense of the business. It's been an
interpretive science. To manage that complexity they needed a means by which to start with the
design of where they're going and have have a business strategy.
How do they take that strategy and transform it into technology and into information
management? They needed an ability to have a framework in which to have that substantive
discussion between the people who were responsible, such as the CIO who is responsible for
technology and the operations and the COOs, who are really about the execution of the overall
picture.
What we've seen from our CEOs is a need to start being more integrated. There have been
market pressures that they having to respond to. The big economic downturn was a big change
for everyone, and they are trying to address it.
They're looking at means that they can start integrating more globally. They can start to increase
their cost variability and start becoming more agile in how they operate their business. To do that
they need a means by which they can more effectively communicate.
Driving understanding
So far, we've been seeing that business architecture is a perfect way to start driving an
understanding. It's a place where both people who are used to seeing standard business models
like revenue and capability are able to associate that to the different types of architectures and
designs that we see coming out of the technology group.
It's giving them a common place to meet and jointly move forward with what they're trying to do
in terms of managing the complexity, so they can be more agile and dexterous.
Gardner: Dave van Gelder, it sounds as if what we're trying to do here is at a very high level in
the organization. Does a business architect and architecture have to be at a high level to be
successful? Where in the org chart do we typically see this role? Is it near the top? Does it
matter?
van Gelder: It depends on the maturity of an organization. Within Capgemini nowadays, we talk
about business technology. As Kevin said, business and technology are not separate. Technology
is part of the total business.
When we started the Business Architecture Working Group in 2006, there was a
lot of discussion about two words, business and architecture, and nobody knew
exactly what we were talking about. Everybody had a different understanding of
those words. In the last years what you have seen is that business architecture is
looked at in a different way.

4. Currently in the Business Architecture Working Group, we see business architecture as
something that brings the balance between all the other architectures in the company -- that’s IT
architecture, financial architecture, money, people architecture, and a lot of other architectures.
If business architecture is bringing the balance between the different aspects of a company, then
business architecture is something that should be handled in the top of the organization, because
balance should be created between all the different aspects in the organization.
Gardner: Based on what Dave said. it sounds, Mieke, as if we're talking about a federation of
architectures,. What then is the fundamental problem that the business architect needs to solve?
Is this getting into the actual mechanisms or is it about organizing the people around some sort of
a vision or strategy?
Mahakena: It's more like making sure that, whatever transformation you're going to implement,
you align all those different aspects. As Dave told us, there are a number of aspects in an
organization that might need to change, and you can have all those different architectures for
those aspects. But, if every aspect goes its own way in changing, then they will never be aligned.
Business architecture is meant to align all of those aspects to make sure that you have a balanced,
consistent, and coherent set of operations at the end.
Gardner: It sounds as if we're in agreement that this is a high level function, but what is it that
people might stumble upon, if they direct this in a wrong direction? What is business architecture
not good at? Peter, what should we avoid? What's a misstep in terms of either the level in the
organization or the target of the activity?
Many things at once
Haviland: Business architecture is similar to other forms of architecture, in that it tends to try to
do many things all at once. The idea of enterprise alignment is definitely the
right outcome, but there is enough complexity there to blow steam out of your
head for many, many years to come.
Certainly in our experience in implementing these types of functions in
organizations, functions that constrain scope very well, also tend to
communicate very well around what their status is, what their progress is
against milestones, and what outcomes they've achieved, and they tend to
articulate those outcomes in terms of real business value.
What business architecture is not very good at are broad-reaching types of goals that don’t have
measurable outcomes.
Gardner: So, it's not just let's have a designated business architect and a laurels-wearing
individual, but move more towards something that’s very practical and that shows results. That
leads to a question about how to professionalize this role.

5. Anyone could stand up and call themselves a business architect, but what is The Open Group, in
particular, doing about actually certifying and moving towards a standardization of some sort.
Does anybody have any thoughts about how to make this more rigorous?
Hendrickx: The first question we get asked is, what's the difference between a business
consultant and a business architect or a business analyst and a business architect? We also have
enterprise architect and technology architects. Is there a reason for being for the business
architect?
This is something we did a lot of research on at HP and we
delineated the role of the business architect quite clearly from the
business consulting and the business analyst aspect.
The business architect's role is distinct, because he combines the
organizational strategy with the operations. He identifies the implications of this strategy, as well
as that of the technology for the business operations. This is opposed to the business consultant,
who is more outwardly looking to the commercial aspects of the organization and what that
means for the structure. The business analyst is looking more at not the structure of the
operation, but at the solution level.
When we look at the enterprise architect and the solution architect, the business architect focuses
more on the complete implications of the strategy and technology trends on the operations,
whereas the enterprise architect is more interested in the IT and the implications for the IT
strategy and how IT should be deployed. The business architect is much more focused on the
complete performance of the business operations.
So, the bottom line of these delineations of the past one-and-a-half years is that there is a reason
for being for a business architect. It is a distinct role and it has a real solution for a problem.
Gardner: Thank you, Harry. Anyone else with some thoughts about how to make the
certification and standardization of this stick?
Defining the profession
Mahakena: What we've been doing in the Business Forum, after we decided that business
architecture has its own reason for existence, we described the business architecture profession --
what's the scope and what should be the outcome of business architecture.
Now, we're working on the practice of business architecture by defining a
framework, looking at methods, and defining approaches you can use to do
business architecture.
Parallel to that, if you know what the profession is and what the practice is,
you're able to create the business architecture certification, because those
things help you define the required skills and experience a business architect

6. needs. So, we are working on that in the Business Forum.
Daley: Let's look at business architecture from the concept that has existed, combining the
thoughts of what Mieke and Harry have already talked about. When we work with clients, for
those of us that are in consultancies, we see that there is normally something that’s similar to
business architecture, but it's either a shadow organization inside a purely business unit that isn't
technology focused, or it is things like the enterprise architects who are having to learn the
business concepts around business architect anecdotally, so that they can be successful in their
roles.
I'd suggest that we're seeing a need to make it more refined and more explicit, so that we're able
to identify the people that fit for this. They have specific things, instead of having general things
that we have today. For me, the certification helps provide that certainty as a hiring manager or
as somebody who is looking to staff an organization.
It provides that kind of clarity of what they should be doing, giving them specific activities,
specific things they do that create value for the company. It takes out of the behind the scenes
action and pull something that's critical to success into the front with people who are specifically
aligned and educated to do that.
Gardner: Thank you, Kevin. Let's speak a little bit about why the strategic and top-level aspects
of this certified individual or office is so important. It seems to me that, on one hand, we have
more need for different technology competencies in an organization, but at the same time, we're
starting to see consolidation, particularly at the data center level, fewer data centers, more
powerful and vast data centers and consolidation across different regions.
How does globalization fit into this? Do we need to think about the fact that if we have fewer
data centers but more technology requirements, doesn’t the role of somebody or some group
need to come together so that there is a pan organizational or even global type of effect?
Let's start with you Peter. How does the globalization impact the importance of this role?
Haviland: Globalization is creating more and more complexity in the business models that
organizations are trying to operate. Over the last couple of decades, with the science and
engineering of IT, there has been enormous investment by companies to actually operate,
maintain, and improve their IT in their current world.
In many cases, this IT work has outpaced the comparable business efforts inside those
organizations, when they actually think about their business, their business models, and their
business operating principles.
What we're actually seeing now is that the rigor, the engineering, and the effort that’s put into
technical architecture and IT architecture is now being proposed on the business side, with many
business management process improvement activities. These tend to be at quite a low level,
however, when you compare them to business architecture initiatives at the enterprise level.

7. Scope and challenge
If those architecture initiatives are at the high levels that are needed, you start to consider the
scope and challenges that come into play, when you start talking about globalization. So, with the
increase in scope and the global way that people are operating across cultures, geographies, and
languages, that requires this discipline, which does operate at that high level to start to organize
the other areas, but perhaps at a lower level.
Gardner: Harry Hendrickx, thoughts about this issue of increased complexity and yet more
consolidation in terms of where IT is housed, managed, and governed?
Hendrickx: There are two aspects that need to be paid more attention to with globalization and
more complexity. First, the business architect is, or should be, equipped to look at the
organization, not only within the boundaries of an organization, but also the ecosystem of
organizations that will mold together and have to be connected to produce the value.
Since these are more formalized contracts or relationship with different organizations connected
to each other, there is a dynamic that is hardly seen anymore, that is not transparent anymore.
There clearly needs to be some more detailed insights and transparency for each organization, so
that people understand what the impact of certain developments or events will be. This can't be
done just by logic or just by watching carefully. This really needs some in-depth analysis for
which the business architecture is built.
The second part of it is that the due to the complexity, the decision making process has become
more complex and there will be more stakeholders involved in the different areas of decision
making. The business architect has a clear task and challenge as well. By absorbing the strategy,
technology trends, and the different developments and focusing on the applications for
operations, he has the opportunity to discuss with the different stakeholders. He has the
opportunity to get those stakeholders either mobilized or focused on specific decisions: the
deliverables you will provide.
Gardner: We certainly see a lot of important characteristics in this role: global, strategic high
level, encompassing business understanding, as well as technology. Dave van Gelder, where do
you go to find these kinds of people? Who tends to make a good business architect or is there no
real pattern yet established as to who steps up to the plate to be able to manage this type of a job?
van Gelder: To all the complexity already mentioned, I'd want to add something else that we
found in the Business Architecture Working Group, which is more research in the whole field.
That's the problem of communication. How do people communicate with each other?
If you look in the IT world, most people come from an engineering background. It's hard enough
to talk to each other and to be clear to each other about what's possible and how you should go or
what you should go for. If you start talking to all those other areas in the business, then suddenly

8. people have a completely other way of thinking. Sometimes they use the same words and don't
understand each other.
It’s not easy to have these kinds of people that need very good communication skills next to all
the complexity that you have to handle. On the other hand, you need an architect when it's
complex. You don't need an architect when it's simple, because everybody can do it. But an
architect is just a person. I say if I am a simple person, I can only handle simple things.
What you need are people who can structure. I can only work with things when I can structure it,
when the complexity is fairly well-structured. I then have overview of all those complexities, and
then I can start communicating with all the parties I have to communicate with.
No real training
At the moment, I don't see any real training or development of these kinds of people that you
need. Most of them come with a lot of experience in a lot of fields, and because of that, they have
the possibility to talk to all kinds of people and to bring the message.
Gardner: Mieke, at Capgemini Academy, you’ve obviously encouraged and encountered folks
moving towards a business architect role. What are your thoughts on what it takes and where
they tend to come from?
Mahakena: Let's have a look where they can come from. What you see is that this role of
business architect can be a next step in one’s career. For example, a business analyst, who has
been creating a lot of experience in all kinds of fields, and he could evolve to watch a business
architect. This person needs to get away from the detail and move towards the strategy and a
more holistic view.
Another example could be an enterprise architect who already has analytics skills and
communication skills. But, enterprise architects are more or less focusing on IT, so they should
move more towards the business part and towards strategy and operations.
One could be the business consultant who is now focusing on strategy, also should have those
communication skills, and will be able to communicate with stakeholders in high positions in
companies. Business consultants have a lot of industry knowledge. So they should need more
knowledge about technology and perhaps improve their analytics skills and learn more to how to
structure operations.
So, there are number of existing roles that already have a lot of skills required for business
architecture. They just have to enhance skills and get new skills to do this new role.
Gardner: We talked about how this is important because of the internal organizational shifts and
the need for transformation. We’ve seen how globalization makes this more important, but I’d
like to also look a little bit at some of the trends and technology.

9. We’ve seen a great deal of emphasis on cloud computing, hybrid computing, the role of mobile
devices, wirelessly connected devices, sensors, and fabric of information which, of course, leads
to massive data, and they need to then analyze that data.
This is just a handful of some of the major technology trends. Kevin Daley, it seems to me that
managing these trends and these new capabilities for organizations also undergirds and supports
this need. So how do you see the technology impetus for encouraging the role of business
architect?
Daley: I'm seeing from my work in the field that we’ve got all these things that are converging.
Certainly, you've got all these enabling technologies and things that are emerging that are making
it easier to do technology types of things and speeding them up. So, as they start maturing and as
organizations start consuming them, what we’re seeing is that there’s a lack of alignment.
Business relevancy
What this trend is really doing is making sure that you have something that is your controlling
device that says what is the business relevancy? Are we measuring these peer-to-peer --
measuring something such as massive data and information fabrics compared to something like
cloud computing, where you are dispersing the ability to access that more readily. It creates a
problem in that you have to make sure that people are aligned on what they're trying to
accomplish.
We're seeing that the technologies that are emerging are actually enabling business architecture
in a fashion. It provides that unified vision, that holism, that you can start looking at
combinations of these technologies, instead of having to look at them as we’ve had to in the past
of siloed elements of technologies that have their own implications.
We're using business architecture as a means to provide the information back to the business
analyst who is going to look and help. You can provide the business implications, but then you
have to analyze what that implication means and make decisions for how much of that you’re
willing to accept within your organization.
In the notions around how I investigate risk, how I look at what is going to improve market, and
what is the capacity of what I can do, there's a disconnect that business for which architecture is
helping provide the filler for to get to the people that are doing these corporate strategies and
corporate analysis at a level. That allows them to virtualize the concept of the technology,
consume what it means and what that relates to for a business or in terms of its operation and
strategy and the technology itself.
We’re seeing this become the means by which you can have that universal understanding that
these are the implications, and that those implications can now be layered, so that you can look at
them in combination instead of having to deal with each technology trend as if it's a standalone
piece.

10. We're seeing this as a means by which to provide some clarity around what any adoption would
be. When you adopt technology, it obviously has a level of maturity it has to reach, but it also has
a level of complexity. It's being able to start taking advantage of more than just one technology
trend at the same time and being able to realistically deliver that into their business model.
What I have been seeing is that the technologies are driving the need for business architecture,
because they need that framework to make sure that they are talking apples to apples and that
they are meaning the same thing, so that we get out of the interpretation that we have had in the
past and get into something that’s very tactical and very tactile, and that you can structure and
align in the same way, so you understand what the full ramifications are.
Gardner: Peter Haviland, we have these multiple technology developments overlapping. They
can be opportunities for businesses, but they can also perhaps be problems, if you don’t manage
them.
What are the stakes here for business architecture and for organizations that can master this? It
seems to me that they would have a significant advantage. For those that don’t, it could mean a
significant cratering of their business potentially. So are we talking about an existential level
importance for business architecture? How important is this now?
Haviland: It’s extremely important. What I see is that this is a discipline that’s just crying out for
more people and more maturity. You almost need it to become pervasive throughout
organizations now.
Feeding technology
The most common story I encounter is simply that organizations spent a lot of time in the past
creating their processes and then they spent a lot of time feeding technology solutions to those
processes. In recent times, the pace of technology change has moved faster than that previous
paradigm.
What you're looking at is at people saying, well, I am the business, there are all of these
technology options out there. I cannot find a way forward and so how do I exploit those? That is
where the business architecture profession is really being pushed to the front.
That said, there is a slight risk here that it may be considered too much in isolation. I mean, it is
an architecture profession, it is a part of architecture, and the value of architecture is to provide
that aligned view across the various domains that are important in terms of business, technology,
information, security, and those types of elements.
When it comes back to what’s at stake for businesses that are investing in this particular area and
for businesses that are trying to reconsider the way that they can operate themselves to support
technology, they are moving ahead and they have competitive advantage. Businesses that aren’t
doing that tend to be left behind, because the pace of change of technology is going to get faster.

11. Gardner: We're here at The Open Group Conference. I wonder if any of you could fill us in on
what The Open Group is now doing to advance this definition, mature the role, promulgate
certification, and hasten the effect and benefits of business architecture in the field. Who can
update us briefly on where we stand with The Open Group’s movement on certification and
definition?
Mahakena: All those subjects you mentioned are part of the work of the Business Forum. The
Business Forum is working in parallel on all those things. For example, it's defining the
profession and defining business architecture, working on methods and frameworks and
approaches, and working on certification.
We need to do that in parallel, because all those aspects have to be aligned. We also need
alignment in our own work to make sure that the certification, for example, are just the skills you
actually need to do the business architecture and to create the outcomes we have defined in the
profession and practice part.
We're on our way as a Business Forum and we have done a huge amount of work, but we're not
ready yet. There are still a number of subjects we need to discuss, and we need to align
everything we have now to make sure that we have a consistent package of deliverables that can
be used by the members of The Open Group and anyone outside as well.
That’s where we are at this moment, and we are hoping to deliver a set of documents that will be
accepted by The Open Group, by the members, and then they can be shared.
Hendrickx: I want to extend a little bit on where we are, because there has been some
investigation in the 28 frameworks, which are very close or are meant to be frameworks for
business architects. From this it resulted that none of these really had a complete holistic
approach, as the role is identified currently, or at least how the needs have been identified in the
marketplace.
Some have gaps
Some are quite close, but quite a few have gaps in one of the areas that should be touched, like
strategy, operations, processes, or technology. We currently try to identify and fill that gap. That’s
one point.
The other one is that most of the techniques used by the business architect are very well-
embedded in academic research and are often and sometimes already used by different roles as
well.
I'm thinking of things like the systems approach, and the systems thinkers have quite a few
techniques. There are also techniques developed by IBM, HP, and Capgemini on the business
architecture, which are well-versed and well-embedded in academic research of the past 20, 30
years. So, it's not just a set of techniques that are built together. These are really based on insights
which we have gained over several decades.

12. Gardner: Very good. I understand that many of these resources and the ability to take part in
some of these working groups are all available on the newly redesigned Open Group website.
That would be opengroup.org online and easily found from search.
I want to close up by thanking our guests. We've been discussing the burgeoning role of, and the
opportunity for, business architecture and its practitioners in a dynamic global business
environment.
This podcast is coming to you as a sponsored activity in conjunction with The Open Group
Conference in Austin, Texas, the week of July 18, 2011.
So thanks to our guests. We've been joined by Harry Hendrickx, Chief Technology Officer, CME
Industry Unit in HP’s Enterprise Services, and also a Certified Global Enterprise Architect.
Thank you, Harry.
Hendrickx: Thank you, Dana.
Gardner: And also Dave van Gelder, Global Architect in the Financial Services Strategic
Business unit at Capgemini. Thank you, Dave.
van Gelder: Thank you, Dana.
Gardner: We're also here with Mieke Mahakena. She is the Label Leader for Architecture in the
Training Portfolio at Capgemini Academy, and also a Certified Architect. Thank you, Mieke.
Mahakena: You are welcome, Dana.
Gardner: Peter Haviland, Head of the Architecture Services for Americas at Ernst & Young has
also joined us. Thank you, Peter.
Haviland: Thanks, Dana. Thanks everyone.
Gardner: And lastly, Kevin Daley, Chief Architect in the Technology and Innovation Group at
IBM Global Business Services. Thanks so much, Kevin.
Daley: Thank you, Dana. Again, thanks to everyone else also.
Gardner: This is Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions. Thanks again for
listening, and come back next time.
Listen to the podcast. Find it oniTunes/iPod and Podcast.com. Sponsor: The Open Group
Transcript of a BriefingsDirect podcast from The Open Group Conference on defining the role
and scope of the business architect. Copyright Interarbor Solutions, LLC, 2005-2011. All rights
reserved.

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