Business Architecture, the Ugly Duckling of the architecture family?

A plea for more Business Architecture

Yes, the title seems provocative. But those who are familiar with the tale of the ugly duckling know that it is not a derogatory term at all. For those unfamiliar with the 19th-century Danish literary fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen, it tells the story of a duckling who is different from his brothers and sisters and feels like the odd one out—only to discover that he’s a swan, not a duck.

Business Architecture is indeed the odd one out. Most other architectural disciplines have a strong IT focus. And if you ask me, that’s not strange, as IT has always required strong architectural structuring. With every new technology and the exponential growth of both adoption and possibilities, the complexity of the IT landscape has significantly increased.

Consequently, organizations could no longer build monolithic systems without architectural structure; they had to invest considerable effort into data architectures, software architectures, integration architectures, and more. Yet even these architectures do not operate in isolation. They still aim to realize business value by providing functionality and delivering on quality attributes (e.g., scalability, performance).

Architecting the IT landscape brings its challenges. However—and here’s the crux of this story—if you want to build digital solutions that enable your business to create real value for the market or other stakeholders, you need to clearly understand how your business should be configured to deliver that value and secure a competitive position in the market. Your IT solutions should follow this business configuration to provide actual business value. Even when efforts focus on internal optimization, the ultimate goal is to support the business part of the organization and customers more effectively.

I’ve frequently heard the following statement when discussing Business Architecture: “I don’t want other people to tell me how to run my business.” And that’s fine—Business Architects won’t. Instead, they exist to help you structure your business and facilitate critical decision-making. Identifying your competitive position is part of your strategic planning process. Configuring your business correctly (identifying the correct value streams, the appropriate mix of people, effective processes, etc.) is, first and foremost, a Business Architecture activity.

This activity is crucial for any organization because everyone downstream relies on clarity about expectations and structure. Enterprise Architects strive to maintain coherence at a structural level, aiming to deliver strategic value to the organization. They depend heavily on Business Architecture insights, such as Capability Maps and Value Streams. Domain and Solution Architects will also perform better if they understand how Business Domains are structured and their operational configurations, enabling them to deliver suitable IT solutions.
In other words, don’t expect miracles downstream if you don’t care about architecting upstream.

So why the Ugly Duckling? Apart from being a distinct architectural discipline, Business Architecture could be the swan your organization needs. That’s not to say it’s more critical than the IT-oriented architectural disciplines.
However, if we’re being fair, it’s the one discipline that can provide direction to all the others.

So, if you’re still treating Business Architecture as the Ugly Duckling of your organization’s architecture, remember this: it might be the swan guiding your organization toward more tremendous success.