Enabling Operational Excellence
Enabling Operational Excellence
Enabling Operational Excellence
Enabling Operational Excellence

TURNING OPERATIONAL KNOWLEDGE & COMPLIANCE INTO A COMPETITIVE EDGE

We systemize tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge

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Posts Tagged ‘Business Architecture Summit’

My New Talk and New Take on Business Architecture at BBC2011: The Architecture of Enterprise Know-How

Business Architecture Summit at BBC2011 – Thurs, Nov 3, 2011 – 10:10am I am giving a talk next week called The Architecture of Enterprise Know-How at the Building Business Capability (BBC2011) event in Florida. If you’re there, I hope you’ll come listen. I’ll be plowing new ground. We’ve done some fascinating work the past several years and now it’s time to talk about it … Does the know-how of the company have intrinsic structure at the enterprise level? Can you use that structure to assess and plan operational business capabilities? Where do business rules, business processes, and business analysis fit in? Every company depends on its special know-how, a point so obvious we often overlook it. The products and services we deliver to customers can never be better than our capacity to organize, manage, revise, and deploy that know-how. In a knowledge economy, operational know-how is king. Current techniques for creating enterprise architectures are largely IT-centric. They focus on processes, data and services rather than on business products and the business capabilities to produce and deliver them. We need to change all that using proven, pragmatic techniques that directly engage business managers. The new approach is highly innovative, business-driven, and surprisingly easy.
  • How to conduct a deep, meaningful, rapid assessment of business capabilities
  • How to identify life-cycle-long, enterprise-wide dependencies
  • How to give Finance the crucial, coordinated touch points it needs
  • How to plan for massive customization and reconfiguration of products
  • How to put the ‘business’ into business architecture and business agility
  • How to rekindle the spark of creative thinking in your organization
 

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The Debate Continues … Business Rules in Zachman 3.0 … and the Upcoming Business Architecture Summit at BBC2011

At the Business Architecture Summit in Ft. Lauderdale (BBC2011 – Oct 31 – Nov 4) I will be joining John Zachman and Roger Burlton for one of our rabble-raising 3Amigo sessions. The session is only an hour long, so I’m sure there will be some fast talking(!). One of the first questions I want John to address is: “Where are the business rules in Zachman 3.0?” The following recent exchange represents my current understanding on the matter. I plan to come back on the record after the event to say what I got right and what I got wrong. Question: Can rules address more than one primitive (column) in the Framework? My Answer: Yes, atomic rules can address multiple primitives – e.g., An accounting must be given by the CFO in Delaware on March 15, 2012. (By ‘atomic’ I mean ‘can’t be reduced into two or more rules without losing meaning.’) In this rule you have a thing (‘accounting’), a person (the CFO), a place (Delaware), and a date (March 15, 2012). So even atomic rules are composites, not primitives. Question: Does rules not being a primitive mean that business rules shouldn’t be treated as a first-class citizen? My Answer: What ‘first-class citizen’ has always meant in the Business Rule Manifesto (http://www.businessrulesgroup.org/brmanifesto.htm) and elsewhere is that business rules shouldn’t be subordinate to other kinds of requirements for system design in general, and to what I call ‘Big-P’ processes in particular. Big-P processes are not primitive (think ‘input-process-output’), but rather they amalgamate (think ‘mash-up’) some or even all the other primitives. In other words, Big-P processes are also composite. Composites are about the configuration of the enterprise at any point in time. Business rules are one candidate for that capacity. I believe business rules are a far better choice in that regard than Big-P processes (think ‘business agility’). In any case, business rules being a composite in no way diminishes their importance. The enterprise is not built on primitives alone. If you had only primitives, there would be no configuration, and literally no enterprise.

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