So, since I'm hoping that this blog will appeal to business managers as well as business architects/analysts, I guess I'd better start with the obligatory post...

What is business architecture and why should I care?

OK, story time... are you sitting comfortably? Then I shall begin.

You've got this plot of land and some money and you want a house built. You've got some pretty specific views about the features of this house and, boy, is it going to be something special. This house is going to be something worthwhile that you can be proud of. You've spent the last 3 months thinking about all the features and rooms and dimensions and facilities and you're ready. You call a meeting with your bricklayer, your electrician, your plumber and your carpenter. You set out your vision, your objectives, your targets, your resources, your financial constraints, everything. By the end of the meeting, your team is sold on it; they are as enthused about this as you are and you're convinced they will give it their all. So you give the go-ahead "Go to it guys and girls!"

One month in and the carpenter is fighting with the plumber about who gets to use that space under the stairwell, the bricklayer comes to you and says that the bricks he's used won't support the weight of the woodwork the carpenter wants to put in, the electrician has just told you that all those gadgets you asked for are going to cost you more than you can afford in electricity bills...

...and then it dawns on you "Ooops! I forgot to invite the architect to that first meeting".

It's a silly story, I know. But you wouldn't do that for a house so why would you do it for a business?

I don't know about your business so I'm going to use a few figures from the business I work for. We have a few thousand employees, a couple of hundred processes, products in the 50-60 range, several locations, hundreds of things we have to react to and 6-8 objectives per manager. That's a lot of moving parts that all need to work together effectively and efficiently to achieve your organisation's goals. A business isn't like a house... it's more like a hospital or a factory.

You could just throw all those moving parts into a pile in the middle and hope it works out. You could do some planning up front and share out the parts into manageable chunks and then trust in the goodwill of your people to, somehow, make it all work. This is the approach that most businesses take.

Or you could give that architect a ring... now, where did you put that number?