How does business architecture go beyond conventional scope to become a genuine driver of business transformation?
Most treatments of business architecture focus on functions, processes, and capabilities — important, but incomplete. This 2012 presentation by Graham McLeod, delivered at The Open Group Enterprise Transformation Conference in Cannes, makes the case that the true scope of business architecture is much broader: encompassing innovation and design thinking, customer value and emotion, external context, emerging technology, and the full range of strategic concerns that drive organisational change. Drawing on TOGAF 9, Archimate 2, and the Inspired framework, the presentation maps out an expanded meta model that integrates motivation, functional, process, service, and capability perspectives — and shows how these are not competing views but complementary lenses that can be reconciled. A compelling section examines the transformative forces reshaping business in 2012 — cloud, big data, social media, additive manufacturing, and the rise of design-driven companies — and asks what business architects must do to stay relevant. Case examples from Apple, Volkswagen, and others illustrate how architectural thinking at the right level of abstraction enables the kind of strategic clarity that transforms organisations. The closing argument is unambiguous: business architecture practised at its full scope is a board-level strategic capability, not a documentation exercise.
Originally presented by Graham McLeod at The Open Group Enterprise Transformation Conference, Cannes, France, April 2012.
