Question

The Value Chain and Business Capability Model provide additional perspectives on the business. Just as there are additional ways of looking at the business, there are additional blueprints to provide a visualization of those different perspectives.

In this Assignment, write a 4- to 6-page paper that addresses the following:

1. Justify whether Adopt-A-Farm is a product-driven or service-driven business structure in its current state of business.
2. Identify and document high-level business requirements for the current business structure model of the Adopt-A-Farm virtual business. Based on these requirements, create business architecture blueprints for the value chain and business capability model. You can use Visio, the Shapes and SmartArt features within PowerPoint, or any graphics editing tool that allows you to create and manipulate shapes to build your blueprints
3. Assuming Adopt-A-Farm moves its business to a cloud solution, how will the business structure model change?

Answer 1

There are three important components within the business architecture framework: business blueprints, business architecture scenarios, and the business architecture knowledgebase. As previously noted, business blueprints deliver business transparency that enables and streamlines business transformation across business units, capabilities, and stakeholders. The degree of transparency delivered by these blueprints rarely exists in many organizations. As a result, the participants in strategy planning sessions often miss the essential understanding of how to maximize solution-related investments while ensuring that one business unit’s success does not create problems for the enterprise as a whole. For example, consider the company that was creating multiple, competing enrollment solutions for the same customer base across multiple product lines. The projects could have succeeded in principle, yet they created more complexity and dissatisfaction across the customer base. Business architecture provides the transparency necessary to discover these issues in advance — before money and goods are squandered. Essential business architecture blueprint building and usage are outlined

The framework also incorporates the concept of business architecture scenarios, which provide business transparency on specific business initiatives. Business architecture is applied differently

based on the type of scenario at hand. For example, a business team involved in a merger and acquisition would require different information than another team considering how to stem customer attrition. Applying business architecture through various business scenarios, thereby leveraging blueprint views derived from the business architecture knowledgebase, enables business teams to create and deploy a wide variety of transformation roadmaps. Because this approach is based on a common view of the business across business units, it enables improved executive sponsorship and more sustainable funding structures. : • Investment Analysis • Shift to Customer Centric Business Model • Digital Transformation • Merger and Acquisition Analysis • New Product / Service Rollout • Globalization • Business Capability Outsourcing • Supply Chain Streamlining • Divestiture • Regulatory Compliance • Change Management • Operational Cost Reduction • Joint Venture Deployment

These business architecture scenarios define the collective set of initiatives, programs, and projects that leverage business architecture. Of particular importance for each scenario is the creation of a roadmap necessary to advance that particular scenario. The business architecture knowledgebase is used to store the information about the business and is organized in concise ways that are customized to a given organization’s environment. For example, corporations have divisions and departments while governments may use different terminology. There are generic approaches to knowledgebase structure as well as organizationspecific approaches. For example, a government agency would have unique organizational structures in comparison to a hospital or shipping company.

Business architecture is principle driven. A principle is an agreed upon truth that can guide one’s reasoning. This approach offers practitioners a wide degree of latitude in the practice of establishing and leveraging business architecture. Each major section has a set of principles that guide actions associated with individual blueprints and related practice areas. Core principles that apply to business architecture as a whole are listed below: 1. Business architecture is about the business. 2. Business architecture’s scope is the scope of the business. 3. Business architecture is not prescriptive. 4. Business architecture is iterative. 5. Business architecture is reusable. 6. Business architecture is not about the deliverables. These statements emphasize a principle-based approach to business architecture that provides practitioners the option to employ a variety of methods, visualization techniques, tools, and governance concepts. The common thread is that each approach adheres to a foundational set of principles that aligns the practice of business architecture without dictating how the work is done or restricting the creativity of the practitioner. while, Guide, particularly parts 2 and 3, look for the principles section that serves as a foundation for best practices in that particular topic area. Business Architecture Value Stream A common business architecture blueprint — the value stream — defines the major stages involved in delivering value to a collective set of business stakeholders. Additional business capabilities enable each stage of the value stream. While capabilities define what a business does, the value stream is an end-to-end collection of activities that deliver value to internal and external stakeholders. Figure 1.5 outlines five stages of a value stream that describe how strategies and other business direction are executed. This value stream is particularly important because it places business architecture within an enterprise context, where it is appropriately positioned between strategy and downstream planning and execution activities. It is important to note that the value stream is initiated every time a stakeholder triggers the need for business direction to be implemented in different scenarios, such as for a new strategy, a business transformation, a significant regulatory change, or integration of a newly acquired organization. Business architecture plays a key role throughout this value stream and works in partnership with other teams and disciplines. A series of capabilities provides additional insights into to each value stream stage that identify what may be done at each stage to achieve stakeholder value