Title: The business architect role is vital to business process transformation
Headings: The business architect role is vital to business process transformation
The business architect role is vital to business process transformation
If you have not yet heard the term "business architect", you soon will, write John Rymer and Alexander Peters of Forrester Research. Whether business architects report into the business or IT, this emerging role will help usher in organisations' transition from IT to business technology (BT).
Recognising the need for a business architect
Independent role for business architects
Previous Forrester articles in the series:

Content: Specifically, they must have comprehensive knowledge of large-scale, cross-functional processes - such as supply chain management, enterprise resource planning (ERP), finance, or customer resource management (CRM) - or extensive experience with core, strategic line-of-business processes. Business architects must not only see the big picture when looking across multiple process improvement initiatives, they must also have business strategy talents, wide-ranging process discipline skills in methodologies such as Lean and Six Sigma, and technology know-how. Business architects have a rare combination of business domain knowledge, process experience, transformation talents, methodology skills, and a winning personality that helps with communication and business change management. Sign up to Computer Weekly to download more research and reports on business analysts and enterprise architecture: Business analyst skillset well-suited to change management
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The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF™ 9) and the US Department of Defense Architecture Framework
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Forrester believes that the business architect role is vital to organisations pursuing BPM programmes. These programmes are not only seeking to improve and transform cross-functional processes, but also to attempt to control the complexity that increasingly sophisticated technologies introduce and capitalise on relationships with customers and suppliers. In the survey Forrester carried out for this research, we found that organisations that were transforming their businesses, processes and information systems needed the business architect role most acutely. Recognising the need for a business architect
What is not obvious to many who are still relatively new to the business process transformation scene is how this crucial position should be organised, who should occupy it, and what business architects should do. Our research also indicates that only a handful of firms are consistently trying to fill this role, in part because it is so difficult to fill - although business process professionals lead the way in bringing business architects into process transformation initiatives. Our survey of more than 150 businesses and IT executives who engage in business change programmes found that: