Business Architecture for Change Program Design and Planning

Abstract

It is an established practice of program and project management to plan based on product breakdown structures or rather to decompose the end product into individual deliverables. Following this common practice we consider how the key elements of our product (the changed business), described by the business architecture can and should be applied in designing and managing business change. In particular, we address the challenge of identifying and managing dependencies in large complex programs—something classical program management methodologies leave as an “exercise for the reader.” The approach employs key business architecture deliverables that define the target architecture as well as those documenting the current architecture. In applying key aspects of the business architecture, such as capabilities, in program planning we seek to ensure alignment in various aspects of change across the organization and its resources, including IT systems. Our approach is a synthesis of project/program management and architecture practices. The approach described is based on the experience of taking an architecture-driven approach to a major business change program (Sprott 2008).

Always design a thing by considering it in its next larger context—a chair in a room, a room in a house, a house in an environment, an environment in a city plan.

—Eliel Saarinen quoted by his son Eero, Time, 2 Jun 77.