Faisal H. • Interesting question! I think we can easily agree on one thing - a business ecology can not survive without a business architecture. I have been practicing, writing about, and building 'business architcture' for more than a decade now....

Take look at one of my article on business architcture ::

http://www.btminstitute.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=223&Itemid=60

You can also look at the BTM Institute (http://www.btminstitute.org), my personal website :: www.faisalhoque.com and my company website BTM Corporation (www.btmcorporation.com) for extensive information on this very topic.

Hope this stimulate more conversation on this topic as it is about time we pay attention to - business architecture, business ecology, as much as we have on technology and process architecture.

Thanks, Faisal

Abbie L. • Faisal, I particularly like your inclusion of descriptive and quantitative attributes for each of the elements you include in your Strategic Enterprise Architecture. From the article:
"Each of these elements has subjective and objective – or, textual and numeric -- attributes (metrics, priority, and feasibility, for example) that help give the SEA the depth of description and interaction that distinguish it from a simple diagram or drawing. For example, the element “high value customer” could include attributes such as a textual description of who is considered a high-value customer and numerical values that describe the estimated number of customers that fall into this category and the revenue a customer needs to account for to qualify as high-value."
Smart!

Aleks B. • Abbie -

This is a very deep rabbit hole indeed. There are a lot of links in my thoughts, so I'll aggregate them on our blog: http://www.agilityissensible.com/2011/01/business-architecture-and-business.html

I suppose the answer depends on where one draws the scope boundary around Business Architecture. Based on our observations from how this works in practice, it will probably be different in different organizations. For example, in our Vanilla Enterprise Architecture Capability Map, Business Architecture is a core business capability portfolio (or core function) of Enterprise Architecture, similar to how The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF) Architecture Development Method (ADM) positions the discipline. Business Ecology, on the other hand, encompasses Enterprise Architecture, along with other Office of the CXO strategy and planning functions, such as Risk Management, Portfolio Management, Asset Management, et al. It also includes the delivery and ongoing operational steady state functions of a given organization.

That's not to say that two are unrelated. The challenge for every organization is to find the "right" level of investment in the various core functions to balance short-term profitability with long-term competitive advantage. If one were to view each core function - whether strategy/planning, delivery, or operations - as a separate business unit, each of these core functions would have their own business architecture. Consider two core functions that most organizations of scale have (sometimes in spades) - Risk Management and Portfolio Management:

* They each (RM and PM) have unique organizational attributes (e.g. culture, org structure, etc.), as one would expect of two organizations with completely different mission statements-especially around communication!

* They each have unique business attributes - the business of mitigating risk is quite different than that of getting leadership to agree on the priorities of various efforts;

* They each have unique technology needs and tools - although a seasoned Enterprise Architect may detect a certain amount of commonality between GRC and EPPM tools.

So in the example above, there are two core functions within the same organization, bound by the same organizational goals and objectives, empowered by the same leadership, with two competing missions, business operating models, organizational constraints, and technology. And that's just within the Office of the CXO. Once the analysis reaches the various business profit and loss centers, whose entire business operating models may be disparate, the natural result is complexity.

As I presented at BEI last year, complexity is nothing to be afraid of - it's just complicated (podcast here). Even in the simple example above, there is an optimal range of options that allow for the two competing core functions to work in harmony. Finding the range that works to align the given set of core functions is an obvious use case for business architects. The more core functions there are to align, the more complicated it gets, since there are quite a few dependencies (and personalities) to align.

Before I get too far down the rabbit hole, here's the gist: the business of Business Architecture is creating and managing the "right" equilibrium and range for Business Ecology - the alignment of all of the disparate business operating models and their core functions within a given organization. Not to say that it can't be done without a formal Business Architecture function. But the likelihood that it can be done consistently well diminishes as level of scale increases.

AAB

Michael M. • Perhaps the difference lies between the words "architecture" and "ecology". To me, if Business Ecology is a "techie" focused SIG, then it is doomed...and I come from a techie background. Business Ecology should elevate above the technologies and change the way we think about designing business architectures.

Martin G. • I would agree with Michael. Business ecology to me provides the context in which business architectures are developed or emerge. Ecology reflects the composite of culture and structure in this sense.

Balaji P. • It's been interesting to watch the terms emerge over the years to draw lines in the business landscape to assist both cognition and execution. Sometimes the new terms hinder rather than help understanding, especially when large groups of people engage in big-endian/little-endian debates, and nuance the semantics.

I have seen Business Architecture rise up to fill the gap in Enterprise Architecture left by how architecture was defined in many enterprises - primarily as IT architecture. By most accounts, EA is still seen as short of mainstream-level definition, adoption and maturity. It would be reasonable to expect the nuancing of terms to go on for some time.

The distinction between business ecology and business architecture may lie in the words, as Michael and Martin suggest. Architecture takes a systems view of the business and provides a disciplined approach to arranging, orchestrating and composing the business symphony that is tuned to the performance mandate for the business. The result of the architecture effort can also be termed an architecture. So the word is overloaded.

TOGAF seems to have a level of business architecture that lies beyond the business architecture just described ... in the form of business strategy/context and the interactions with the environment that lies outside the purview of the enterprise. Perhaps this is what Business Ecology addresses too and is essentially a more rounded Business Architecture++. And as the clear delineation between an enterprise and its environment blur, the scope creeps some more.

Maybe, it would help to drop the term "ecology", err on the side of simplicity, and let "Business Architecture" take on the burden of all of the above.