The overlapping nature of business analysis and business architecture: what we need to know

Abstract

The concepts of business architecture and business analysis have many things in common. The commonalities bring beneficiary synergy to the organisations that employ both concepts. However, they also impose challenges, such as how they align, integrate or complement each other within an organisation. Also, some of the challenges lead to confusion, disorientation and defragmentation of processes and activities in many organisations where both concepts are employed in parallel. The challenges get even worse as they increasingly continue to impact structures in some organisations, which happen through allocation of roles and responsibilities between business analysis and business architecture units. Thus, the parallelism of both concepts raises fundamental question - whether the business analysis and business architecture are roles or titles. This confusion manifests itself into power struggle and selective accountability of practical unconsciousness, as actors exert their mandates and authority within an organisation. These challenges and confusion happens at different levels, and does affect the organisation’s performances. This article examines, discusses and highlights the distinction between the business analysis and business architecture, from the perspective of the computing environment. The article reveals differentiation, functionalism and serviceability as some of the critical factors, which influence the challenges and confusion that are posed by the concepts’ parallelism. Also examined are the implications of parallelism, which both concepts bring into an organisational environment. The findings from the study are intended to reduce negative impacts that the confusion and challenges do unconsciously and in practice have on processes and activities in organisations that employs both concepts in parallel.