Business Architecture must move on

Why business architecture must move beyond the BIZBOK model

BIZBOK has long served as the de facto reference for business architects, offering a structured yet flexible body of knowledge for aligning business strategies with operations. However, its continued reliance on narrative interpretation and handcrafted artefacts positions it more as an artisanal framework than a digital discipline.

To illustrate this, consider a well-known analogue from the construction industry.

A parallel from construction: the legacy of traditional blueprints

Despite the availability of powerful tools like Building Information Modelling (BIM), many construction and urban planning processes still rely on:

Static 2D blueprints,
Narrative design rationales, and
Manual compliance checks.

This traditional model is deeply embedded in practice. Yet, it requires significant human expertise, suffers from inconsistent interpretation, and cannot be easily integrated into digital workflows. As a result, project risks, approval delays, and coordination failures persist — not due to technical limitations, but because the underlying method has not evolved.

The BIZBOK equivalent

In business architecture, BIZBOK plays a similar role:

It lacks machine-readable standards for consistent interpretation or integration.
Its artefacts are often unstructured or bespoke, limiting reusability and scalability.
It depends heavily on expert judgement to adapt guidance to specific contexts.

While IT, data, and enterprise architecture have embraced automation, model-driven design, and measurable standards, business architecture remains rooted in manual craftsmanship — just as architectural blueprints were before BIM.

The case for modernisation

Modern business environments require business architecture to operate at pace and scale. That means:

Moving from guidance documents to structured metamodels,
Enabling automated alignment between strategies, capabilities, and initiatives,
Embedding business architecture into decision systems, governance, and reporting.

Just as BIM transformed construction by making designs computable, simulatable, and traceable, the next generation of business architecture must be machine-readable, measurable, and integrated. This is essential to achieve the strategic agility demanded by digital transformation.