Ultimately the only reason to take the time and put in the effort is so that you can ask smarter questions and get smarter answers. Business Architecture will provide you with a decision support system that understands the complexity of your organization. All too often when making one change you risk breaking many other parts.

Your ability to sense and respond to changes in your customer or market behavior is vital. With organizations of all sizes entering new markets and new geographies there is no such thing as business as usual.

The “Wheel of Change” is a simple tool designed to provide you with examples of the categories of questions you are likely to need answers to. As you can see it only has 4 rings, each of which rotate, but still these 4 generate over 1,250 categories, each of which will contain many questions. Sometimes it is not possible to simplify, sometimes we just have to accept that things are complex and that what we need are systems to help us with that complexity.

Use the wheel to help guide you through your own path. The important thing here is to make sure that the repository, upon which you will rely for your answers needs to be robust, properly populated, well maintained and available to all. A good tool should provide you with all the things you need.

The right tool will also enable you to see your information presented graphically, either via dashboards or reports, in the way that suits your business need best. Good Business Architecture, just like good Enterprise Architecture is a process. Consider one cycle round these steps is akin to taking one flight of stairs – the number of flights you need to take depends on how high your business wants to climb and how much you can prove the value of each flight.

Next week: Conclusion