Artifact: Business Architecture Document
The Business Architecture Document provides a comprehensive overview of the architecturally significant aspects of the business from a number of different perspectives.
Domains: Business Modeling
Work Product Kinds: Specification
Purpose

The Business Architecture Document provides a comprehensive overview of the purpose, structure and operation of the business. It also contains a rationale for these structures and processes. It serves as a communication medium between the stakeholders and project team members. Because it describes the what, why and how of the business, it thereby forms a basis for making informed decisions regarding changes to the business.

Relationships
Illustrations
Tailoring
Representation Options

General Considerations

You must adjust the outline of the Business Architecture Document to suit the nature of your business and the purpose of your effort, as described below:

  • Some of the architectural views may be irrelevant, or other views may be necessary to describe certain aspects.
  • Some specific aspects of the business may require their own sections; for example, aspects related to security, data management, usability issues, or legal and regulatory compliance.
  • You may need additional appendices to explain various aspects, such as the rationale of certain critical choices together with the solutions that have been eliminated, or to define acronyms or abbreviations, or to present general business design principles.
  • The order of the various sections may vary, depending on the stakeholders in the business and their focus or interest.

Architectural Views

Note that the mapping of these business-oriented views to the basic RUP viewpoints is described in the Concept: Business Architecture.

Here are some criteria for the selection of each architectural view:

  • Market View - This view is optional. Use it only if you will be making decisions regarding the business strategy, to show how the business architecture is affected, or in cases where the business strategy may be influenced by architectural decisions.
  • Business Process View - If you develop this document at all, this view is mandatory.
  • Organization View - If you develop this document at all, this view is mandatory.
  • Human Resource View - This view is optional. Use it only if the reorganization implies significant changes in how people work and how they relate to one another.
  • Domain View - This view is optional. Use it only if information is a significant aspect of the business and if there is a need to clarify concepts that are core to the business domain. This view is very useful for improving communication and understanding between different departments, projects, or external parties.
  • Geographic View - This view is optional. Use it only if the effect of the geographic distribution of business operations on business processes and structure needs to be understood.
  • Communication View - This view is optional. Use it only if the internal and external paths of communication must be understood.

 

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