Business Continuity and Business Architecture

Are there any potential relationships between these two domains? Maybe yes…

Very often Enterprise Architecture programs start with a bottom up approach as this is easier to justify. A bottom-up approach involves setting infrastructure standards and introducing governance processes to ensure adherence to those standards, while a top-down approach dictates a formal analysis of the current state with respect to business process, application programs, data, and technology components.

Top-down start with Business Architecture once the Business strategy and organization is well known, but how to be able to quickly justify some sort of return on investment when no real Business Process Management initiative is associated?

Disaster recovery efforts can be extremely costly, both in terms of technology replacement and business interruption. But giving users access to the exact same work information through another connectivity path is a big step toward business continuity.

Often a major factor in the decision to provide only limited recovery facilities is the cost of having “redundant” office space ready to use just in case of an incident. These limited recovery facillities are associated to limited IT Services because rarely all applications and systems have redundancy. Choices have to be made… but on what criterias? How do we manage existing Business Processes if these are no more automated?

Business Architecture can be an answer!

Business Architecture programs limit the depth of the program to business architecture, and are typically driven from the top-down, with corporate planning and strategy, or change management as the sponsor of the program. The architecture team is typically comprised of business process experts, and has a close relationship to their specific Lines of Business. Business Architecture teams in companies that are “process organizations” typically have the mandate to define business processes that span the company.

Associating Business Architecture to Business Continuity can therefore help to quickly justify a top-down approach as key processes needs to be documented for a disaster recovery effort.