Mind the Gap: Making Business Architecture Deliverables Work for You
It was day one of a new strategic initiative at a European telco. The CIO had called us in a cross-functional team of enterprise and solution architects to "make sense" of the business transformation underway. The ask? Launch a new B2B digital marketplace within 12 months, tightly integrated with legacy billing and CRM systems. Before diving into cloud-native platforms, APIs, or integration middleware, we had to do the architect's equivalent of checking the map: define the baseline and target business architectures, and more importantly, identify the gaps.
Why Business Architecture Needs Structure
In any business change or transformation, it’s tempting to jump straight into designing systems, building APIs, or launching minimum viable products (MVPs). But if we don’t understand how the business works today, we risk building the wrong things, solving the wrong problems, or making costly mistakes. As solution architects, we are often asked to help deliver change, but we’re handed incomplete information, unclear processes, and inconsistent goals.
Business Architecture helps bring clarity and structure to this confusion. It provides a shared language between business and technology stakeholders. Without a structured baseline, every integration or feature feels like a guess. And without a clear target, we risk architecting for the wrong outcomes.
The goal is to:
- Clarify what the business does today (baseline).
- Articulate what it needs to do in the future (target).
- Identify the architectural, capability, and process gaps that must be closed.
Anatomy of a Business Architecture Engagement
Once the need for structure is clear, the next step is understanding how to apply that structure in practice. A well-executed business architecture engagement helps bring visibility, alignment, and traceability to change initiatives. It links strategy to execution and provides clarity across stakeholders, from business sponsors to delivery teams. Getting this right sets the foundation for scalable, sustainable transformation.
Let’s deconstruct this into three phases, each with practical deliverables.
1. Baseline Business Architecture
This is your architectural as-is. It’s where every business architecture engagement must begin. The baseline gives us a clear view of how the business operates today across people, processes, technology, and information. It exposes inefficiencies, manual steps, outdated capabilities, and organizational silos. Without this foundation, you can't identify what to improve or how to modernize it meaningfully.
| Deliverable | Description |
|---|---|
| Business Capability Model (Current) | Map of existing business capabilities and their maturity levels |
| BPMN Diagrams (As-Is) | Documented current business processes with manual steps and handoffs |
| Organizational Model | Current departments, roles, and responsibilities |
| Business Services Catalog | Inventory of currently offered business services |
| Information Map (As-Is) | How core data entities are used and duplicated across systems |
| Stakeholder Map | Identification of current key internal and external stakeholders |
| SWOT or Environmental Analysis | Summary of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats |
As an example we mapped the Order-to-Cash process in BPMN for the current telco systems. It revealed 4 manual handovers, 1 swivel-chair integration, and 1 Excel-based approval. Below is a simplified BPMN view:
2. Target Business Architecture
This describes the desired future state, not just aspirational, but concrete and achievable. The target architecture aligns business goals with the capabilities, processes, and services needed to deliver value. It shifts the focus from fixing problems to designing purposefully for the future. A clear target gives delivery teams direction and provides the business with a blueprint for transformation.
| Deliverable | Description |
|---|---|
| Business Capability Model (Target) | Enhanced or new capabilities with target maturity levels |
| BPMN Diagrams (To-Be) | Redesigned business processes reflecting automation and orchestration |
| Future-State Organizational Model | Roles and responsibilities aligned with future capabilities |
| Target Business Services/Functions | Services to be added, modified, or decommissioned |
| Information Requirements | New or updated data needed for future operations |
| Business Objectives and Metrics | KPIs tied to strategic business outcomes |
| Strategic Alignment Document | Clear alignment of architecture outcomes with business strategy |
Building on the example BPMN model of the baseline Order-to-Cash process, the future digital marketplace introduced a reimagined version of the same process with automation and API-first integration at its core. The revised BPMN process removed unnecessary manual steps and introduced system-driven triggers to reduce cycle time and error rates.
The target BPMN process included:
- API-first order capture that automatically feeds into the order management system.
- Automated credit checks via external credit services integrated through REST APIs.
- Real-time provisioning triggers that communicate with downstream systems without human intervention.
- Event-based notifications to inform customers and partners of order status updates.
These enhancements were modeled using BPMN to illustrate the streamlined handoffs, reduced latency, and new system boundaries introduced in the target state.
3. Gap Analysis
This is where analysis turns into action. Gap analysis compares the baseline and target architectures to uncover what’s missing, what needs to be improved, and what must be retired. It’s not just about listing differences, it’s about understanding what those differences mean for business operations, delivery priorities, and organizational change. This step fuels your roadmap and enables focused investment.
Gap types to look for:
| Gap Type | Description |
|---|---|
| Process Gaps | Manual steps that should be automated to improve efficiency |
| Capability Gaps | Missing or incomplete business functions (e.g., onboarding) |
| Technology Gaps | Legacy systems that cannot support the future-state model |
| Data Gaps | Inconsistent, missing, or siloed information and data models |
Before jumping into implementation, it's important to quantify where the biggest gaps are and how they impact business value. A Capability Gap Matrix provides a structured way to compare current capabilities against target outcomes, highlighting where change is needed and guiding investment decisions. It ranks business impact, baseline maturity, target goals, and proposed solutions to support prioritization and alignment across business and technology stakeholders.
This type of matrix turns ambiguity into clarity. It helps delivery teams know where to focus, gives business leaders insight into potential ROI, and allows architects to map solutions directly to measurable capability needs. In short: it becomes a powerful storytelling and prioritization tool for guiding change.
From Models to Meaningful Change
Models and frameworks are not the end goal, they are the tools we use to guide real, tangible business transformation. Business architecture helps us see beyond the noise of day-to-day operations. It creates clarity where there is confusion, and it gives every technical decision a strategic context. When done well, it’s the difference between solving isolated problems and shaping sustainable business outcomes. It allows us to shift the conversation from systems and features to value and impact.
If we want to architect meaningful change, we must first clarify the journey. That means:
- Start with reality (baseline).
- Design with intent (target).
- Identify the right battles (gap analysis).
Taking a structured, model-driven approach, whether using BPMN, UML, capability maps, or information flow diagrams, supports far more than just documentation. It enables alignment across business and IT, adds traceability from goals to solutions, and ensures architectural decisions are repeatable and defensible. These practices help create a shared understanding of what needs to change, why it matters, and how progress will be measured.
Whether you're enabling digital marketplaces, streamlining insurance workflows, or modernizing public sector services, these architectural techniques elevate solution architecture from reactive delivery to proactive, strategic leadership.