In the last article, a few key terms like reference architecture, artifacts and types of artifacts were explained. That article also highlighted the need of having a reference architecture in place. Today's article will cover how an architecture comes to existence and who within the enterprise creates and owns the architecture.
Creation of a reference architecture requires a subject matter expert of particular field, which can create a business transaction mapping among the following (also known as business process modelling).
Service Offering
SME knows the various aspects of services being offered like native format of services or blended options (Consider the example of a normal tea and flavoured team, as presented in last article).
Consumer
This step involves mentioning the actors and roles in a BPM diagram.
Associated Interfaces
Once the Roles, Actors, and Services are identified and marked in BPM, then there is a need to define the interfaces and information flow between all of them.
In a simple scenario, there can be two or more actors or roles.
Tea Seller & Customer
Product being offered is Tea
Process is Customer orders the tea => Pays in cash => Seller prepares the tea as per reference architecture /method and delivers in a cup
Now, this simple business transaction may have other complex components like accepting payment by other modes (due to demonetization) and this may require consideration of additional roles/actors like payment gateway provider, bank and others.
The diagram below depicts the simple order scheduling process, please identify the associated interfaces.
![Enterprise Development]()
View & Viewpoint
In an enterprise, every process may involve one or two departments and hence for a single process different roles can have different views. View means how does a process and associated deliverables are perceived by a specific actor. For example, in case of a large cafe, cashier can have different view of the ordering process, while the chef can have a different view.
Each view is created for a specific role and hence it becomes very important that SME considers all aspects of the process from role's perspective. This perspective or looking at the process as a defined role within enterprise, is called as Viewpoint.
Example
Once a train approaches the station, driver and station master have different viewpoints and hence the different views of same event.
Summary
Hence identifying the actors, roles and business process is key aspect of presenting an architecture. One business architecture can have different views created from different viewpoints. SME takes care of all these aspects and creates models associated with his/her area of expertise.
Different Views are created for different stakeholders to have their feedback on the architecture. As a result, underlying principles, policies or business strategy can be amended to have a robust business process in place.
There are different architectures, where SMEs are required,
- Security & Compliance Architecture
- Business Architecture
- Data Architecture
- Information Systems Architecture
- Technology Architecture
Apart from the above, there could be specific architectures created like financial architecture etc., to accommodate the business process and strategy. There are different BPM tools available to create the different views/models. You must start from creating the simplest models and then increasing the complexity of model.
Hope the article has given a good information on Business Process Modelling, Views, and Viewpoints.
I will explain Business Architecture in my next post. Until then, keep liking and sharing the post.