Business and Dynamic Change

Book excerpt: The chapters in this book are contributed by visionaries who see the need for business leaders to define their organizations to be agile and robust in the face of external changes. The goal is to build something knowing that it will be changed; so that you have no need to go back to the metaphorical drawing board for every market condition change. In his Foreword, Keith Swenson asks you, "Consider what it means to say that the business will adapt in the face of external changes. The business architecture is not simply a model that specifies how to run the business for now and the next few years. The people making the architecture cannot know the pressures that will be faced. Instead, it must support leaders and executives within the organization to make consistently good decisions on how to adapt their practices. The architecture is not a plan that anticipates all the decisions; instead it embodies a set of core guiding principles that enable decision-making." Understand that the term “business” used this way is not limited to for-profit enterprises but includes all forms of organizations that have a strategic need to accomplish goals. Pragmatically speaking, business architecture is the conceptual understanding that people have on why particular choices were made in forming the organization in a particular way. This book will help you understand your options and how to relate them to your own organization.