Business Architecture: The Missing Link in Strategy Formulation, Implementation and Execution

Praise for the book
"Pierre Hadaya and Bernard Gagnon offer readers a practical and inspiring handbook for bridging the gap between formulating, implementing and executing an organization’s strategy. Let yourselves be seduced by this refreshing manifesto for business architecture." Prof. Yves Pigneur, HEC Lausanne. Author with Alex Osterwalder of "Business Model Generation"

Description
History has shown that having a competitive advantage is critical to the success and long-term viability of all organizations. However, creating and sustaining such an advantage is a challenge. Organizations must formulate a winning strategy, surpass competitors at implementing and executing it, and excel at adapting in response to internal and external events. Although organizations have applied numerous best practices to help them succeed in their strategic endeavors, they still face serious difficulties, which they can only surmount by adopting business architecture. The goal of this book is to describe what business architecture is; how it can help meet the challenge of formulating, implementing and executing an organization’s strategy; and how to build and exploit a superior strategy management system that leverages business architecture.

The book answers these important questions about business architecture and strategy formulation, implementation and execution.

Chapter 1: Introduction
What are the key issues that persist in strategy formulation, implementation and execution? What is business architecture and how can it help alleviate or eliminate these issues?

Chapter 2: Contributing to Strategy Formulation
What is a strategy and what is a strategic plan? What are their key components? What are the strategy formulation activities and how can business architects contribute to them? How should a strategy be codified?

Chapter 3: Architecting the Target Business Architecture
What are the core concepts used in designing a business architecture? How do these concepts relate to each other and to concepts used by strategists and IT enterprise architects? What are the main target business architecture design guidelines? What type of models should be used to document a business architecture?

Chapter 4: Elaborating a Transformation Plan
What are the characteristics and components of a well-designed transformation plan? What methodology should be used to identify, select and prioritize transformation projects?

Chapter 5: Engaging and Governing
How can business architects help motivate and get buy-in from all involved stakeholders, and how can they help remove barriers to the formulation, implementation and execution of their organization’s strategy? What are the key strategy formulation, implementation and execution governance activities and how can business architects contribute to them?

Chapter 6: Putting it All Together
How can an organization leverage business architecture and other best practices to create a strategy management system that will enable it to surmount the challenges of formulating, implementing and executing its strategy?

Chapter 7: Leadership Agenda
What are the key business-architecture-related principles? What activities should leaders initiate, contribute to and oversee to start integrating business architecture into the strategy management system of their organization?

Pierre Hadaya, Ph.D., is a professor at the School of Management of Université du Québec à Montréal. As Co-Founder of ASATE Group Inc., Dr. Hadaya also collaborates with organizations striving to transform themselves so they can develop a competitive advantage. Bernard Gagnon, M.A.Sc., is Co-Founder and President of ASATE Group Inc., a management consulting firm that helps organizations better formulate, implement and execute their strategies. He has more than 30 years of experience working with organizations in the aerospace, banking, biotech, investment, manufacturing, retail, telecommunication, transportation and utilities industries.