Best practices for business architecture

Lets switch gears and reflect on the best practices for business architecture.

According to Gartner, at a high level the best business practices are

• Getting agreement on enterprise business architecture definition : this would help ensure that everyone within the organization is on the same page as long as the understating of the core definition is concerned.
• Define and socialize a common language across the enterprise , or standardization.: standardization is a key to ensure compliance within an enterprise.
• Focusing on higher level business capabilities: Once the high level business capabilities are defined, it becomes easier to add elements at a more granular level according to solution's and keeping in context with the current and the future state of the organization.
• Creating a business driven line of sight: this is very essential as its creates an enterprise wide focus and goal of the entire organization. By creating one vision company wide, focused strategies can be developed to ensure the success of the project.
• Understanding stakeholders pain and passion points: this is very essential as stalehodlers are essential to any organization. It is very important to take into consideration their passion and pain points, so that they can be involved in every strategic planning of the organization, and also necessary to maintain their interest along the way.
• Increasing stakeholder buy - in : Goes along with the earlier point.

Other best practices involve defining and designing strategic maps, road maps, map of organization political landscape, including social networks, political relationships, and spheres of influence.

Ref: https://www.gartner.com/doc/869116/best-practices-enterprise-business-architecture