 Hi, I'm Andrew Josie, Vice President of Standards and Certification at the Open Group. I'm joined today by Paul Holman, Vice Chairman of the Open Group's Architecture Forum, and we're going to talk about business architecture and the latest developments in the Togo of Standard, version 9.2. Thanks, and I'm looking forward to the conversation. Well, Paul, how do you think business architecture should be addressing today's challenges with business transformation? So, I think that's a really key point, and one of the things I was reflecting on not that long ago was, I used to say business architecture was about mirroring the business, in other words, understanding what the business did so that you could kind of reflect that in the enterprise architecture. Today, I think it is still that, but I think it's more than that as well. I think there's so much around trying to understand disruption, trying to understand how you make a business agile and how businesses themselves can innovate, that business architecture has actually become even more important than it was before, and I think that's the kind of key challenge for business architects and business architecture. OK, how do you see it supporting this sort of movement to agile in particular? Well, one of the key things in agile is understanding value. So, agile is all about value and value-add, and if you really get down to the principles of agile and things like lean, value is why you do something, and frankly, if it doesn't add value, you shouldn't do it. That's a key agile principle. But that begs the question, what is valuable to my organisation? So, you need to have a way of understanding what the value propositions are, what the value streams are in the business in order to be able to deliver anything that's agile. The two are inextricably linked. OK, and I understand there are some new Togaf series guides that sort of help in that area in particular, especially around value capabilities, business models, information mapping. Could you tell us a little bit about those? Yeah, those are the four main things that exist as series guides now. Some great work has been done by many people looking at exactly those topics. If I pick each one out, I'll start with just my personal favourite. I'm prejudiced slightly. I like capability models. I've always found that whenever I use a capability model, it's been a really good ally and friend. But should I show favouritism? But capability models are one critical area that has been captured. There are some good standards and some good examples about use of those, how to develop them and how to share them with the business. Capability models help identify what an organisation has to do, what abilities it has to have to be able to deliver its value propositions. Against a capability, you can kind of understand what businesses need to do and what, therefore, any projects you might work on, any change initiatives, any gaps you want to close, can address. Allied to that, and we talked about value streams. Value streams are ways of representing how value is added by an organisation in a joined up way. Similar to value chains, but broken out into that each step along the way individually adds value in its own right. And a great way of being able to illustrate what an organisation is trying to achieve. That can be mapped to capabilities, what capabilities do you need to deliver those values. The other really key part is anyone who's ever worked in architecture knows that information is critical. It's the lifeblood that runs throughout the business. Information modelling, whilst information architecture is a domain in its own right, within business architecture there's a special kind of place for key level entities. Things that are absolutely critical to those businesses. Things like plan or part or process that mean something very, very specific to that business. Everybody who's ever worked in any industry will know what those words are for them. Those exist in their own right in the business architecture. We have some serious guides that look at the information modelling for those key entities. The last one, which in some ways sits first, but I've left it to bring them all together, is the business modelling. And some really sage advice around how to do business modelling, but bearing in mind that a lot of business modelling is about communication. So understanding who the audience is, and what message you want to get over to your stakeholders. The number of times I've been asked, can you put a single, my whole business on a single A4, where in fact actually there are so many different stakeholders, you kind of want to have different models for different purposes, depending on what message you're trying to put over. But that series guide to address them comes up with some great hints, some great techniques for being able to address business modelling. And those four really are the fundamental updates, separate series guides, but also in the TOGAF standard specification. So Paul, I understand professionalism is very important to the open group and they've been making some changes in this area, bringing on some new programmes in the area of business architecture. Can you tell us a little bit more about that? Absolutely. I mean, professionalism has always been important for people who want to build their career out. And I think business architecture has been an area where as a business architect, a lot of people who've felt a little bit left out to be quite honest, a little bit left out in terms of what is the career path for a business architect? How do you become a business architect? And how do you demonstrate that you are a good business architect? And with the development now of a separate series of set of series guides and the ability to build a credential that actually allows for an open badge to be awarded for somebody who is a business architect, business architects can now actually demonstrate and say, I have a level of knowledge and a level of practice around business architecture akin to other similar kind of professions and I can display that. And for me that's been shown to be valuable amongst people, especially when they're starting their careers or they're coming through, a lot of people these days are working as say business analysts in agile teams and they'd like to see where that could go and having there for a credential they can aim for that helps build up their CV, helps build up their professional status that is recognised by their peers is hugely valuable for them. So the initial business architecture credential is a great step towards adding to that portfolio. OK, well thank you very much for talking with us today Paul and it's really good to hear about all these new things that are happening around the business architecture space in the open group. It's a pleasure.