How can you improve the business value of agile outcomes?

For me, the ability to have the organization understand how they are, were want to be and if they would be able to do it under current restrictions and challenges, its always one of the first things to start discuss. Many organizations believe they have a strategy and that they can execute it but forget to assess it in more detail and strategic programs will then fail and no one knows why....

Agile excels in quick delivery but can stray from long-term objectives. Business architecture bridges this, aligning agile tasks with strategic goals. Tactics include: Dynamic Backlog: Link business value streams to your backlog, using algorithms for task prioritization. Impact Mapping: Align each agile story to business goals, clarifying real value. Communication: Use business terms as shared language between agile teams and stakeholders. Metrics: Leverage business architecture KPIs for outcome measurement. Integrating business architecture into Agile not only ensures alignment but is important for sustained growth.

Business Architecture is very important and the issue I see today as organisations tend to do more of business analysis rather than architecture. Hence, they end up digitising the legacy as part of their digital transformation programs. They end up with more problems rather than solutions cause they try to use existing processes to deliver a new era of technology landscape. I believe business architecture should be taken more serious and becomes a corner stone and a first step once the organisation has defined their vision and mission.

Business architecture bolsters agile in key ways: Shared Context: It outlines business goals and value streams, aiding agile teams in aligning their backlogs. Common Language: It helps in streamlining communication across teams and stakeholders, reducing ambiguity. Feature Selection: Business architecture guides in picking the most valuable and feasible features based on expected business outcomes. Alignment: It ensures agile outputs integrate well with existing business capabilities and systems. Outcome Metrics: Using relevant KPIs, it allows for the evaluation and feedback loop, critical for improvement. By incorporating business architecture, agile outcomes gain strategic coherence, maximizing both agility and business value.

I think Agile and Business architecture can benefit each other. In example of Scaled Agile, a business architecture can set the ground on which the framework will grow. Once business architecture defines the main initiatives, how the process would work and build a ground to deliver outcome, agile framework will be easily navigating those components with confidence and map it roles, stages and deliverable outcome. Without Business architecture, agile wouldn't scale however it would continue to succeed delivering small pieces here and there. Business Architecture brings a long life into scaled agile to the organisation

Business architecture techniques can improve the business value of agile outcomes: Value Stream Mapping: Use this to scope agile projects, align user stories with value stages, and identify pain points for improvement. Capability Mapping: This helps define the core abilities and functions required to meet goals, guiding your agile team's focus. Stakeholder Mapping: Identify key actors, their needs, and perspectives. This allows for targeted communication and requirement validation. These techniques let you segment and prioritize stakeholders, tailor communication, and validate project requirements, elevating both the agility and business value of your projects.

The most important business architecture component I can relate to here is the portfolio. Once a portfolio is defined as part of business architecture stage, everything will fit under all the way from long term solutions to short term sprints. It's important to understand the lean portfolio management and make sure we are building a portfolio that fits with coherency into the organisation.

Starting with business architecture for agile? Here's how: Learn Basics: Get a grasp of essential concepts, principles, and frameworks in business architecture tailored for your domain. Seek Expertise: Identify and consult with business architects or experts within your organization for direction. Choose Techniques: Opt for the most applicable business architecture techniques for your agile project and adapt them to your specific needs. Collaborate: Share business architecture artifacts and insights with your agile team and stakeholders to foster alignment and value delivery. Review & Update: Periodically revisit and modify your business architecture artifacts based on feedback from agile outcomes.

For Agile to deliver business value in an organization, the organization needs to first understand what Business Agility it needs, how to measure and/or quantify it. An example of such an outcome can be "Having an ability to integrate with a supplier within 5 days". Once this is defined, we need to work backwards from this to define what Architecture (Business / Data / Application / Technology..and not just Business) enables this outcome, which inturn tells us what platform agility (e.g. Plug and Play connectors) is needed, which informs what Process/toolchain changes are needed. This way any change in Process/Arch/Tool/Automation is aligned to the overall agility objective which can be measured.

Business Architecture validation is crucial to succeed. Having a dreams in form of business architecture that is not deliverable through portfolio budget or technology landscape won't help so it's important while considering every single stakeholder in the organisation and moving the authority toward the front-line stakeholders who deal with customer and allow them to influence the business architecture, it's important to validate it