Turn an executive question into a BA engagement
The request arrives as a solution, a vague transformation, or a demand for “a capability map.”
Use this recipeApplied business architecture · Free field guide
Business architecture, made usable.
Business architecture is difficult. The concepts are elegant; the joins are not. This is the real cookbook: how to move from a live business problem to the smallest architecture package that can improve a decision.
- No registration
- No email capture
- No paywall
- No tool pitch
What is here
A workbench, not another framework tour.
Every section is designed to help you perform real work: choose an artifact, build it at the right level, link it to the rest of the architecture, and use it in an actual decision.
8Applied recipes
32+Public resources
10CBA domains translated
1:1Free email help
The cookbook
Use the minimum architecture that changes the decision.
The recipes are organized around the work practitioners are actually asked to do—not around completing a metamodel for its own sake.
Build a capability map without drawing the org chart
The first draft mirrors departments, applications, or process steps instead of stable business abilities.
Use this recipeBuild a value stream without slipping into process
The “value stream” becomes a swimlane full of activities, systems, and handoffs.
Use this recipeScope an initiative with a capability–value impact grid
Scope is expressed as features, applications, or a project charter with no enterprise impact logic.
Use this recipeConnect strategy to execution without a slogan cascade
Objectives, capabilities, initiatives, and metrics exist in separate decks and cannot explain one another.
Use this recipePrepare a decision-ready architecture review
Architecture review becomes a document checkpoint rather than a forum for resolving consequential choices.
Use this recipeWhy I built it
I came to business architecture from operations.
I did not begin on a traditional enterprise-architecture track. I came out of freight operations, where decisions had immediate effects on safety, service, labor, cost, and customers.
I was new to the discipline, learned it while doing the work, helped stand up a business architecture practice, and served as the senior business architect during the separation of a Fortune 500 company.
That path made the central problem obvious: business architecture is often taught as a set of clean concepts, but practitioners succeed or fail at the linkages, judgment calls, governance, and translation into action. This site publishes the practical material I wish I had at the beginning.
SCALE
Make architecture knowledge answerable.
Strategic Capabilities Architecture Linkage Engine is an open reference design for an AI assistant that retrieves governed architecture knowledge, follows the links, shows its evidence, and refuses to invent the enterprise.
Explore the SCALE designField notes
What the recipes cannot reduce to a checklist.
Short essays on judgment, failure modes, practice design, career transition, and the awkward parts of applying BA inside large organizations.
Field Note
Coming to Business Architecture from Operations
An operations background is not a detour from architecture; it can supply the consequences, constraints, and institutional realism that abstract models lack.
Read field notePractice
The Minimum Viable Business Architecture Package
A small, linked architecture package can outperform a comprehensive repository when it is designed around a real decision.
Read field notePractice
Why Business Architecture Feels Hard Even When the Definitions Make Sense
The discipline becomes difficult at the boundaries: choosing the right abstraction, linking domains, and making architecture matter to a decision.
Read field noteFree help
Bring a real BA problem.
Send one focused, sanitized question by email. I can help you choose the right artifact, critique a model, think through a practice problem, plan CBA study, or frame a career move into business architecture.
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