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. Use a recipe for the method, a work product for the artifact, or the Northstar case study to see how the architecture fits together.
- No registration
- No email capture
- No paywall
- No tool pitch
How to use the cookbook
Descriptive architecture, practical starting steps.
Business architecture is descriptive rather than prescriptive. It represents what an organization does and how its capabilities, value streams, information, organization, stakeholders, strategies, and initiatives relate. It can describe current and intended future states, but it does not impose a universal rulebook for how every organization must operate.
The recipes are scaffolding for judgment. For practitioners like me who came to the field from operations or another discipline, being told only that “it depends” is not enough to build an initial mental model. The cookbook offers practical moves, questions, work products, and stop conditions so you can produce a defensible first pass. Use the sequence to get oriented, then adapt it to the decision, evidence, strategy, culture, operating model, governance, and constraints in front of you.
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.
35Applied recipes
32+Public resources
12Reusable work products
1:1Free email help
The cookbook
Start with a common problem, then go deeper.
These are curated entry points for common BA work. The full cookbook continues to grow without forcing every new recipe onto the homepage.
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 recipeStand up a lean business architecture practice
The organization wants BA but starts with a huge metamodel, a tool purchase, or an unfunded center of excellence.
Use this recipeCreate a practical BA starter charter
The practice begins with enthusiasm but no shared purpose, boundaries, decision rights, engagement model, or definition of success.
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 · Business architecture tool
Make business architecture knowledge answerable.
Strategic Capabilities Architecture Linkage Engine is an open tool and reference design built primarily for business architects. It helps the BA traverse governed relationships, test impact and dependency, cite evidence, expose conflicts and gaps, and prepare decision support without transferring authority to the system.
Explore SCALE for business architectsField 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.
Practice
The Operating Model Is the Architecture of How Work Gets Done
A practical business architecture approach to the choices, boundaries, decision rights, capacity, and transition required to make strategy operational.
Read field notePractice
Start Small, Build for the Enterprise: A Practical Guide to Standing Up a Business Architecture Practice
Practical guidance for establishing a small business architecture practice, building an initial capability, value stream, organization, and information baseline, and using it to support real business decisions.
Read field noteField Note
When the Business Object List Gets Out of Control
How business architects can govern an unruly business object model, preserve canonical business meaning, model lifecycles and states, and connect business objects to automation without collapsing business architecture into data or solution design.
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.
No form. No account. No sales sequence.
Do not send confidential, customer, employer, or proprietary material.
How free help works