The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is a bold global agenda helping the world move beyond traditional indicators such as GDP growth and per capita income to a broader set of objectives that include well-being, environmental sustainability, and social fairness. In this Executive Update, we describe the individual and organizational benefits of contributing to the SDGs as well as how organizations can leverage business architecture to achieve these goals.

In nature, apparently robust systems can be disrupted by a single new invasive species, while other systems can retain their resilience despite a sustained assault. The behavior of such sys­tems can be explained by the interdisciplinary theory of complex adaptive systems (CAS). This Advisor describes how we can use CAS theory to support organizational change.

In my last Advisor, “Using Heat Maps to Better Drive the Rationalization of Your IT Landscape,” I introduced the use of business capability heat maps to better focus on business areas that require attention. This Advisor further illustrates the approach and offers next steps in sharing your organization’s evolution with stakeholders.

Heat mapping allows for high variability. It is a very universal approach to produce easy-to-read material that helps prepare decisions (e.g., for capability-based IT planning and IT rationalization). Heat maps may also show “hot spots” in the IT landscape and help communicate them.

Organizational transformations come in many forms, including divestures, joint ventures, taking a business public or private, and general market reorientations. Here, we explain EA in relation to one type of strategic transformation: acquisitions. Acquisitions are one way that businesses seeking to digitize use to accelerate the journey to their destination and, in our experience, to specifically complement their innovation-management pipeline.

This eight-hour virtual course will help your organization increase the likelihood of success in an early-stage project by applying residual analysis to manage complexity and improve system behavior early in the software systems design phase and build in robustness and resiliency along the way.

The architecture of architecture itself is multi-layered, just as architecture layers the things it represents in the real world in ways that we can understand and deal with. Some parts of architecture are easier to work with than others. This Advisor points to the need for a deeper understanding of the muddled middle of architecture.

The use of business capability maps and an associated application landscape with functionalities are a great tool to identify what may be rationalized, consolidated, modernized, replaced, and retired. Starting with a baseline application landscape and related infrastructure, you will end up with a target application landscape and associated roadmaps.