CBA (Other exams) key terms

A blueprint of the enterprise that provides a common understanding of the organization, showing how capabilities, value streams, information, and organizational units fit together to guide change and align strategy with execution.

A structured body of concepts, frameworks, reference models, and practices that defines what business architecture is, how it is described, and how practitioners apply it across an enterprise.

An organizing structure that defines the domains, viewpoints, and relationships used to describe an enterprise, providing a repeatable way to categorize and connect architecture content.

A formal, structured description of one aspect of the enterprise, such as capability, value, or information, created for a specific audience and purpose using a defined set of concepts.

A perspective on the architecture defined by the concerns of a particular stakeholder group, determining which concepts and relationships are shown and how they are presented.

The actual representation produced for a viewpoint, such as a diagram, map, or matrix, showing selected architecture content so a specific audience can understand and act on it.

A person or group with an interest in the enterprise and its architecture, whose concerns, decisions, or responsibilities shape what the architecture must describe and communicate.

A particular ability the business has or needs to have, described in terms of what it achieves rather than how it is performed, independent of organization structure, process, or technology.

A hierarchical, decomposed view of the capabilities of an enterprise, typically arranged in levels, used to show scope, identify gaps, and support investment and planning decisions.

A planning approach that uses business capabilities as the primary unit of analysis and investment, aligning funding, change, and performance discussions to what the business must be able to do.

An end-to-end collection of activities that creates value for a customer, triggered by a request or need and ending when that need is satisfied, described independently of the organization that performs it.

A view that shows the stages of a value stream, the value items created or exchanged at each stage, and the capabilities and stakeholders involved in delivering them.

Something of worth that is produced, transformed, or delivered during a value stream stage, such as a product, service, information, or decision, and that matters to a customer or stakeholder.

A planned, measurable improvement to one or more business capabilities, used to organize change initiatives and track progress toward a target state rather than organizing work by project alone.

A description of how an organization creates, delivers, and captures value, covering customers, offerings, channels, revenue, cost, and the capabilities required to sustain them.

A view of the enterprise's organizational units, their relationships, and reporting structures, used to show where capabilities and value streams are performed and who is accountable.

A distinct organizational grouping within the enterprise that has a defined scope of responsibility and often its own goals, resources, and accountability for outcomes.

A view showing the concepts the business uses and needs, and the relationships among them, described in business language rather than as database or system structures.

A conceptual thing about which the business keeps information, such as a customer, order, or product, named and defined in business terms and reused across views and initiatives.

A defined sequence of activities performed to produce a specific outcome, usually crossing organizational boundaries and consuming and producing information, distinct from a capability or value stream.

A time-bounded effort to change part of the enterprise, such as a project or program, which can be assessed against the capabilities, value streams, and information it affects.

A time-sequenced plan showing how capabilities, initiatives, and other changes are expected to progress from the current state toward the target state over a defined horizon.

The description of the enterprise as it exists today, including its capabilities, value streams, information, and organization, used as the baseline for impact analysis and planning.

The description of a desired future state of the enterprise, expressed through capabilities, value streams, information, and organization, used to guide change and measure progress.

A comparison of current and target states that identifies missing, redundant, or misaligned capabilities and other elements, providing the basis for defining initiatives and investment priorities.

A visual overlay on a map or matrix that uses color or shading to show ratings such as maturity, risk, cost, or business value across capabilities or other architecture elements.

The decision-making and oversight mechanisms that ensure architecture content is reviewed, approved, maintained, and applied consistently across change initiatives and investment decisions.

A measure of how established and effective an organization's business architecture practice is, considering scope, usage, governance, skills, and the value it demonstrably delivers.

The stated benefits the business architecture practice provides to the enterprise, such as informed decisions, faster change, reduced duplication, and better alignment between strategy and execution.

The process of identifying stakeholders, understanding their concerns, and involving them in architecture work so that content is relevant, adopted, and used in real decisions.

A described situation or end-to-end journey used to test how capabilities and value streams behave together, often revealing gaps or dependencies that single views do not show.

A general, enduring statement that guides architecture decisions and design choices, expressing preferred direction without prescribing a specific solution or technology.

A reusable, generic model of capabilities, value streams, or other content that can be adopted or adapted as a starting point, reducing effort and improving consistency across the enterprise.

The managed store of architecture content, including models, definitions, relationships, and versions, enabling reuse, traceability, and consistent reporting across the enterprise.

The ability to follow relationships between architecture elements, such as from a capability to a value stream to an initiative, so that impacts and dependencies can be understood and justified.

A matrix that aligns two or more architecture perspectives, such as capabilities against value streams or capabilities against organizational units, to expose dependencies and overlaps.