I am increasingly being asked the question: “What tools are business architects using?” My answer is short but not very helpful: “Microsoft Office.” In a recent Forrester survey of more than 250 organizations, 80% of the respondents said they used PowerPoint, Excel, or Visio. Thirty percent or less also use a variety of other tools, including the typical EA tool suites and process modeling tools.  

My question to the business architecture community is: “What kind of business architecture tools do you want?”

Here are a few attributes to spur your thinking:

  • What business architecture elements do you want to manage: goals, strategy, capabilities, processes, services, organization, etc.?
  • How would you like to see the tool packaged: totally integrated (one tool does it all), separate components, integrable modules?
  • How important is it that your business architecture tool integrates with the more technically focused EA tools?
  • What kind of platform do you want your BA tools to run on: desktop, server, cloud?
  • How would you like the pricing structured: one-time purchase, lease, SaaS model?

Let me know what you think. You can reply here, or even better, reply on Forrester’s new EA Community, where it is easier to follow the conversation: http://community.forrester.com/message/13450#13450