ValueBlue and IASA Netherlands Form a Strategic Partnership to Enhance Architecture Practices

ValueBlue, a leading software company known for its innovative Enterprise Architecture (EA) platform BlueDolphin, is proud to announce a strategic partnership with IASA Global, and their association for career guidance and training within the architect community. The collaboration aims to enhance the standards, practices, insights and tools made available to architects, fostering successful innovation and change in organizations across the Netherlands. 

As part of this partnership, ValueBlue and IASA will combine their expertise to provide architects with a comprehensive suite of resources, including training academies, networking opportunities, and tools for architecture practices. By leveraging IASA’s globally recognized frameworks and ValueBlue’s innovative BlueDolphin platform, the partnership will empower organizations to accelerate their business transformations with more formalized, future-focused architecture strategies.

A Vision for the Future of Architecture 

IASA has developed the Business Technology Architecture Body of Knowledge (BTABoK), a comprehensive framework for managing architecture practices that is based on proven methodologies from hundreds of large organizations worldwide. The BTABoK provides an open-source collection of techniques used by practicing architects to deliver value to companies. These are applicable to all types of architects, including business, software, solution, and chief architects. 

IASA challenges the traditional hierarchical view of architecture — which typically separates Enterprise, Solution, and Application architecture — advocating instead for a practice model based on competency. By focusing on skill development and practical techniques that have been successfully implemented across Fortune 500 companies, IASA believes that this integrated, competency-based approach can help architecture teams avoid the common pitfalls that often hinder their success. 

This framework goes hand-in-hand with ValueBlue’s approach to enterprise architecture tooling. By integrating enterprise architecture and application landscape management with solution design, the BlueDolphin platform empowers organizations to not only maintain their current landscape but also design future-state solutions that realize new strategies. This enables cross-functional teams to collaborate more effectively on planning and executing business transformations — thus accelerating outcomes, reducing costs, and controlling risks.

Accelerating Transformation and Professional Growth 

Business capabilities are the building blocks that allow a company or organization to deliver its products or services and, ultimately, value to the customer. Business capabilities come in many flavours – ‘hard’ (manufacturing, invoicing) or ‘soft’ (innovation, talent development), ‘core’ (software development) or ‘contextual’ (qualifying sales and marketing leads). There are a wealth of ways to slice and dice business capabilities – but no matter the approach, companies must go through the process of business capability mapping.

When defining the capabilities for your organization, you are going to need to think in terms of what needs to be done or what the organization needs to be able to do to be successful. It is not yet important how this will be done or what it takes in terms of people, processes or resources. The capability answers the “what” question and leaves the “how” question aside. Starting with identifying the business capabilities means the question of ‘how’ can eventually be answered.

Determining whether or not something is a business capability, differentiating one capability from another and validating them within the context of your specific business model can be challenging. By joining forces, ValueBlue and Iasa Netherlands aim to more effectively address the growing challenges in business transformation while creating new opportunities for professional development within the architecture community.