I have never been comfortable with being called an “architect” – even a “business architect”.
Part of this is because I believe the concept of “business architecture” is poorly defined and overlaps too much with “entrepreneur” and “general manager” (see this old article and this one).
The enterprise architecture profession also spent many years in endless debates about what it was. I thought this was a distraction. But maybe – just maybe – this is improving.
So, if I were to define myself as a “business architect” it would be in the context of the below view of business architecture:
You’ll notice that I think the context of business architecture goes beyond it being the top of the enterprise architecture stack (see Beyond B.A.I.T.). Most importantly, I think business architecture is actually part of a missing business capability called “Strategy Deployment”. I believe fragments of many disciplines are part of this missing business capability (see here).
I’d call myself an expert in “Strategy Deployment” if that were a common role that people understood. But it isn’t – so Business Architect works for now.
I also don’t believe that “business architect” sufficiently captures the work I do in evolving the management function itself. My MWT Model makes me something I might call a “management architect” as well as a “business architect”.