Day 1: January 7
9:30 am
Registration Opens | Coffee and Refreshments
10:00 am
Summit Opening | Linda Finley, Founder & President, TCBAF
10:30 am
Keynote
The Two Jobs of an Architect (and the lessons that took me too long to learn)
Neal Sample, EVP and Chief Digital & Technology Officer, Best Buy
For many of us, the early years in architecture were filled with frameworks, diagrams, and the belief that if we modeled something precisely enough, the world would follow the model. Eventually, reality provides a gentler correction: an architect really has two core jobs: managing complexity before it overwhelms the system, and guiding trade-offs before they become expensive surprises.
This keynote focuses on the practical lessons that only become obvious in hindsight. How complexity grows quietly unless someone owns it. How trade-offs happen constantly, whether anyone is steering them or not. How the business values clarity and confidence more than theoretical elegance.
Drawing from experience in both architecture and executive leadership, Neal Sample will share what he wishes he’d understood earlier — the things that make architects indispensable partners to the business, keep teams aligned, and help organizations move faster with fewer regrets. It’s a straightforward, candid look at what architects really do and why it matters.
11:30 am
Lunch & Networking
12:30-3:30 pm
SUMMIT TRACKS (3 SESSIONS)
Business Transformation and Architecture with SAP
Day 1
Minnetonka
12:30 pm
Accelerators for Business Architecture Discovery and Workshop Delivery
Coco Bassi, Architecture Advisor and Alex Cardona, Architecture Advisor, SAP Americas
Overview:
This session introduces a comprehensive three-phase framework for Business Capability Workshop delivery: Pre-Workshop Excellence, Workshop Delivery Mastery, and Post-Workshop Follow-Up. We focus specifically on breakthrough accelerators that transform traditional capability discovery through AI-powered preparation and real-time interactive delivery methods.
The Framework: The Business Capability Workshop Enablement framework empowers architecture advisors to move from technical solution presenters to strategic business advisors who translate complex capabilities into compelling business narratives. This evolution builds upon technical foundation to enable agile workshop preparation, delivery, and value realization.
Key Innovations: AI-Powered Pre-Workshop Excellence: Demonstrate structured AI prompts that automate comprehensive customer intelligence gathering, financial analysis, and business model canvas development. These prompts enable advisors to build deep customer context by synthesizing business drivers, industry trends, and organizational dynamics into actionable workshop insights.
Interactive Workshop Delivery: Showcase enhanced workshop templates featuring integrated Mentimeter functionality for real-time capability assessment. Participants evaluate business capabilities across dual axes of improvement needs and pain levels, enabling immediate visualization and analysis by team function while maintaining collaborative engagement.
What You'll Learn: Live demonstration of AI prompt methodology for customer research and workshop preparation, plus hands-on examples of Mentimeter-powered capability discovery sessions. Whether you're looking to accelerate workshop preparation through intelligent automation or enhance participant engagement through interactive assessment tools, this session provides immediately applicable accelerators for your business architecture practice.
The Framework: The Business Capability Workshop Enablement framework empowers architecture advisors to move from technical solution presenters to strategic business advisors who translate complex capabilities into compelling business narratives. This evolution builds upon technical foundation to enable agile workshop preparation, delivery, and value realization.
Key Innovations: AI-Powered Pre-Workshop Excellence: Demonstrate structured AI prompts that automate comprehensive customer intelligence gathering, financial analysis, and business model canvas development. These prompts enable advisors to build deep customer context by synthesizing business drivers, industry trends, and organizational dynamics into actionable workshop insights.
Interactive Workshop Delivery: Showcase enhanced workshop templates featuring integrated Mentimeter functionality for real-time capability assessment. Participants evaluate business capabilities across dual axes of improvement needs and pain levels, enabling immediate visualization and analysis by team function while maintaining collaborative engagement.
What You'll Learn: Live demonstration of AI prompt methodology for customer research and workshop preparation, plus hands-on examples of Mentimeter-powered capability discovery sessions. Whether you're looking to accelerate workshop preparation through intelligent automation or enhance participant engagement through interactive assessment tools, this session provides immediately applicable accelerators for your business architecture practice.
Why Do They Call Them Soft Skills When They’re So Hard
Day 1
Bde Maka Ska
12:30 pm
Beyond the Blueprint: Collective Ownership Drives Lasting Change
Sheri Grone, Elevare Solutions and the Minnesota Change Management Network
Organizations don’t transform because a blueprint says they should—they transform when people understand, embrace, and adopt new ways of working. This session explores the essential role of change management in translating strategy and design into sustained behavioral shifts across the enterprise. We’ll break down what effective change management truly entails, why transformation efforts struggle when end users aren’t engaged from the start, and how Business Architects can help create the conditions for lasting change.
Participants will learn how to identify the human impacts of future‑state designs, activate stakeholders early, and build the commitment and capability needed across all levels of the organization. We’ll also outline the core competencies of an effective change manager—from empathy and communication to influence, measurement, and continuous reinforcement. Attendees will leave with practical techniques to embed people‑centric thinking into every phase of the project lifecycle, ensuring that transformation isn’t just designed well—it’s lived well.
Participants will learn how to identify the human impacts of future‑state designs, activate stakeholders early, and build the commitment and capability needed across all levels of the organization. We’ll also outline the core competencies of an effective change manager—from empathy and communication to influence, measurement, and continuous reinforcement. Attendees will leave with practical techniques to embed people‑centric thinking into every phase of the project lifecycle, ensuring that transformation isn’t just designed well—it’s lived well.
On the Horizon
Day 1
Nokomis
12:30 pm
From Practice to Cure: Introducing the Cohesion Framework and Strategic Fitness
Scott Erlanson, Founder, Arr-Ee
Organizations today face relentless disruption, yet most transformation efforts fail to deliver lasting impact. Why? Because the way we approach change if fundamentally broken. Business Architecture isn’t just about clarity – it’s the medicine organizations need to build strategic fitness and thrive amid complexity. As with any cure, it must be expertly dosed and administered to be effective.
This session introduces the Cohesion Framework, a strategic lens designed to build resilience, coherence, and rhythm in the face of transformation. We’ll unpack what strategic fitness means, why it matters, and how Business Architecture can move beyond models and frameworks to become a systemic remedy for organizational health.
This session introduces the Cohesion Framework, a strategic lens designed to build resilience, coherence, and rhythm in the face of transformation. We’ll unpack what strategic fitness means, why it matters, and how Business Architecture can move beyond models and frameworks to become a systemic remedy for organizational health.
Thinking AI: Blueprint to Breakthrough
Day 1
Harriet
12:30 pm
Agentic AI for ERP (SAP)
Emma Qian, Co-founder & CEO and Justin Kershaw, Chief Customer Officer, Nova Intelligence
Agentic AI promises transformation—but what does it actually take to apply frontier AI to complex, high-stakes business processes? Where should humans stay in the loop? How do you build for a landscape that shifts every few months?
With thousands of enterprises facing mandatory S/4HANA migration by 2030 and millions of lines of undocumented custom code standing in the way, SAP transformations represent one of the highest-stakes testing grounds for enterprise AI.
Emma Qian (CEO, Nova Intelligence; formerly Google DeepMind and Meta AI) and Justin Kershaw (Chief Customer Officer, Nova Intelligence; former CIO of Cargill) bring two rarely combined perspectives: cutting-edge AI research and decades of Fortune 500 technology leadership. They'll share what "agentic AI" actually means, how to bring it into the enterprise, and lessons from deploying AI where the stakes are high.
With thousands of enterprises facing mandatory S/4HANA migration by 2030 and millions of lines of undocumented custom code standing in the way, SAP transformations represent one of the highest-stakes testing grounds for enterprise AI.
Emma Qian (CEO, Nova Intelligence; formerly Google DeepMind and Meta AI) and Justin Kershaw (Chief Customer Officer, Nova Intelligence; former CIO of Cargill) bring two rarely combined perspectives: cutting-edge AI research and decades of Fortune 500 technology leadership. They'll share what "agentic AI" actually means, how to bring it into the enterprise, and lessons from deploying AI where the stakes are high.
Business Transformation and Architecture with SAP
Day 1
Minnetonka
1:30 pm
10 Things…
Chandra Knabel, Global Customer Services & Delivery (CS&D) Enterprise Architecture and Tonia Zeiler, VP America’s Architecture Advisory, SAP Americas
Ever wondered what happens when Enterprise Architects and Business Architects swap notes? Join us for a fun, fast-paced session where we share 5 things SAP EAs should know about Business Architecture and 5 things Business Architects should know about SAP.
Why these 10 things? Because after years as SAP customers—and now years inside SAP—we’ve seen both sides of the fence. These are the insights we wish we had back then, and the ones we wish our customers knew today.
Expect practical tips, a few laughs, and plenty of “aha!” moments. Whether you are an EA, a BA, or just curious about bridging the gap between business and technology, this session will leave you smarter—and maybe even smiling.
Why these 10 things? Because after years as SAP customers—and now years inside SAP—we’ve seen both sides of the fence. These are the insights we wish we had back then, and the ones we wish our customers knew today.
Expect practical tips, a few laughs, and plenty of “aha!” moments. Whether you are an EA, a BA, or just curious about bridging the gap between business and technology, this session will leave you smarter—and maybe even smiling.
Why Do They Call Them Soft Skills When They’re So Hard
Day 1
Bde Maka Ska
1:30 pm
Architecting Negotiation: A Systemic Approach to Influence
Selena Evans, Founder & Insight Architect, Ara Governance Advisory
Negotiation isn’t just a skill, it’s a system. This session explores how advanced organizations structure negotiation as an enterprise capability (and the perils when they don’t) and how architects can enable negotiation that drives strategic outcomes. We’ll examine real world breakdowns and the architectural interventions that resolve them. Along the way, we’ll translate these insights into personal negotiating systems – applicable to career decisions, stakeholder dynamics and high-trust influence. Join us to rethink negotiation as a designed flow of intelligence, tradeoffs, and trust and up your influence game.
On the Horizon
Day 1
Nokomis
1:30 pm
The Impact of Business Architects in Enterprise Transformation Lifecycle
Scott Fleming, Senior Enterprise & Business Architecture Consultant
Standards are often created as toolboxes with many tools. Enterprise Architecture has TOGAF with Business Architecture as one of its toolboxes. We also have the Business Architecture Guild and the Business Architecture Certification course. Yet, we often struggle to convince those outside of our niche group of the value we bring. In this session, we will take a look at Business Architecture through the context of the Enterprise Transformation Lifecycle. We will discuss how Architecture both simplifies and optimizes the efforts along the necessary and sufficient steps of the Enterprise Transformation Lifecycle, as well as how Business Architecture plays a key role in that endeavor. We will do this by showing which Business Architecture artifacts help when and where in the Life Cycle and how Business Architectural thinking ensures that implementation projects are measured against their strategic objectives.
Thinking AI: Blueprint to Breakthrough
Day 1
Harriet
1:30 pm
Case Study: The Golden Thread of AI in Mental Health
Luke Wendledt, Founder & CEO; Michael Arulfo, Chief Technology & AI Officer; Shannon Stauff, Chief Product Officer; and Emily Hanson, VP of Growth, Cadre
Cadre turns mental-health support into an AI-ready capability blueprint. Built around trusted, anonymous communities of vetted peers, coaches, and licensed professionals, the Cadresphere connects people through always-on content, live community, and peer coaching. For business architects and executives, our BIZBOK-aligned capability map makes the “why” explicit—so AI investments focus on safe personalization, responsible moderation, and measurable outcomes for members and employers. Know your why before you AI.
Business Transformation and Architecture with SAP
Day 1
Minnetonka
2:30 pm
Measure What Matters: Realtime Analytics & AI Architecture
Jason Shearer, Chief Enterprise Architect and Alec Lewis, Enterprise Architect, RISE, SAP Americas
Don’t just survive the AI revolution in enterprise architecture – lead it! Are you tired of traditional metrics that don’t capture real value? This session promises to reveal why real-time data integration and compute capabilities are no longer optional, but absolutely crucial for securing your competitive advantage, showcasing through compelling case studies how leading organizations leverage real-time KPIs for immediate business value. Discover how the transformative Digital Twin of an Organization (DTO) concept unifies business process design, technical deployment, and change management into a continuous improvement engine, powered by real-time insights. You’ll gain practical frameworks for integrating advanced analytics and AI into your decision-making, equipping you to pinpoint critical metrics, uncover hidden patterns, and design architectures that truly measure and deliver what matters most in today’s rapidly evolving landscape.
Why Do They Call Them Soft Skills When They’re So Hard
Day 1
Bde Maka Ska
2:30 pm
A Strategic Approach to Stakeholder Success
Joseph Okonek, Director of Business Architecture
The presentation “Enabling Stakeholder Success through Strategy and Business Architecture” provides a comprehensive framework for aligning organizational strategy with execution through the disciplined use of business architecture & strategy with and emphasis on engaging stakeholders to collaboratively bring value to the organization. The methodology demonstrates how business capabilities serve as stable, high-level building blocks (“what” the business does, independent of how or where) to assess current maturity,identify critical gaps, and prioritize investments.
Using practical examples, a detailed case study for a fictional company (ACME), the presentation walks through very high level capability maturity assessments, alignment of capabilities, operational efficiencies and impacts, gap analysis and bridging silos. Throughout every stage—from initial assessments and cross-functional planning to initiative prioritization and performance tracking—the approach consistently highlights stakeholder engagement as a continuous, essential practice that involves leaders, business owners, and teams to foster ownership, reduce resistance, break down silos, ensure alignment, and ultimately translate strategic intent into measurable, sustainable organizational outcomes.
Using practical examples, a detailed case study for a fictional company (ACME), the presentation walks through very high level capability maturity assessments, alignment of capabilities, operational efficiencies and impacts, gap analysis and bridging silos. Throughout every stage—from initial assessments and cross-functional planning to initiative prioritization and performance tracking—the approach consistently highlights stakeholder engagement as a continuous, essential practice that involves leaders, business owners, and teams to foster ownership, reduce resistance, break down silos, ensure alignment, and ultimately translate strategic intent into measurable, sustainable organizational outcomes.
On the Horizon
Day 1
Nokomis
2:30 pm
Navigating AI Innovation, Sustainability, and Uncertainty
Oliver Cronk, Technology Director, Architect Tomorrow
Business architects face a critical challenge: how do you shape strategy and operating models when AI's future spans such a wide cone of uncertainty?
This talk provides frameworks for navigating multiple possible AI futures. Explore different adoption scenarios from augmentation to automation, understand the hidden sustainability costs threatening current approaches, and discover practical enterprise AI categories that help match solutions to contexts.
Drawing on work with government and industry, Oliver demonstrates how [business] architects can move beyond vendor narratives to architect conscious choices about AI adoption. Learn to recognise early signals, balance trade-offs between profit-people-planet, and create policy frameworks that enable innovation whilst managing risk. Discover why constraints might drive better outcomes than "brute force" approaches.
Thinking AI: Blueprint to Breakthrough
Day 1
Harriet
2:30 pm
Data for Useful AI
Mara Inglezakis, Portfolio Architect, Delta Air Lines
Hallucinations
Slop
BS
That’s how we describe much output from generative AI: perhaps the defining human achievement of the early 21st century, the technology’s propensity towards content that is void of meaning also makes it profoundly frustrating for users. This is particularly true when our senior leadership expects us to use AI for productivity and automation, especially low-touch agentic frameworks.
AI does not have to be another expensive toy—and the architecture community can help our organizations realize true productivity and automation gains by identifying, digitalizing, and exploiting data that accurately reflect our organizations in ways that generative AI can use.
This talk will unpack:
*The unique, essential value of your business-relevant data and context for your agent-forward AI systems
* 2 kinds of AI and how they work: non-symbolic (probability-based or generative) and symbolic (rule-based) AI, and their respective strengths, weaknesses, and ‘attitudes’ towards data
* How architects in different specializations can coach our stakeholders through informed, pragmatic decision-making about which AI and data approaches to use for which kinds of business problems
* Best practices for business, enterprise, and information/data architects, from symbolic AI and complementary fields like information and library science, to help make meaningful business data and context accessible to non-symbolic, generative AI systems
Slop
BS
That’s how we describe much output from generative AI: perhaps the defining human achievement of the early 21st century, the technology’s propensity towards content that is void of meaning also makes it profoundly frustrating for users. This is particularly true when our senior leadership expects us to use AI for productivity and automation, especially low-touch agentic frameworks.
AI does not have to be another expensive toy—and the architecture community can help our organizations realize true productivity and automation gains by identifying, digitalizing, and exploiting data that accurately reflect our organizations in ways that generative AI can use.
This talk will unpack:
*The unique, essential value of your business-relevant data and context for your agent-forward AI systems
* 2 kinds of AI and how they work: non-symbolic (probability-based or generative) and symbolic (rule-based) AI, and their respective strengths, weaknesses, and ‘attitudes’ towards data
* How architects in different specializations can coach our stakeholders through informed, pragmatic decision-making about which AI and data approaches to use for which kinds of business problems
* Best practices for business, enterprise, and information/data architects, from symbolic AI and complementary fields like information and library science, to help make meaningful business data and context accessible to non-symbolic, generative AI systems
3:30 pm
Panel | TCBAF and Our Essential Partner Ecosystem
Linda Finley introduces leaders within our Robust TCBAF Partner Ecosystem: Delvin Fletcher, President and CEO, International
Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA); Grant Ecker, Founder & Chairman; Chief Architect Network (CAN); Sheri Grone, Board Member, Minnesota Change Management Network (MnCMN); Angela Eifert, Executive Director, BETA; Jason Porterfield, Americas’ SAP Users’ Group (ASUG); and Stacey Volkrot-Mello, American Productivity & Quality Center (APQC).
4:30 pm
TCBAF ESSENTIAL PARTNER ECOSYSTEM MIXER “It’s cold outside!” Hot cocoa bar, winter warm up snacks, and door prizes