Page History
...
Architecture Tool Case Studies
The slide deck is here:
| Widget Connector | ||
|---|---|---|
|
Itana Steering Overview
J.J. Du Chateau: Architecture Tools is a recurring topic: should we get one? are they valuable? which tool does my institution need? These are really more than diagramming and documenting tools... they are truly modelling tools with the promise of providing ways of creating and managing real insights. What is the relationship between the cost of these tools and the value they provide? They are so complex! Some of them start with top-level constructs such as "Vision", "Strategic Goals", and "Business Objectives", but do we have common understanding of what those things actually are, and do we have them at our institutions? Is the learning curve steep? How can we get value from the resources and investment we must make in establishing these tools and upkeeping the repositories we create with them?
...
...and NYU is also using Tableau to create reports (in dashboards that were influenced and shaped by engagements with Gartner) that show costs and TIME assessments and resources and health, all able to be sliced and diced by various dimensions of interest). Also, the NYU "Head of Data" has mapped data assets to the business capability model, and that opens up a world of new possibilities for visualization and reporting and insights about the enterprise architecture.
Throughout considering, selecting, and implementing any form of EA Tools there is a bunch of stuff to watch out for — and clarifying key concepts such as "what is an application?":
There are plenty of valuable suggestions here for other teams looking at these tools, these "things you should consider doing" items:
The George Washington University
Mahmoud Youssef and IRIS Business Architect — insights and designs from the Business Architecture Guild, and being used at The George Washington University:
IRIS is mainly business-architecture-focused but it does have some ability to be applied in the strategic realm (including support for things like the Business Model Canvas). IRIS has a team/server delivery model so that a group of people can work together on a common repository. APIs are used in the IRIS tool to bring in information from the wider technology and business-planning estate (e.g,. ServiceNow and Jira). Three main perspectives baked into the tool:
- Architecture: this is what architects use most of the time to do their work
- Reporting: where reports are specified and generated
- Configuration: add your own tags and fields and metamodel management
Within the tool there is a Model Explorer that facilitates navigation through the architecture assets, mappings to capabilities, definitions of value streams, and transformation-related initiatives such as "strategy". Under the assets you can place applications and machines etc.
When in the configuration perspective the definitions of core concepts such as those required for each business capability can be managed, as in the example shown below for the capability of "Online Giving" — the vendor provides its own metamodel that aggregates features of many established models and frameworks, but the whole thing can be customized with "custom attributes" and extensive use of tagging and labels:
In the value streams it it is possible to undertake mappings, like this example:
...and the higher-level view that shows the connections and gaps between strategy and execution are also easy to create here and are very valuable for planning:
...and here is an example of the Business Model Canvas:
...and there is also rudimentary support for linking customer journey maps with capabilities and value streams:
Page Information
| Children Display | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
...
Overview
Content Tools