Conference Call Notes

Agenda for next call

1. Roll Call (by timezone - East to West)
2. Scribe Call Out

3. Architecture Tool Case Studies

4. Itana Org Updates (if any)

   1. Working Group Updates
      
      1. Wiki Refresh Working Group
      2. New2EA Working Group
      3. API Working Group
      4. Business Architecture Working Group
      5. Information Architecture WG
      6. EDUCAUSE Connect WG
   2. Steering Committee Update

Full program on the 2021-2022 Itana Program page. All calls (including working groups) are listed on the Events page.

Architecture Tool Case Studies

The slide deck is here:

Itana Steering Session 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?

NYU Case Study

Henry Pruitt.  Overall goals as depicted below (includes the ability to answer application-architecture questions like "where are all the places we are running Java?" and "where are there opportunities to align the use of similar business solutions across the institution?" such as when we find there are fifteen separate instances of Salesforce).

...and sample questions (these are really valuable) to be addresses include:

The journey included the initial capture in a spreadsheet of hundreds of applications (including mappings expressed with pivot tables to key things such as business capability), and part of what needed to be addressed by introducing the ability to find architecture diagrams and architecture documentation.  One useful outcome of the TOGAF training was that architects were able to start speaking the same language.  Using some of the ServiceNow functionality (around CMDB and the application portfolio), noting that there was a requirement to change some of the labels and functionality (jeff = in the ServiceNow Common Services Data Model?).

Technology planning happening in spreadsheets is disconnected from the architecture context (e.g., Identity & Access Management spanning significant application services such as the future plans for LDAP and the future plans of the university-wide Person Registry).  The promise of the EA tool is to help bring this work together and achieve better outcomes for the institution.  Also looking for the ability to run basic reports across the architecture (linking applications to business outcomes and strategic objectives and organizational structure), etc.

Some alternatives to traditional/mainstream EA tools were also considered by the NYU team, acknowledging the overlap between the domains of "EA Tools", "IT Portfolio Analysis", and "IT Service Management" (jeff = and also like Strategy Execution Management):

Key considerations for selecting an EA tool include scenario-based planning and:

NYU has an pre-CAUDIT version of their own "front office" business capability model = note the pace-layer color-coding here:

...and the same approach for the "back office" business capablities:

...and the ability to create summary views such as this applications tree map:

...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:

Boston College

Alberto Mendoza = using Archimate.

Need to demonstrate to stakeholders the context for upcoming technology changes and to communicate roles and responsibilities.  Diagrams are a natural great-fit approach to this!  Archimate is based upon the standard, and is a visual notation language, with support for applications and technology in a large scope of enterprise architecture.  This provides an environment in which the consequences of small decisions in the wider enterprise context can be explored and understood and communicated.

Archimate has many strengths, which somewhat stem from having top-level common terms/concepts  that can be used throughout all of the architecture domains.  Providing formal meanings to specific concepts enables us to drill down into the underpinning assets and understand the connections between them (servers and containers included).  This enables the creation of meaningful objects that can help to represent day-to-day work in the context of this more enterprise-scoped view.

The abstraction capabilities underpin the visual representation of real-life situations at different levels of the architecture stack, and this helps with the formation of views that satisfy the concerns of stakeholders from the viewpoints they each occupy.  Alberto is using the Archi tool (https://www.archimatetool.com/), which is open-source and cross-platform and ready to use:

Although it's not an "official" Archimate tool (jeff = my understanding is that's only because this open-source project has sensibly decided to not pay The Open Group a significant amount to be submitted for formal endorsement) but it has full support for the latest Archimate Version 3.1 and it has a large and active community wrapped around it.  In a project context, it's possible to use Archi as a valuable way of describing a common model with common language that illustrates in a detailed way the relationships between all the moving parts of your institution that are involved in a project or other business-change initiative.

For the Boston College community, the models from Archi are published automatically on a daily basis for wider consumption, so they're always up-to-date and kept alive.  That they are always current and iterating gives them credence with the stakeholder community.

In modelling systems and knowledge management and looking to create some reusability (acknowledging the support of the Archi community) there are views like these being created, examples here related to ETL feeds:

Using the tools and mechanisms of Archi has been really helpful in improving stakeholder communications, though without needing all of them to becoming experts in Archimate!  The example below illustrates the need to undertake projects to effect certain changes to move the indicated domain from the current state to the next state:

Brief Open Discussion

• Some people are also interest in "The Essential Project" = https://enterprise-architecture.org/
• Many of these (kinds of) tools have their particular focus, but most of them do support languages such as Archimate.
• Is there tension between upkeep of all these data in the EA tool and the need to keep/retain/harvest the kind of information held in a CMDB?
• For anybody here with a Gartner subscription, this from 22NOV2021: Jhawar, A., van der Heiden, G., & Hart, N. (2021) _Critical Capabilities for Enterprise Architecture Tools_, Gartner Research, Article ID #G00742564, available at https://www.gartner.com/document/4008588 (and some might also be interested in the "magic quadrant" based upon those critical-capabilities assessments: van der Heiden, G., Jhawar, A., & Hart, N. (2021) _Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Architecture Tools_, Gartner Research, Article ID #G00742577, available at https://www.gartner.com/document/4008102).

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