Agenda

  • Roll Call (East to West) Name and Institution
  • Main Topic - EA Tools Comparison Vendor #02 - Bizzdesign Presentation
    • Mary Stevens, University of Illinois - Urbana Champaign
    • Dan Melville, Bizzdesign
    • Natalie Armitage, Bizzdesign
  • Working Group Updates
  • Close

Session Notes

Overview

  • Bizzdesign is the vendor, and Horizzon is the product, so today's demonstration showcases "Bizzdesign Horizzon":
  • Bizzdesign Horizzon is offered via SaaS built and hosted on AWS
  • Bizzdesign Horizzon is based around a repository — three key aspects underly the repository: components, relationships, and attributes.
  • The repository-centric approach enables the exploration of how things are related from an architecture perspective, and provides the foundation for and analytics and reporting.
  • Examples of "things" includes the list of applications, the catalogue of business processes, etc.
  • Data are able to be imported from other systems (such as a CMDB) and there is rich integration through APIs and other techniques with other systems.
  • The modelling capabilities support the needs of a bunch of architecture and architecture-adjacent roles (ArchiMate, BPMN, UML, ERD, etc), and the reporting reporting features includes a range of out-of-the-box assets including current- and future-state views.

Dan Melville, Bizzdesign

  • This is the landing page for Bizzdesign's demonstration environment, based around the fictitious company "Bizzcorp", noting that different roles can be provided with different landing-page "sites" through here — for example, a business architect might just see the Business Capability Map as their site | landing page:
  • From the top of the architecture stack, here is what a Business Motivation Model looks like in Bizzdesign Horizon:
  • There are pre-formatted reports such has this "Strategy Impact Map" that enables the chain from strategy > objective > initiative > business-capability to be modeled and understood:
  • Business Capabilities can hold relationships with applications and the ecosystem of connections around applications can be modelled as shown below, and the technologies underpinning each application can also be modeled and shown in relationships too:
  • There are various attributes able to set on each business capability reflecting things like its maturity and maturity gap and strategic importance:

    ...providing the ability to create maps showing things like performance-health-maturity and strategic importance together:
  • There is mappable support for side-by-side comparisons of current- and next-state operating models:


  • Application Portfolio Management is also supported with suitable attributes, which can also be used to drive visual overlays on various model views:

    ...able to be fed into assets such as a Modernization Dashboard, communicating the usual TIME-based views of the application estate:
  • People working with the repository and the view-creation and definitions use the Bizzdesign Studio, which looks like this:

Mary Stevens, University of Illinois - Urbana Champaign

  • Mary uses Bizzdesign and feaytures includeing:
  • One example is in Strategic Vendor Management, being able to explore the vendors providing products and services and being able to categorize them for things like "reduce the spend on this one" and "shift this from a vendor relationship to a partnership", and able to view these across different portfolios, like "technologies" and "infrastructure":
  • Nice map here showing stakeholder perceptions of the architecture practice (hidden, noisy, useful, trusted) of the architecture practice:
  • Value Streams and the business capabilities that furnish them:

    ...and expanding this into a journey map, with the value stream broken out into its phases, enabling the examination of maturity levels current and required:

Further Information

Resources

  • Bizzdesign: https://bizzdesign.com/
  • Business Motivation Model from OMG: https://www.omg.org/spec/BMM/1.3/About-BMM
  • Gartner, for those with access, also has a bunch of content around the value proposition, selection, implementation, and use of EA Tools, including:
  • van der Heiden, G. (2023) 8 Steps to Select and Obtain Value From Enterprise Architecture Tools , Gartner Research, Article ID #G00784838, available at https://www.gartner.com/document-reader/document/4145899 — An enterprise architecture product is not “just a tool” — its features and functions support business and IT, making it an enterprise application. Enterprise architecture and technology innovation leaders must follow our eight steps to select the most appropriate EA tool and obtain value from it.
  •  Jhawar, A. (2023) Infographic: Developing a Business Case for EA Tools With User Stories , Gartner Research ,Article ID G00790188, available at https://www.gartner.com/document-reader/document/4386899 — Enterprise architecture and technology innovation leaders often struggle to justify investment in an enterprise architecture tool. This research provides an approach for creating a compelling business case for EA tools and highlighting how the tool aligns with the delivery of business value.

ZOOM

Participants

  • Beth Schaefer, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee
  • Mary Stevens, University of Illinois - Urbana Champaign
  • J.J. Do Chateau, University of Wisconsin-Madison
  • Dana Miller, University of Texas — Arlington
  • Louis King, Yale University
  • Kali Armitage, University of Idaho
  • jeff kennedy, The University of Auckland

Chat

07:03:05 From Mary Stevens to Everyone:
    https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1kG2DzS7lHUhhTVTCbDC_OyaF1wy0bRof_Jb_uV1vBi4/edit?usp=sharing
07:05:31 From Mary Stevens to Everyone:
    https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1kG2DzS7lHUhhTVTCbDC_OyaF1wy0bRof_Jb_uV1vBi4/edit?usp=sharing
07:05:43 From jeff kennedy to Everyone:
    ...currently 52°F at 7:00AM and heading towards a high of 68°F with open skies = happy Easter!
07:05:56 From J.J. DU CHATEAU to Everyone:
    Reacted to "...currently 52°F at..." with 👍
07:06:33 From Dana Miller I UTA to Everyone:
    Reacted to "...currently 52°F at..." with 👍
07:07:02 From Dana Miller I UTA to Everyone:
    The Idaho Panhandle Timezone
07:07:15 From Louis King (Yale University) to Everyone:
    Folks, I do have to wrap up about 15 minutes early.
07:07:43 From Kali Armitage (UIdaho) to Everyone:
    I was just going to say the same thing, need to drop at about 11:50 PT
07:07:43 From Beth Schaefer to Everyone:
    Reacted to "Folks, I do have to ..." with 👍
07:07:51 From Beth Schaefer to Everyone:
    Reacted to "I was just going to ..." with 👍
07:07:59 From Beth Schaefer to Everyone:
    Reacted to "...currently 52°F at..." with 👍
07:08:56 From Beth Schaefer to Everyone:
    Reacted to "...currently 52°F at..." with 🐰
07:25:57 From jeff kennedy to Everyone:
    "Strategy Impact Map" is cool = and i assume that the colors and other features of, say, the business capabilities can be appearance-modified to show as overlays things like their cost maturity health performance?
07:26:25 From Kali Armitage (UIdaho) to Everyone:
    This is a very useful presentation so far, I am currently working on approval to purchase a few licenses.
07:26:42 From Mary Stevens to Everyone:
    Most things can be customized.
07:27:06 From Mary Stevens to Everyone:
    I will show a couple of examples in my part on using data to do things like heat maps.
07:28:51 From J.J. DU CHATEAU to Everyone:
    I like the maturity attributes in the assessment.  Something that is easily overlooked when doing change management.
07:30:29 From jeff kennedy to Everyone:
    ...and @dan.belville used the magical phrase "Course of Action" from the TOGAF Enterprise Metamodel and i wonder if that is a sign that there Bizzdesign Horizon is particularly TOGAF-friendly (asking for a friend).
07:30:34 From jeff kennedy to Everyone:
    Reacted to "I like the maturity ..." with 👍
07:44:23 From Louis King (Yale University) to Everyone:
    Thanks Dan and Mary. Gotta run but will check the video for the rest. Very interesting.
07:47:37 From Kali Armitage (UIdaho) to Everyone:
    I too need to go, really appreciate this, excited about the tool!
07:52:52 From jeff kennedy to Everyone:
    Thank you also to Bizzdesign for the most-excellent blog resources at https://bizzdesign.com/blog/why-business-capabilities-are-key-in-business-architecture/ = there is some absolutely golden advice and guidance in there.
07:53:39 From J.J. DU CHATEAU to Everyone:
    Reacted to "Thank you also to Bi..." with 👍
07:55:52 From jeff kennedy to Everyone:
    Replying to "Thank you also to Bi..."
    
    ...and i did have the great pleasure of meeting Marc Lankhorst at a CAUDIT enterprise-architecture event hosted at The University of Melbourne back in, ah, 2013!  As totally lovely and generous a person as he is a global-thought-leading architecture figure!
07:56:47 From jeff kennedy to Everyone:
    In the background i've grabbed some rough session notes = https://spaces.at.internet2.edu/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=295339464
07:57:47 From Dana Miller I UTA to Everyone:
    @Mary Stevens What are your sources of data?  It appears you are working only within the IT org?
07:58:22 From Beth Schaefer to Everyone:
    Quick Itana updates - New2EA 2024 cohort will be hosting the May 10th call; two more calls in this tool series, and thank you all so much for being here today!
07:58:45 From Mary Stevens to Everyone:
    For the purchasing it was from our data warehouse, different dumps across 2 fiscal years.  Most of what I do is within IT, but looking to tie in other sources
07:58:45 From jeff kennedy to Everyone:
    Reacted to "Quick Itana updates ..." with 😍
07:59:09 From Dana Miller I UTA to Everyone:
    Are you pulling from a CMDB?
07:59:20 From Dana Miller I UTA to Everyone:
    Reacted to "For the purchasing i..." with 👍
07:59:56 From Mary Stevens to Everyone:
    We don’t have a true CMDB, which is one of the things I have been working on changing for years.  So now anything that is how things relate are really coming from sme types
08:00:09 From Dana Miller I UTA to Everyone:
    Reacted to "We don’t have a true..." with 👍
08:00:23 From Mary Stevens to Everyone:
    I am curious is axonius might help provide some info
08:02:02 From J.J. DU CHATEAU to Everyone:
    Coming to that consistency can be a challenge in highly distributed institutions.
08:03:02 From jeff kennedy to Everyone:
    "8 Steps to Select and Obtain Value From Enterprise Architecture Tools" [https://www.gartner.com/document-reader/document/4145899] and other Gartner resources can also help frame the value proposition.


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