Henry Pruitt mentioned that it is always a challenge to get information from the Product Owners
Barbara Forth-William & Mary
They are in the early stages of tool evaluation
What tools are helpful for selection?
Henry:
Show leadership that stringing together Excel and Visio is not a good solution
J.J.:
Diagramming tool, Lucid Charts is almost near a modeling tool
Louis King:
The efforts to put together the data to generate EA views can be viewed as a data governance activity
Meeting Collateral
Chat
From J.J. DU CHATEAU (Wisconsin) to Everyone: Central is taking over.
From Stephanie Warner - UW Milwaukee to Everyone: 👍
From Matthew House (WashU) to Everyone: WashU has an RFP out right now for a new EA Tool. There is keen interest from us today. 😄
From Piet Niederhausen (UWash) to Everyone: Sorry about that. Piet Niederhausen, University of Washington.
From Jim Phelps (UW) to Everyone: I missed the Scribe call out. Could I get a scribe for this call please?
From Dana Miller-University of Texas at Arlington to Everyone: I’ll scribe Jim.
From Jim Phelps (UW) to Everyone: Thank you, Dana,
From Jim Phelps (UW) to Everyone: Before JJ came to UW-Madison, the EA Team also tried IBM Rational - in Ye Olde UML days and it also died on the vine
From jeff kennedy | UoA to Everyone: EA Sparx has been popular historically because it had rich features for a reasonable price (and because it comes from Australia!). That "advantage" is getting eaten by Essential!
From jeff kennedy | UoA to Everyone: @Jim in those similarly old days, we tried Metis (later acquired by Troux) and looked at bits of the IBM Rational Suite, and flirted with Sparx, and experimented with a very-very early version of Essential, and trialed LeanIX more recently.
From jeff kennedy | UoA to Everyone: "Lessons Learned" = these are not offered as The Answer, more that i'm curious how these peer-contributor lessons-learned from this Gartner piece "Peer Contributors (2022) _Gartner Peer Insights ‘Lessons Learned’: Implementing Enterprise Architecture Tools_, Gartner Peer & Practitioner Research, Article ID #G00754150, available at https://www.gartner.com/document/4014544" resonate (or not) with the discussion here today:
Lesson 1: Document Stakeholder Objectives and Potential Use Cases Prior to the Purchase of an EA Tool
Lesson 2: Research and Test Suitable Vendor Offerings to Select the EA Tool That Aligns with Your Use Cases
Lesson 3: Streamline the Organization’s Data; Create a Robust EA Architecture for Effective Deployment
Lesson 4: Foster Necessary EA Skills in Advance of the Rollout; Dedicate Resources to Drive Tool Adoption
Lesson 5: Implement the Tool Progressively, Liaison with the Vendor for Seamless Integration and Best Practices
From Jim Phelps (UW) to Everyone: We looked at Troux here. I thought it was pretty intriguing, but I didn’t think I could staff up to a level where we could deliver value from it.
From Glenn Donaldson (Ohio State) to Everyone: @Jim I was looking at Troux as well back in the day. I think it is now Plainview. But it would take some work.
From jeff kennedy | UoA to Everyone: ALSO there is (in my view) the slippery slope of ServiceNow here too, and (given the $$$$$) that might be something folk here are feeling pressure to embrace <<< anybody in that boat?
From Alberto Mendoza to Everyone: Curious if anyone have looked at LeanIX?
From J.J. DU CHATEAU (Wisconsin) to Everyone: @Jeff EA Sparx is what I used from 2006 to 2014. Very inexpensive tool that worked for us.
From Kelsey Lunsmann (UO) to Everyone: Henry or JJ - Will these slides be shared?
From Dana Miller-University of Texas at Arlington to Everyone: @Jeff UTA is in the clutches of ServiceNow
From Jim Phelps (UW) to Everyone: We have ServiceNow for some service management. It does come up a lot as an “Well, ServiceNow has a module for that” we ideas come up
From Mary Stevens to Everyone: I looked at and tried out leanIX
From Mary Stevens to Everyone: If anyone has questions about BizzDesign happy to talk anytime
From Alberto Mendoza to Everyone: @Mary Thanks... I'll reach you about both LeanIX and BizzDesign
From Louis King to Everyone: Our ServiceNow license includes the module with APM and some business capabilities. We are looking at that first. One nice aspect of that is that it could automate the use of incidents and such to support the analysis.
From Jim Phelps (UW) to Everyone: @Kelsey - the slides will be posted on the Itana site.
From J.J. DU CHATEAU (Wisconsin) to Everyone: @Jeff Great lessons learned.
From Kelsey Lunsmann (UO) to Everyone: Thanks, Jim!
From Barbara Forth bforth@wm.edu to Everyone: lower cost entry - check out Service Prime instead of Service Now
From Dave Goldhammer (CU Boulder) to Everyone: CU Boulder also uses ServiceNow and there have been discussions about broadening its use into CMDB territory, but staff limitations have always made that challenging. It tends to remain largely a tool for support tickets and change management.
From Dave Goldhammer (CU Boulder) to Everyone: It is used for somewhat “basic” service definitions to allow mapping those to responsible teams, etc.
From Barbara Forth bforth@wm.edu to Everyone: Are you using the tools to help with master data transition through ERP? W&M is starting to evaluate move from Banner to Banner and/or Workday
From jeff kennedy | UoA to Everyone: @Mary BizzDesign is almost gold-standard, and just yesterday (while doing some digital gardening) i saw a photograph from 2013 when i hosted a panel discussion at The University of Melbourne where we had the great privilege of having Marc Lankhorst join us for a day!). We also reference some of the really useful business-capability and other material from the BizzDesign blogs like https://bizzdesign.com/blog-category/business-capability/ in our final-year digital-strategy course.
From Dana Miller-University of Texas at Arlington to Everyone: UTA is in the same ServiceNow boat as CU Boulder.
From Dave Goldhammer (CU Boulder) to Everyone: Interesting, thanks Dana!
From Ashish Pandit to Everyone: Is there a ServiceNow plugin that is required for this purpose?
From Mary Stevens to Everyone: @Jeff Yes, it is, and I am fortunate that my boss had faith in me when I made the case for it. They are actively adding features, and the ability to do not only technical drawings but tie in the business drivers, functions, etc. are very valuable.
From J.J. DU CHATEAU (Wisconsin) to Everyone: @Jeff I do realize the concept of a TRM is more challenging than 15 years ago given that LOB solutions are so commonplace. Also, the idea of how to categorize a platform vs an app in these tools is interesting (ex. Salesforce being both a LoB CRM solution and a general dev platform)
From Mary Stevens to Everyone: Some price on number of objects, some on user licensing, etc.
From Mary Stevens to Everyone: I would also say consider if you need it up and running fast, can you leverage consulting to get your environment instantiated. IE. Do you need help integrating to sources of data, and can they do that quicker than you can.
From Mary Stevens to Everyone: At our org, there is also some concern about loading real data into a POC environment, and how the data is handled when the POC is over if it is a cloud product. So, talk with your security/privacy people if you have that as part of your environment
From Mary Stevens to Everyone: Migration from one tool to another isn’t always easy. What I have learned is that the underlying ArchiMate model data can move relatively easily. Views may not move from one tool to another. And if you devote a lot of time to user permissions, etc. that will likely also not translate between tools.
From Ashish Pandit to Everyone: Thanks @Jeff
From jeff kennedy | UoA to Everyone: @Mary +1 on the POC comments, and something I've also heard from CAUDIT colleagues is that the POC tends to be based upon manual loads from spreadsheets, and if the POC is successful _then_ there is a whole new conversation about integrations (because, depending upon scope and aspirations, manual loads from spreadsheets just isn't sustainable!).
From J.J. DU CHATEAU (Wisconsin) to Everyone: One thing we'll have to address is what data is the EA tool the source of record vs the EA tool be having a copy of it. It is likely a mix of both where we'll figure out how to programmatically load/update data from other systems (e.g. CMBD, asset inventory)
From jeff kennedy | UoA to Everyone: @Mary absolutely agree on portability, and on _interoperability_, which we're seeing in the CAUDIT work around creating an Application Reference Model domain for the HERM --- there are huge differences in terminology (for things like "Application Component" we are trying to navigate between Essential's metamodel and TOGAF|ArchiMate and ServiceNow's CSDM.
From Alberto Mendoza to Everyone: Talking about exit strategy... ArchiMate is an open standard but not all EA tools support it. If exit strategy is a case to consider in selecting a tool, definitively consider one that supports Archimate
From Barbara Forth bforth@wm.edu to Everyone: Do you have BCM built out for NYU
From Alberto Mendoza to Everyone: It is very easy to get lost mapping enterprises that add little value... someone aptly called it Enterprise Cartographers
From jeff kennedy | UoA to Everyone: @JJ that's super-important too, which attributes|things are mastered and lifecycle-managed where --- we're in the process of stripping attributes|things out of our Application Inventory that shouldn't be there (and should be mastered somewhere like the CMDB instead). However, all of sudden, distributed management of the estate requires actual cooperation between parties, and the ability to link|join something like an "application" or a "server" in one repository with something like an "application" or a "server" in other repositories.
From J.J. DU CHATEAU (Wisconsin) to Everyone: @Alberto, you do realize I was a cartography in my previous life. I better be careful not to fall into that trap. :)
From Mary Stevens to Everyone: You may also want to evaluate how automatable the tool is. Is there a scripting function in the tool, and what can it do
From jeff kennedy | UoA to Everyone: @Alberto "Enterprise Cartography" is nice (and might pique J's interest! = https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-96264-7_5). i've also heard of Enterprise Architecture being "Digital Anthropology"!
From Mary Stevens to Everyone: @JJ I am always amazed when talking with architects how diverse the group is in their previous careers/educations
From Barbara Forth bforth@wm.edu to Everyone: Any thoughts on Data Strategy modeling - business goals against DG and DM capabilities needed and prioritized?
From J.J. DU CHATEAU (Wisconsin) to Everyone: @Barbara We also want to discuss this tool's possibilities with our Data Gov'n folks about knowing CRUD info for data domains as it relates to applications and business processes and APIs. Something they are interested in.
From Loring Hummel to Everyone: We're test driving Sparx EA with Prolaborate. It's highly configurable and scriptable but with a high technical learning curve.
From Mary Stevens to Everyone: @Barbara, I’m talking with our data, security and privacy people right now about what to model, what is useful, what data is there about data, etc. So we are early in the stage of exploring this.
From Alberto Mendoza to Everyone: I'm in Jason's shoes.... looking to start EA mid-way up... from application portfolio, planning around technology obsolescence, and mapping dependencies... then go UP to business capabilities and so on.
From Stephanie Warner - UW Milwaukee to Everyone: Great question, Barbara!
From Mary Stevens to Everyone: LucidScale is a modeling tool for cloud environments.
From Mary Stevens to Everyone: You can export from lucid scale into lucid to make diagrams or stay in scale and create model views
From J.J. DU CHATEAU (Wisconsin) to Everyone: Good Point Louis. Data Gov'n and Business Intelligence. I think some of this could be done in a reporting environment if the data is available elsewhere.
From Alberto Mendoza to Everyone: FYI LeanIX has an integration to LucidChart and I think they do create data points based on the diagrams
From Alberto Mendoza to Everyone: (I'm not shilling for leanix… just they are high on my list, but they don't seem to have any HE customers and I wonder why)
From Jason Clevenger to Everyone: Thank-you Louis. Making sure that Product Owners are included in the value proposition analysis is important
From Dana Miller-University of Texas at Arlington to Everyone: Thanks, J.J. and Henry!
From J.J. DU CHATEAU (Wisconsin) to Everyone: Thanks all!
From Dave Goldhammer (CU Boulder) to Everyone: Thanks so much, all!
From Alberto Mendoza to Everyone: Thanks JJ and Henry… awesome
