Modeling the Business using Archimate

I am continuing to build business models using Archimate, but I am getting bogged down in functions, processes, services and interfaces,

To my mind Archimate seems to move the modeling of the Business (ie that which is not IT see Tom Graves ) only a little way on from the practice of Business Process Modeling.

Archimate still seems to have a “start with IT and from an IT perspective” feel to it. Or put another way “how can we answer the what & why IT is needed”.

This may be the result of my mind set, however it may also be a result of trying to make Archimate compatible with UML, so that for instance an existing class model can be referenced in an Archimate model.

What I am trying to imagine, is how to represent say a centralized hierarchical organization as opposed to a decentralized flat structured organization. Can a decision be represented as a function, process or an interaction?

 

Using Archimate

I have been looking a little more deeply at Archimate 0.1 to see if it will give a useable off the shelf meta model.

The 1st reaction that I have had from a real customer, is that we EA’s may understand it – but not his business managers and executives.

How much time and effort do we expect customer’s staff to put into understanding our EA models?

I guess that it depends, but for the at a most 20 minutes attention span of busy a CxO the answer is that there is not much time and energy available for learning to understand different graphical representations. Indeed it is not just the symbols, but the juxtaposition of them and of the relative diagrams. By which I am thinking in particular of the representation of layers within Archimate.

Coming from a Zachman filled culture the layers are troublesome, and mentally I tip the diagrams on their side! I cannot get my head round the implied hierarchy within the Archimate meta model, after all if a task or activity can be performed by hand, by IT system or by machine where is the hierarchy?

I have been searching for some real life examples of Archimate, and I have not found any. My efforts so far tend to look a little between a process model and a tiered application architecture.

Does any one have any reviews / articles that will shed more light on the use of Archimate?

I think that we could start a thread or discussion on this, if there is sufficient interest. For instance what do we make of the “layering” of Business, Application and Physical dimensions?

May be this has all been discussed at length in the Archimate forum?

Is there a place for peer review of models on the web?

 

Views from 22nd TOGAF Conference

I have just come from the 22nd Open Group EA Conference in London http://www.opengroup.org/london2009-apc/ and survived my 1st presentation to the Open Goup. I was on edge all conference hoping that no one would be presenting similar material to mine. They did not and the Sustainable Enterprise Architecture http://www.opengroup.org/london2009-apc/latham.htm remained my baby.

It has been good to have affirmation that Smart421’s EA http://www.smart421.com/solutions/consultancy/enterprise-architecture.asp proposition matches up to other’s best practices.

This conference was the launch of TOGAF 9, thankfully for my British reserve, not launched with great pomp and ceremony, nor with any Razzmatazz. A little Raz may well have re-enforced the significance of the achievement.

Judging from the mood of the delegates there is confidence in TOGAF 9 and agreement that it is solid as far as it goes.

TOGAF 9 has put on a lot of weight since it was 8, much of it valuable and not at all a middle aged spread into verbosity. Although covering TOGAF 9 at breakneck speed in a couple of presentations on the first full day was not necessarily the best use of conference time. It did show that at least 3 people know TOGAF 9 inside out – I am sure that all of the Open Group members who worked on it are as equally as knowledgeable.

Watch out for Archimate http://www.opengroup.org/archimate/downloads.htm – A meta model to describe Enterprise Architecture, you download the symbols for use in Visio, but to use it properly it needs to be installed in your modelling package. Archimate 2 is due out by the end of the year. I think that it will be a unstoppable force for architecture modelling in years to come.

There were a couple of recurring themes at the conference:-

The hole that is Business Architecture – As Tom Graves http://www.opengroup.org/london2009-apc/graves.htm pointed out IT is less than 10% of expenditure and so by inference we are missing out on 90% of the market for architecture. The hole is being addressed by the Business Architecture working group, but progress is slow and there is much to be done. I want to encourage all knowledgeable practicing Business Architects to dive in a get it sorted.

Enterprise Architects need more soft skills. We are too geeky! This may also explain the lack of progress on the Business Architecture front as the non IT people can not bear to talk to us or as Paul Homan http://www.opengroup.org/london2009-apc/homan.htm put it – they do not understand what we say and anyway we take too long to say it!

Some people were trying to extend the scope of TOGAF, Jason Uppal http://www.opengroup.org/london2009-apc/uppal.htm talking about the 10 year lifecycle of architecture artefacts. Amit Bhagwat explored the relationship between leadership, time span of control and Enterprise Architecture.

On balance there was a lot of talk about theory and not much on the practical application of TOGAF. There is great need to publish practical EA experiences and best practices.
We have contributed to the EA community, thrown in our hat with a model for Sustainable EA. It was interesting that some other presentations were near to our offering of Sustainable Enterprise Architecture – Danny Greefhorst http://www.opengroup.org/london2009-apc/greefhorst.htm talked about Just in Time architecture as part of his Pragmatic Architecture, Paul Homan talked about architecture becoming out of date quickly, if it if not used (Use it or Loose it I suppose) – Martin van den Berg http://www.opengroup.org/london2009-apc/van_den_berg_martin talked of the “Project Start Architecture” the EA Killer Application – But I think that the EA Killer app is the Project Start-up in the our Sustainable EA.

 

Enterprise Architecture and Home Computers

Thoughts prompted by fixing my home PC and the difficulties I had in replacing the motherboard – what should be a relatively simple task.

High availability home computing – The next time I am asked about buying a PC, I will say “buy two PCs”. That way you will have no single point of failure accessing the Internet. The Internet is essential to fixing a failed PC. With disk back-up, an image of the system and a rescue disk, high availability can be achieved at home. (Do you need to test your modem / 3G internet access as well?). Email is essential for communications – registration of software, contact with helpdesks and finally the saved emails are the index for saved documents!

A steep learning curve for an Enterprise Architect you would say. Yes but it really re-enforced the message about documentation – Life would have been a whole lot easier if all of the information was readily to hand and if there was only one source of the truth (on the Internet!).

The lack of information, in this age of information overload, I find quite infuriating – It seems that Google searches have been hijacked by companies trying to sell me things or compare things before they sell me things – There should be an “I am not buying anything!!!” switch in the advanced search options.

Internet forums are places with some of the most misleading misinformation – In the interests of world peace cannot they be classified as dangerous, in a similar way to the security classifications for Viruses, Trojans and Malware? What about Malinformation?

Do we have to play guessing games to find the right answer? Isn’t it in the supplier’s best interests to be the source of truth? (Even if the truth is – You cannot do this with our software or product). Are they more concerned with hiding the truth? Finding out what you need to know and making a plan is hard – After all the hardest questions are the ones you don’t know the answer to.

To get back to my theme, which is Enterprise Architecture and Home Computers, it is obvious that some of the most popular software does not meet the basic principles and standards software design.

A short list will illustrate some problems

A genuine windows XP CD will not load XP, because I have SATA drives
It is virtually impossible to move your music tracks photos or videos and keep your catalogues intact
Email client stores my customised data in the windows registry
Software scatters itself and its data over a myriad of directories and files
The instructions and manuals detailing the moving, restoring and management of software and its data is almost non existent
Software to manage the applications does not exist
Applications that configure themselves automatically without permission

These horrors come from some of the largest software suppliers on the planet.

So why EA? If the four TOGAF architecture viewpoints (Business, Application, Infrastructure and Information) had been addressed by the software designers then many of these situations would not exist.

Business Architecture – Define the organisation, structure and visions of your target environment – In the case of a home PC, this is individuals and families – they grow, merge and split and get older. Their lifestyles change particularly in response to the changes brought by IT.

Application Architecture – Define the principles, standards, structure and integration of the applications – In the case of a home PC, These are the email, games, photo editor, music and video players. How can I be sure that this program will not affect the others that are running? How do we remove those pesky toolbars and other addons that clutter the screens and programs in start-up that slow my PC to stand still?

Information Architecture – Define the form, content and type of data – In the case of the home PC, this address keeping my photos and videos safe, securely saving my logons and passwords. Controlling how much information my children reveal about the family on the sites like Facebook? Why can’t I find….. ? And how can I move?

Infrastructure – Define the target infrastructure architecture. In the case of the home PC, this is the ability to print documents and photos, access email from any PC or laptop and synchronise multiple MP3 players (at least one for each son or daughter). What would be the effect on the family of the PC not being available? – Unable to do home work, shopping, banking and worst of all unable to keep in contact with friends – How do we configure a highly available, secure, responsive and accessible computer systems in the home?

It is not all bad news – the screws & holes all lined up on my new motherboard and the old disk drives, graphics card and sound card all work on the new motherboard. The use of standards in hardware is good – it works! – But then I suspect that when you need to be able to supply your hardware to all PC manufacturers, it pays to be standard, but better.