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.