Products and Applications

The enterprise architect continues his analysis of the AEC-company by continuing the modelling of the information that he collected from the workshop with the head of departments, and by reading through the notes from the workshop the enterprise architect could identify some of the  business applications  used to produce the products. 

The reason for why the enterprise architect thinks in the terms of business applications and not in the terms of the ArchiMate Language’s use of the terminology is due to business applications are important applications and not “just” applications used for everyday purposes, and in most organisations then the enterprise architect will not be able to keep track of all of the applications used by the organisation. Nonetheless, to ease the communications of the ArchiMate Language the references to application(s) are used.

The enterprise architect recalls that the AEC-company produces these products today:

• Construction Consulting.
• Engineering Consulting.
• Sustainability Consulting.

The enterprise architect chooses to visualize the applications by using the ArchiMate element “Application Component”.

On a side note, then an application can consist of multiple application components, but for this example a business application consists of one application component only.

The enterprise architect maps the products to the business applications. The enterprise architect identifies that the illustration provides a good basis for knowledge sharing and alignment, and that the AEC-company can make use of to support the IT-strategy of the company and a high-level overview of how digital disturbance can impact the business operations. The below illustration shows the relationship between the products and the business applications:

The enterprise architect identifies that the products Construction Consulting and Engineering Consulting are supported by the same applications. This is due to the building information modelling (BIM) software capabilities of the applications so these can help with the calculations and the design of the different engineering tasks and with the planning and management of the construction sites.

The enterprise architect reuses the model on products and processes and added the business applications to the illustration, so it becomes clear for him and other stakeholders in the AEC-company how the capabilities, business processes, products and applications are connected:

Line of Sight

The product of Engineering Consulting and how the applications are serving the production of it:

The product of Engineering Consulting and how the product is realizing capabilities, served by business processes, realizing principles, and how it is served by applications:

The product of Sustainability Consulting and how it is served by the application Product LCA (Life Cycle Analysis):

The product of Sustainability Consulting and how the product is realizing capabilities, served by business processes, realizes courses of actions (Function strategies) and realizes principles:

The product of Construction Consulting and how the applications are serving the production of it:

The product of Construction Consulting and how the product is realizing capabilities, served by business processes, realizing principles, and how it is served by applications:

From a capabilities planning point of view the line of sight from the capability “Construction Planning Management” it is visible that there is a portfolio of applications enabling it:

The above illustration is considered 6 levels below the capability layer in the Archi-tool used to produce the ArchiMate mapping.