Architecting.Biz

Category: Business Mapping

  • Applications and Infrastructure

    Applications and Infrastructure

    The enterprise architect identifies that there is yet another layer to map in order to gain the line of sight on how the strategy is impacted by the current digital infrastructure that the AEC-company makes use of; and the enterprise architect realises that the current mappings so far has focused mainly on the As-Is enterprise architecture of the AEC-company. Nonetheless, as the enterprise architect thought for himself, the journey has to start and end somewhere. The end is the To-Be architecture and in between is the transitional architecture(s). 

    With the As-Is enterprise architecture in mind the enterprise architect begins mapping the AEC-company’s application landscape and puts it to the infrastructure that has been chosen in the past.  The AEC-company makes use of the product suits from Autodesk to produce the construction consulting products, the engineering consulting products, and sustainability consulting products.

    While doing the mapping the enterprise architect begins mapping out the AEC-company’s core business usage e.g., the Microsoft Office productivity suite, the Microsoft based ERP-system, Microsoft Dynamics ERP that is used in combination with Microsoft Dynamics CRM, the HR-application suite and the salary management suite. The enterprise architect chooses to map the applications to the infrastructure that the vendors have informed the AEC-company that they are making use of, and in this case the enterprise architect chooses to map the cloud computing devices as devices and after doing so, the enterprise architect maps location to each of the infrastructure devices.

    Line of Sight

    The first illustration provides the enterprise architect with the view of relationships among the objects in the model that shows the As-Is architecture and that supports the engineering consulting product and the construction consulting products.

    The second illustration provides the enterprise architect with the insights into how the infrastructure (Technology layer) supports the sustainability product and the supporting processes of the AEC-company.

  • Products and Applications

    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.

  • Products and Processes

    Products and Processes

    The enterprise architect had the opportunity to interview some of the department heads of the AEC-company to learn more about how the core processes of the AEC-company supported deliveries of the products that the company sells currently and in the future as part of the realisation of the company strategy “Partnering for Green Construction”. While interviewing the head of departments the enterprise architect identifies that there are four key processes in scope for the company:

    • The bidding process. 
    • The project delivery process.
    • The invoicing process.
    • The vendor management process.

    While the enterprise architect modelled the relations among these high-level processes, then he began adding the relations among the processes and the capabilities and products, which is illustrated in the below illustration:

    During the interviews with the head of departments it became clear to the enterprise architect that the current processes also would have to be dealt with in order to enable the needed improvements of the capabilities of the AEC-company. The enterprise architect maps the assumed gaps among the core processes and the capabilities. This is illustrated in the illustration below:

    You will see the four core processes have been mapped to four identified capabilities that they support the realization of. The four core processes and the four capabilities have relations to the “As-Is” plateau and all of them have realization relationships (pointing from) to the 2030 plateau. The enterprise architect is visualising that the core processes and capabilities exist today, but they will have to be enhanced as part of the “Partnering for Green Construction” business strategy, which is expected to be completed by the year 2030; and the enterprise architect identifies four major gaps to help enhancing the core processes and capabilities:

    • Knowledge of how to digitalise the core processes.
    • Knowledge of the operating model.
    • Business process reengineering.
    • IT-strategic plan.

    The enterprise architect already has an idea of what would be required before the IT-strategic plan is available to close the gaps:

    • Budget.
    • Guardrails.
    • Roadmap.

    The enterprise architect also realises that there are some knowledge gaps in the organisation that will have to be addressed as part of the implementation of the business strategy and essentially also the IT-strategy; and consequently a lot of clarifications will have to be conducted in order to get there.

    Line of Sight

    The enterprise architect can with his mappings among core (business) processes, capabilities and products see how these are impacting one another.

    The enterprise architect is now able to see how one of the core business processes is linked to two plateaus and must undergo changes:

  • Strategy, capabilities and products

    Strategy, capabilities and products

    The enterprise architect continued his work on sketching out the business strategy of the AEC-company. He decided to do so he could create a line of sight for the company’s CTO. The enterprise architect has begun mapping the business strategy to capabilities, principles, and the capabilities to products that are delivered by the AEC-company to its customers.

    The purpose of having such an overview as part of having an enterprise architecture programme (Please note an enterprise architecture endeavor is not a project) is to provide the overview relevant stakeholders on what the consequences of changes will be. Examples of this could be changes to the business strategy, changes to the business functions (Structure), products, and lastly how this will impact the business applications and digital infrastructure.

    The AEC-company provides three products for its customers:

    • Engineering consulting.
    • Construction consulting.
    • Sustainability consulting.

    Capabilities

    Since the AEC-company for historic reasons primarily sells the construction consulting products that are delivered as services, most of the capabilities owned by the AEC-company have been set up to support that specific product originally. 

    • Construction Site Management.
    • Construction Planning Management.
    • Construction Architecture Management.
    • Project Management.
    • Construction Technology Management (A recently created capability to support SMART-buildings and SMART-city trends).

    This also enforces a path dependency for the company, which means that adjustments and configurations will have to be done in order for the AEC-company to realise its business strategy. Construction of new buildings is one of the most CO2 emissions intensive activities that can take place, then the AEC-company will have to strengthen its existing capabilities and embed its existing practices from the sustainability management into the other capabilities as-well either as part of the business processes (Business practices).

    The path dependency will impact the AEC-company’s ability to adapt technologies minded for other types of consulting services to enhance its capabilities, its competitive position, competitive advantages or product line. Potentially this can become a risk for the AEC-company if its executive management does not understand the potential problems of not being able to navigate changes.

    The enterprise architect’s approach is to apply the top-down approach meaning that the line of sight must be based on the strategy elements (Course of action), drivers, goals, and products; which leads to the below illustration (Mapping):

    A Capabilities-Based Strategy

    The enterprise architect identifies that the AEC-company’s business strategy, Partnering for Green Construction, is reliant on a set of capabilities that provides strengths for the company and a set of capabilities that would need to be strengthened as part of the strategy period in order to ensure the completion of the strategy and its subsequent goals. One of many positive perspectives of approaching the business strategy from a capabilities-based perspective is that the capabilities can be used to identify areas that need improvements from four perspectives and each constitutes a value:

    • People with their skillsets.
    • Information technologies.
    • Data as in datasets and data products available.
    • Business processes and their states.

    The enterprise architect can with the above in mind use the capabilities to map the gap(s) and what would be needed to fill the gap(s); however applying the capabilities-based approach also enables the governance related deliverables needed to produce a system landscape that provides the business and IT-stakeholders the intended overview and possibility to ensure alignment across business demands and IT. This would also provide significant value for the AEC-company’s CTO in the discussions with the business stakeholders on how to enhance the capabilities of the AEC-company.


    The enterprise architect also realises by having this deliverable that enables the AEC-company to provide the foundational architectural services to support scenario planning and consequence planning; since there will be a trade off by each of the options that the executive management team will choose as part of the “Partnering for Green Construction”.

    The line of Sight

    The enterprise architect now has the ability to apply the level 3 depth of the relationships from the course of action element that represents the business strategy.

  • Capabilities

    Capabilities

    The case-study that will be used to explain the architecting process is based on a fictive company within the Danish architecture, engineering and construction industry. Let us call the company for the AEC-company throughout this series of blog posts.

    The AEC-company has recently onboarded an enterprise architect. The person has an IT-background and the person has been anchored with-in the AEC-company’s IT-department reporting directly to the CTO of AEC-company. Since the business model of the company is designed for having as low as possible operating costs then the enterprise architect has chosen to make use of Archi which can express the enterprise architecture of the company in the ArchiMate language.

    The enterprise architect has been able to conduct a series of interviews with vice-presidents across the company and by transcribing the interviews identified a series of capabilities as depicted in the below illustration:

    Capabilities are key components of any resource based business strategy, and they can usually be validated by using the VRIO-framework. Consequently, the enterprise architect has started the journey correctly by applying the top-down approach.

    The enterprise architect has also applied MECE-approach, meaning mutually exclusive combined exhaustive, where each of the capabilities are unique.

    The above illustration shows the capabilities individually but these are not connected; which means the enterprise architect still will have to apply the systems thinking paradigm, but a visual inspection identifies that the enterprise architect has been able to group the capabilities. This is what have been done in the below illustration:

    You will be able to see the capabilities have been structured so there is a hierarchy of capabilities of the AEC-company.

    In the AEC-company case a capability consists of four “values” so to say and these are to be used to evaluate each of the capabilities:

    • People with their skillssets.
    • Information technologies such as business applications and infrastructure.
    • Data as in datasets and data products available.
    • Business processes and their states.