Creative thinking events

Unfortunately, our event planned for the 6 November with the RSC West Midlands in Wolverhampton had to be re-scheduled for 28 Feb 2013 due to insufficient numbers of participants. We have been wondering if it's just the wrong time of year, or the language we use to describe EA for new users.

I met with one of the participants from our summer event, and she described EA as a very exciting and useful  tool. She has used Archi to create many maps to help with planning and future proofing of plans. She had had 'coaching' from Sam and Fleur to help her develop her skills and she found this the most useful development activity. It's likely that she will present a short case study about her experience at one of our future events.

Impact of workshop

I met recently with Sam Scott who had attended the StaffFest event on Enterprise Architecture to ask her if the session had been useful. She currently works in the marketing department with a wide variety of disparate teams on the course data project. She has used her knowledge of EA to create and use several maps to help thinking through the processes and as a way to share her understanding with the various teams. She hopes to use EA to continue to support planning in the future that she hopes will enable her to simplify and make more efficient the existing processes.

Creative Thinking

The project has been progressing, albeit slowly, over the summer months.

We met with our project partner, Stephen Powell from Bolton, on 18th September to share our plans for the workshop on 6 November with the RSC, and had some useful feedback.

We have planned a second workshop for April 2013 (probably the 9 or 16th) in Newcastle with Andrew Stewart.

Ray and Ian have been working to develop the workshop materials, activities and Powerpoints. Ian and I have created some 'cards' based on the Archi icons to use in the workshop for the initial activity. We hope that by engaging participants with a hands-on activity to create a simple process map with cards they will be able to conceptualise the EA process and be able to transfer to the Archi software easily.

We are planning to deliver a webinar with Stephen Powell sharing our case studies in January. This may be delivered as part of a face-to-face workshop.

I have arranged to meet with one of the participants from our first workshop in July to see how they have been implementing EA

JISC Meeting

I met with Sarah Davies from JISC today on the phone. We discussed the project activity so far and I agreed to send up dates of the events we had planned. Sarah offered to help with promoting the events to appropriate colleagues.

Partner meeting

Ray, Ian and I met Stephen Powell today at Staffordshire University. We discussed the workshop event and the webinar and it was good to feel that we are working together effectively on the project.

ArchiMate - training and spreading the word

A colleague and I recently participated in the ArchiMate 2.0 Extensions training, a two day event with the optional Open Group exam at the end of it. With 10 delegates of different expertise levels (and different attitudes to using TOGAF) 7 chose to sit the exam. We decided not to, as we could not commit the time to the revision needed to ensure successful completion, and we have been thinking about qualifications that show how we have applied the knowledge in the real world, as opposed to what has been learnt in the classroom. We were also unsure as to the value of the qualification without that experience, during the event it was clear that some places valued the qualification more than others.
There was a lot for the trainer to fit into the two days (in reality it turned out to be just over 1 and a half days thanks to fitting the exam in at the end of day two). I found it useful in giving me confidence in what I have been doing, and helped me understand the relationships involved in ArchiMate, which has been my biggest barrier (I have been relying heavily on the magic connector in Archi!). I also found that it helped my thinking, along side Sams blogs in here! Feedback from the training showed that people wanted to do more examples, although the training did a number of examples throughout the two days it was clear that people involved wanted more.
My colleague and I had a lot of discussion about how we saw the official training, and how it fit with our own intention to deliver some training through the Benefits Realisation funding from JISC. We realised a couple of things for our (much shorter) events:

• Value of building up a model needs to be clear at the start, along with the acknowledgement of the amount of work this can take!
• Working on 'paper' for the first examples is a good idea before introducing a tool like Archi. But 'paper' on its own can cause problems, using 'signed' post-it notes to allow you to move elements around would be useful for discussion purposes.
• There is a quick acceptance that paper will only take you so far before you need a tool like Archi to develop more complex models for examples
• Examples for us need to be relevant to HE, perhaps around Assessment, Course Information and Course Development (three popular areas within Staffordshire University)
• Group work brings out the best discussions as long as they are with individuals with similar experience (having someone in the group with more experience can cause the team to split) 
• Group work needs to split people from the same institution into different teams (unless they make up one team, otherwise again the team can split)

It is worth noting whilst we were studying away on this Open Group course, we had a number of colleagues attending a one day JISC lead Enterprise Architecture workshop (http://emergingpractices.jiscinvolve.org/wp/doing-ea-workshop-2/) this blog mentions a hands on tutorial https://fsdsupport.pbworks.com/w/page/27206793/hands%20on%20Archimate that might be useful.

Comparing Archimate Views With Process Maps

In a previous post on this blog about our use of Archimate I talked about the difference between Archimate views and business process maps. It can be a struggle to find the right level to model at when creating Archimate views. There is a natural tendency to include too much process detail, especially if modellers have process mapping expertise. Archimate views are intended to act as the focus for discussion of issues and trade-offs between domain experts, not to document process details. Consequently, the goal of the Archimate modeller is to capture enough information from domain experts to create the view whilst resisting the temptation to cram all the details into each view. A 'just enough detail' approach is needed. Because this can be a tricky balancing act, I thought an example of how they differ might be useful. This post shows how a simple Archimate view can be derived from a Business Process Modelling Notation (BPMN) process map and illustrates how the resulting Archimate view captures an overview with the BPMN process map providing the details.

The BPMN process map below, captured as part of the StaffsXCRI-CAP Course Data Project, shows the process for creating a postgraduate course sheet for a new award. The postgraduate course sheet is used to advertise the award. The process map shows the flow of actions carried out by staff involved in the process. The horizontal swim lanes denote who does what. Each of the boxes describes behaviour that occurs in sequence as part of the overall process. BPMN process maps such as this one describe the process in sufficient detail that someone given the process map would know what to do to participate in the process.

BPMN business process map shows process details

Throughout the process map there are references to actors, roles, business objects and other entities that we would want to include in the Archimate model. These are highlighted in the text of the process map below.

Text of the process map contains references to Archimate elements

The highlighted items refer to Archimate elements as shown in the process map below. The overall process becomes a Business Process element in the Archimate view. The swimlanes refer to Archimate Roles. The text describes several Business Objects, software applications and bits of infrastructure like shared network drives (represented as Technology Nodes).

BPMN process map overlaid with corresponding Archimate elements

These Archimate elements can be collected into an Archimate view and relationships and inferred elements added to arrive at the view shown below.

Archimate view of the postgraduate course creation process

You can see that the Archimate view doesn’t contain any of the process detail. It only shows that there is a course sheet creation process which has a range of roles involved in performing it, with business objects and applications used along the way. The value of this level of modelling might not be evident from this single view but as more views added to the model, a critical mass is reached whereupon the model becomes a useful tool for analysis. Individual actors, roles and business objects can be quickly dragged into a view and related elements added to find out, for example, what processes an actor or role is involved with or who needs access to particular business objects for what purpose.

In the JISC Enable project we used existing process maps, corporate process documentation and notes from a series of interviews with stakeholders as input for the creation of our Archimate models. The approach shown above works for written documentation in the same way as with process maps. Pick out references to Archimate elements in the text and add them into Archimate views.

To make gathering of the right information easier, we used a simple template for making notes from interviews which is shown below. The columns acted as a prompt for us to ask about all aspects of the business architecture and enough about the other architecture layers to have a good go at creating a model on the first attempt. This reduced the need to revisit the same areas with stakeholders because of missing information.

Simple template to promote collection of the right information when talking to stakeholders

At Staffordshire University, everyone who has tried Archimate modelling has found that the process of modelling itself has raised questions about how everything fits together. Answering these questions has led to improved understanding of the problems we are trying to solve, improved understanding of the solutions and improved communication with stakeholders.