Fit for purpose

The stakeholder views are composed by linking the three dimensions that make up the axis of any framework around today:

• states
• aspects and
• abstractions

For example the current business strategy. The three dimensions and their combinations cover all conceivable views and show the position of each view in relation to adjacent views. The tool is developed to enable organizations to get to grips with their business and supporting IT throughout the enterprise. The purpose is to align:

• Operation with strategy (strategic fit)
• Technology with business (functional fit) and
• Future with current capabilities (time fit)

The solution is to align these outside layers in each dimension through the middle layers by linking the adjacent views:

• Architecture and organization
• Information and communication
• Transition
  

In relation to programme and project management, we distinguish architecture and the elaboration of architecture in the organization of operational entities.

The architecture provides the business cases to answer strategic questions and the blueprints to layout the following strategic initiatives. Blueprints set the scope and structure for programmes in the startup of projects and the delivery of benefits. The architecture supports projects at organization-level with the viewpoints and the viewtypes to work out their part of the blueprints.

The organization-results specify the way how the operation should take place and the means to support the operation to perform that. Describing:

• How operations are to be performed.
• What means are to be procured or produced and utilized.
• How these means are to be configured, installed, used and supported at operational level.

As well organization answers operational questions and gathers operational ideas and best practices, so these can be re-used.

Our solution addresses all required activities, organization and artefacts to have the right operational means in place to realize strategic targets and to measure, consolidate and report the operational results. In this way our tools help to create a strategic fit between the governance and operation of both business and IT. The abstraction levels strategy, architecture, organization and operation therefore make up the first dimension of our framework.

All our architecture products are full compliant with the IEEE 1471 standard for architecture descriptions. Read more in our special.

Solution for the functional fit

We use the ‘I’ (and 'C') in ‘ICT’ (IT) to align the information technology with the business. Information and communication are used to translate the business demand into technical capabilities and backwards to translate technical innovations into business opportunities.

Business processes are initiated by business actors, such as customers, suppliers and authorities. Business workers perform the activities in business processes to transform and deliver products (goods or services). Business actors and workers communicate using concepts, such as orders. All can be referred to as business objects.

IT is to support this communication. So the first thing to capture from the business is the required communication. Communication generates and uses information about the business objects. Technology handles communication through presentation. The information about business objects is stored as data, accessible through logic.

Our tools use the Unified Modelling Language (UML), to capture and model aspects.

In order to use IT, the supported business as well uses IT business processes to plan, deliver and support IT. The whole of delivery, support and use of IT can be referred to as IT-services:

A (IT-) service is the logical whole of the planning, delivery, support and use of (IT-) goods, expressed in terms of meaning for the stakeholders.

In turn the IT organization or department can be seen as a business as well and is supported with IT services too, usually their own.

Our tools use IT services to package the use of IT Systems and supporting IT business processes. The UML is applied to express the use of IT goods and IT business processes. Use cases and business use cases let the required communication and support to be specified in business terms, without bothering the business about the internal technology and handling. Whether that business is corporate or IT! This way a clear separation is made between specifying IT demand and internal realization. As well this is a structural means to align the technology with the business.

Solution for cost accounting and management accounting

The corporate business provides services too. Whether goods are placed at the customers’ disposal or transferred to the customer, the same structure is useful as well to express corporate customer demand. This allows corporate and IT organizations to express their businesses in the same way, using the same views and language.

Managerial, business economical and IT techniques are combined to design a new architecture for cost and management accounting. This Service Based Costing greatly enhances existing methods for cost and management accounting. In comparison to for example Activity Based Costing (ABC) the complexity in calculation is largely reduced by:

• Separating the costs of goods and activities.
• Composition of activities, using value systems and value chains, instead of decomposing the operational activities into complex hierarchies.
• The use of roles in assigning resources to goods and activities.
• Etcetera...

What's more, services provide a better relation to the supported business.

What does this all add to available best practices, such as ITIL?

Our products and services combine many standards, best practices and frameworks through a coherent application of the underlying ideas. This is one step further than just hooking up standards. Especially best practices are decompositions of logical concepts into real world instances. Best practices provide useful examples of how ideas work for some organizations, but not necessarily all. Our products and services comply with all standards, best practices and frameworks, but provide generic means to realize that for each unique organization.

During years of research and practice both the standard works, interpretations and implementations were subjected to a thorough analysis. Through reverse organization techniques ideas, concepts and relations were mined, re-engineered and combined. Libraries and manuals were stripped down to the bone and re-assembled together with the elements of other standards. Special add-ons were engineered to solve missing links. The resulting tools greatly enhance the application of standards in comparison to approaches that focus on copying outcomes.