Data Capture Concerns
One of the main concerns about starting out with an Enterprise Architecture tool that we encounter is how to capture the initial set of data required. Many people, mistakenly, think it needs huge amounts of data. It doesn’t, and we have addressed this in a previous blog here. However, it does obviously need a foundation set of data to be gathered, QA’d and captured into the tool, and this initial load can be a daunting task when it is just one of numerous jobs to be done.
Use your Interns/Graduates/Students to capture your EA Data
One of the best examples of initial data capture we have encountered came at a large retail organisation that used their intern to complete the task. They had little to no industry experience, being at the end of a first-year computing degree course, no experience of Enterprise Architecture and no knowledge of Essential. They were able, however, to read documentation and ask questions and, importantly were able to map what they saw in the organisation. This last point has a subtle importance to it as if you create artificial concepts that don’t exist (normally to short cut things) then you are not modelling reality. To use an analogy, if the knee-bone is always connected to the thighbone, and so on, that reflects how things are, if you allow the knee-bone to be connected to the shoulder (say because it’s quicker to represent what you want), then unless you have the knowledge behind that decision it is hard to interpret.
We’ve mentioned before that one of the strengths of the Essential meta-model is the fact that it reflects the real world, e.g. a business capability is supported by business processes, those processes are supported by applications, which in turn use technologies, etc. The key here is that we don’t allow you to take shortcuts, so you can’t connect a capability directly to an application, we allow you to use placeholders but we retain the integrity of our model. It is this that allows non-EAs to grasp the data capture so easily.
Mutual Benefit
By delegating the capture to emerging talent, it means everyone gains. You are gathering foundation data for your enterprise architecture, whilst your enterprise architects can focus on the high-value add activities that leverage the data. For the emerging talent there are numerous benefits:
- They learn about the organisation and how it works
- The get exposed to the wider organisation
- They start to understand the structures that sit behind the enterprise architecture discipline, which they can they take into any role they do within your or future organisations.
The company mentioned above had very little documented data, aside from a couple of disparate application catalogues in Excel. The intern did a fantastic job of interviewing a selection of business and IT users to illicit the information required, and then captured it in the Essential Launchpad. We had a couple of meetings with them to explain some of our terms, but this was mainly required due to being unfamiliar with standard terms that most employees would understand.
One significant advantage they brought was their lack of preconceived notions about what might be required or constrained by the intricacies of architectural frameworks. This, combined with Essential’s practical and “real-world” modelling approach, made the task more straightforward.
Summary
If you’re feeling overwhelmed by the prospect of capturing the initial data set needed to meet your Enterprise Architecture objectives, consider leveraging your emerging talent. Organise the process by business area, capability, applications, or another structure that provides clear, incremental value. Set achievable targets, and start the journey. Ultimately, it’s not just the EA team that gains—it’s the entire organisation.