TOGAF is too huge...

While I have been working with these frameworks, a colleague of mine has been educating us in other areas that we need to incorporate. TOGAF has been our focus for the past few weeks now, and I must say... IT IS HUGE!

In our efforts to understand it, without training mind you, I stumled across PEAF. This reduced concept of TOGAF was a great help in my comprehension. In the end, our team has been attempting to create a usable EA Process that is repeatable, and we have just not been able to accomplish this. Everyone wants to do it their way, and therefore change the framework in one way or another.

Will post on this further, and get some screen shots of TOGAF in PowerDesigner next week.

later

Metadata Capture in DoDAF

My last post showed my initial implementation of the DODAF in the PowerDesigner framework. This post will look at how i collected in the information within the process to create the OV3 matrix report.

There were three steps to collect the content. The first was generating the OV2 model as the starting the point. Once this model is created with some of the operational nodes defined, there is an opportunity to add a meta model extension to collect additional information that can be leveraged to automatically generate the OV3 report. Here is the metadata extension that I started for OV2.

This extension process was covered in a previous post here, so to do this, look in the archive. As for the report, PowerDesigner creates list reports through the use of a wizard, so if all the information you need has been collected, spitting it out is a basic task. here is the final report that i generated in HTML format, for review online by our COTR.

Hope this helps, until next time.

DoD AF in PowerDesigner

Hi All,


wanted to share some of the views of my implementation of DoD AF in Powerdesigner 15. I will follow this up with a discussion about how I did some of this and where the repetitive work is... versus the choice areas.

So, here is the framework matrix
Each of these cells has actions associated to them that help me force a methodology into the tool. For my example, i used the standard Staged Approach, so the flow looks like this:



As you can see, the path to complete the architecture is well defined in this approach, so there are actions in the framework that are ONLY ALLOWED to integrate with previous cell information. The best example of this is the generation of Matrices, like SV3 from SV2.




This image is showing the definition of an Action in the SV9 cell, that will generate an Object Oriented Model (UML to the rest of the world, not sure why PD does that) from an existing OOM.
These actions help me to scope what I allow architects to accomplish in each cell... GOVERNANCE :) i love it.

anyhow, let me know what you think, the next post will be about some of the martices and metadata i injected into this process to gather all of the information that i needed to complete this system description.

DoDAF Framework Completeness

This project I have been working on has led me to believe that the Department of Defense Architecture Framework is mostly a waste of time... The majority of the products in it are redundant and useless in the larger scheme of things since the re-use of what i create is minimal. There is always the long term maintenance aspects of the system to keep in mind, but will anyone actually read an Operational Activty to System Function Traceability Matrix?

If there is anyone out there that has leveraged someone else's Matrix, please speak up. I was able to review another developers matrix, just for sharing purposes to compare work effort, and there is no way i could re-use any of their information to assist me, it was too system specific to be of an assistance.

anyhow, enough for today.
cheers

Adding Metadata for Reporting

Metadata and Modeling. These seem to be two topics that are intertwined today. Modeling used to be just about a pretty picture that i could talk the business people into authorizing a project plan. Today, most architects are trying to impact how developers are creating applications while verifying the inputs from the business are correct.



In that vein, there are also some additional needs for the architect and IT in general, so let me cover a simple extension/collection metadata example.



The information architecture that I was working with in PowerDesigner was very complete, and we used PD to update our scripts and generate new database objects, like tables, procs and indices. The customer i was helping in this area had a new requirement to track some compliance information on what data they are storing. For an architect with 3000 entities and over 400 tables, this was a daunting request.



So, with PowerDesigner, we can extend the meta model of the Table object to collect additional information. Here is a pic showing the extended model definition and the addition of some compliance attributes.



This picture also shows the creation of a new Tab in the Table properties sheet in PowerDesigner. Now this is the cool part. I can change the user interface in PowerDesigner to allow for this collection directly in the tool.



anyhow, will come back to this, running out of time today.

How do I use Enterprise Architecture?

I have been realizing that Enterprise Architecture is starting to turn into the next misused IT term, rather than a catalyst for change... This blog is focused on EA and PowerDesigner, true, but i wanted to keep this in perspective that we are also trying to help our business to be successful. so in that context, i wanted to show a sample EA diagram.






This Application architecture diagram was grabbed from the PD15 beta that ended last month. Anyhow, you can see how Enterprise Architecture is bringing together Application Architecture, like UML, with more traditional Process Modeling, like BPMN. pretty cool huh?

WWWWWEEEELLLLL, what is this diagram going to HELP me with? i mean really? can i use to answer some questions?

You bet.
If Application A goes down, what business functions are affected?
What areas does Application A leverage to accomplish its job? What parts of this infrastructure can go down without interupting service?
Does a specific site or location depend on any applications functioning to be successful on daily basis?

There are lots of answers in this diagram to those questions. Maybe not complete answers visually, but there is metadata behind each image on this canvas, unlike Visio :)

Anyhow, lets look at Meta data next week, until then.

Enterprise Architecture Seminar

Hi All

wanted to let everyone know about the Sybase Roadshow on Enterprise Architecture that is coming soon to a city near you.

http://response.sybase.com/forms/nao08octeventpdroadshow?mc=blog

Head to this link to see the city list and register. Seems to have more education and information in it than most roadshows.

enjoy!