Architect's Corner!

Problem - How do you transform a business Strategy to IT implementation artefact?,

Let’s quickly look at some of the challenges?

1. Is there a connection between business strategy and the software programs?
2. What are the key abstractions for modelling business ideas?
3. What are the types of artefacts to capture the system models?
4. How to map business activities with the software component definition?
5. How easy is to transform the business models to system models?
6. What are the various elements to model Technology models?
7. How helpful is Zachman Framework in initiating such transformation?
   
   
   

In order to understand the existing gap and the transformation efforts. We need to understand the various type of models, types, connections and dependencies among these models which form the basis of any enterprise definition. Let’s look at the steps of transformation and the existing connections.

Step 1 – Understand and define strategy & objectives. It's important to understand the businesso bjective and its relationship with other strategic elements such as what are the key stakeholders, key organizations units, important business event, schedule, information overview. Figure: 2



If we observe the Fig 2, there are several traceable connections. a)Business objective Connections as mentioned in Fig 2.

Source	Target	Connector	Notes
Business objective	Business Services	Trace Source -> Destination	Market share to increase by 3%

b)Business Service Connections as mentioned in Fig 2.

Source	Target	Notes
Business Services	Business objective	Yearly subscription to replace monthly
Business Service	Business HQ	Client locations
Business Services	Business Processes related to service definition	Understand the business processes, activities, tasks
Business Services	Important Dates	Date, Month
Business Services	Organization structure	Key actors, roles

Step 2: Transformation of Strategy services and objectives to the Business models. This transformation can be done in two phase. In the phase one, you need to describe the various business primitive models and in the phase 2, one needs to do th emapping and transformation from strategy elements to the business elements.

Phase I – Mapping across business models

Business Process Connections as mentioned in Fig 3

Source	Target	Notes
Business Processes related to service definition	Business Events	Important dates, schedule
Business Processes related to service definition	Business Information	Key Information, Assets, Entity
Business Processes related to service definition	Business locations	Branch Locations, Facility Locations

Business location Connections as in Fig 3

Source	Target	Notes
Business locationn	Network & Distribution	Nodes, Servers, Storage, devices,
Client locations	Business locations

Phase II - Mapping across strategy to business primitive models

Figure: 3



Step 3: Transformation of Business models to System models

Figure: 4

Data Model - logical Connections

Source	Target	Notes
SW model for Business Logic	Data Model logical	Data store Data Flow Elements & Relationship
Data Model logical	Technical Data Model	Table View Procedure
Business Information	Data Model logical	Data Distribution Business Entity Assumptions Assets Equipment Assets Document Assets

Network & Distribution Connections

Source	Target	Notes
Business locations	Network & Distribution
SW model for Business Logic	Network & Distribution
Network & Distribution	Network & distribution Technical models	Device, Node, Storage

For the details on the transformation from system models to techology models and how does it fits to the zachman framework, wait for the second part of this posting. Hopefully, sometime later this week.