As many readers may have noticed, there are some fairly significant gaps in the CLAP Framework. In the perfect world, it is really intended as a guide for how to execute Business Goals into practical IT Projects. But there may be some flexibility in the simplicity of that framework.
A colleague pointed out that maybe the missing component wasn't necessarily the Application, as those needs are covered off in the Functional Requirements. He suggested that instead the framework should consider the Information Architecture itself.
For the purposes of this framework, lets consider that data is the raw input of a process, and information is the output. Information needs to have a defined structure and each element has a distinct meaning. Consider the difference between distance an speed. Distance is a unit of measure, denoting how far something is. Speed is the distance divided by the time taken to travel the distance. Speed is the result of a process. applied to the data.
In the CLIP Framework, the notion of Information Architecture is added. It describes the processed data, its flow from system to system, and its attributes. For example, is information synchronous (live from a source) or asynchronous (delivered by a different process). Further, we see where the Requirements and Standards get applied, and how Security Requirements need to be considered through every step of the process.
Finally, we see the Validation step happens just before the solution is transitioned to Operations. It asks the question "Did the final physical solution deliver what was designed ?". Arguably, there is another validation step, which asks the question "Does the Solution Architecture satisfy all of the requirements ?".
The validation is key, as this largely waterfall process needs to map the entire solution all the way back to the original Business Activities, described in the functional & non-functional requirements. As you can see, the framework is flexible enough to be applied to many IT Goals, and not so rigid as to be unmanageable.
