CLIP Mapping

In this blog entry, we will try to get a better handle on some of the relationships the CLIP Framework has to the actual business itself. Without having tangible Business Outcomes, the framework has no value to the business.

C is Conceptual

Down the middle of the diagram, we see the hierarchy of the framework. As we have seen in previous entries, the top of the hierarchy is the Strategy. The term strategy is defined as a plan of action or policy to achieve one or more goals under conditions of uncertainty. These are the Outcomes the framework seeks to achieve. The next line is the Capability, which for our purposes is synonymous to the Objective - note that there could be multiple Objectives ! In business terms, the Capability aligns to the things the business does to offer its products or services. The Strategy & Capabilities are the foundation of the Conceptual Architecture. If the Strategy is to provide an Omni-Channel means of selling to customers, the Capabilities are to deliver the shopping experience in multiple ways - through both store-front operations and through an eCommerce web-site. The Conceptual architecture provides a means of delivering those Capabilities to meet the overall Strategy.

L I for Logical and Informational

The business will develop Processes for repeatability. Multiple Processes bundled together become the Capability. For example, an eCommerce web-site is a Capability - it is a means of selling products or services to a customer. There might be more than one Capability, such as brick and mortar stores as well as the eCommerce web-site. But the Capability must encompass a number of Processes, like being able to browse the selection, add them to a virtual shopping cart, calculate the price, taxes and a running total. All of these Processes sum up to a Capability. And, just as every process sums up to a capability, a number of Services sum up to a process. Discrete services are often reusable. The process of building a virtual shopping cart in an eCommerce web-site is exactly the same as checking out a client at a cash register in a store. Informational Architecture is about transformation. A number of services need to work together to form a process. Those services are all dependent on information (raw data which has been processed into a usable format) which may come from disparate sources. And each of these sources will have their own way of storing, manipulating and serving that information, so often there is some form of translation (transformative process) which makes the information usable to the services. When building out the systems to support the Capabilities, the Processes & Services provide the Functional Requirements. These describe how the system and the associate interact to perform the Processes.

P for Physical

The Activities and Stories are important to the Framework, as they describe the manual steps required to perform a set of tasks. For example, a store associate might receive an item from a client. They find and scan the barcode on the label, check that the description matches the garment, the system adds the garment to a virtual shopping cart and calculates price, discount and taxes, which are displayed on the screen for the customer and the associate to see. They then make decisions about which activity is next, depending on the form of payment a client wishes to use. So the Stories describe how the associate interacts with both the client and the system to perform all of the activities. The Activities drive out the Non-Functional Requirements. These are usually about the time it takes to perform a transaction, or how many transactions a system can handle in a given time-period.

Framework Flexibility - From CLAP to CLIP

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.

Failure Mode and Effects Analysis

It is said that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. In IT terms, we refer to a Single Point of Failure (SPOF) as being one of a systems weaknesses. Technology Architects spend a significant amount of time attempting to identify and mitigate these SPOFs. But what if there is a large number of points of failure ? How does an Enterprise IT organization prioritize which SPOFs to mitigate first ?

Enter Failure Mode and Effects Analysis. The idea is to first identify the Points of Failure, then identify:

• Severity of the Failure - How would the failure effect the business of the Enterprise ?
• a higher number here reflects greater risk should a failure occur
• Occurrence of the Failure - how often could the failure happen ?
• a high number here represents greater likelihood of the failure occuring 
• Detection of the Failure - how would we know if the failure occurred ?
• a high number here represents a less-detectable failure, and therefor a greater risk

These three items are evaluated on a scale of one to ten, with ten being the highest. When multiplied together, these three factors comprise a Risk Priority Number (RPN). If effect, the higher the RPN, higher the risk of Failure. From there, we can create a prioritized list of tasks which will mitigate the known risks of a system.

Illustration of an FMEA Example

Generally speaking, as the IT organizations works through the top few items on the list (from higher priority to lower), the overall risk to the system decreases dramatically, along the lines of the 80/20 rule. FMEA is normally applied to manufacturing or development processes, but can easily be adapted to suit IT systems as well.

Business Service Model for IT

IT exists for one purpose: to provide the tools necessary to enable Business Activities. Like we saw in the CLAP Framework, Business Capabilities are made up of a number of discrete Business Activities. But it is in the delivery of the Business Capabilties as a Service that IT provides value to the Enterprise.

The model for a Business Service is clearly defined by the ITIL framework. In short, it is composed of People, Process and Technology. Certainly, the framework also describes the meta-data, which includes the Service Owner, the Service Consumer and the Service Provider.

Once the functional and non-functional requirements of the Business Capabilities are mapped out, the application and its underlying infrastructure become straightforward to build out. As I have posted about previously, the Project Management Life Cycle can be easily applied to deliver these capabilities to the Enterprise. Of course, more than one capability can be provided by a single service. Often many services get grouped together to form a broader service.

There is also another relationship hidden in a simple model like this one. The degree to which a process is repeatable (and can therefore be automated) has implications to the People part of the equation. The more highly repeatable and automated a process is, the lower the required skill-set for the labour, which should in turn lower the cost of the Service to the Enterprise.

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Project Management Life Cycle

Illustration: Project Management Life Cycle

We all know that IT projects don't just happen. They usually start with an idea that gets socialized internally, until somebody decides it is interesting enough to write a business case, justifying why the idea might be good for the Enterprise. The Project Management Life Cycle (PMLC) walks the reader, from left to right, through all the components of a project. It assumes the project has been instantiated and has executive sponsorship. Other activities prior to the project itself include the Opportunity Assessment, a Cost/Benefit Analysis, and likely ROI and TCO studies.

The PMLC illustration above is designed to show three things at each stage: the roles that contribute to the project, their responsibility and their deliverable. Starting on the left, the Stakeholders typically sit on a Steering committee, and provide budgetary approvals for the project.

The project is run by the Project Manager, who is responsible for budget, timeline & resources. They usually draft the Project Charter, which defines the objectives and scope of the project. They are responsible for reporting back to, and taking direction from the steering committee. It is their responsibility to deliver the project to successful completion.

The Business Analyst does a lot of leg-work, dealing with the stakeholders to understand requirements, both functional and non-functional. They will take raw data they have collected, and produce information which is valuable to the project, and consumable by all members of the project team.

Now that you have a general idea of the flow, you can interpret the rest of the illustration for yourself. Other information that will later become key is called the RACI. It is an artifact that names all of the roles (as seen in the illustration), and determines who is Responsible, who is Accountable, who is Consulted and who is Informed when a project decision has to be made.

This is a general look at how IT projects move through their life cycle. In a future post, I'll overlay the CLAP Framework, to pull together all of the concepts into a single view.

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From Business Strategy to IT Execution

Illustration - Strategy to Execution

As we have seen in my previous posts, I am always keen to tie IT Activities to Business Strategy. Whether it is in utilizing the CLAP Framework to map Business Activities to physical IT infrastructure, or in achieving your goals using the ERRC Canvas, the end-goal is always to drive Business Value.

In this basic diagram, the basic questions of Who, What, Why and How are directly addressed, leaving the When up to the Executive sponsors to decide in the Project Charter. The centrepiece is the ERRC Canvas, which helps define the Objectives (the What) & IT Activities that would meet the Goal. As with all SMART Goals, the element of Metrics help define the How.

Finally, the Plan is actually the domain of the Project Management Office. It would include the Project Charter and supporting artifacts, including dependency maps and budget estimates. Conventional Wisdom is that the Project Manager is responsible for Time, Resources and Budget.

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CLAP Framework for IT

Many Enterprises struggle with IT frameworks. These frameworks are meant to help turn Business strategy into executable plans. Some frameworks, such as TOGAF or Zachmann will help an Enterprise IT group understand WHAT it needs to do to achieve its goals. Other frameworks, like COBIT or ITIL will further explain HOW to achieve those goals. When an Enterprise does not follow any of the established frameworks, they will often try to devise their own. The diagram above illustrates one such framework - the "CLP" framework (the "A" was added later, after missing information was identified).

Conceptual - this stage of the framework takes the Business Activities into account. Each discrete activity can be mapped out as a few elements in a process, describing a single activity. An example might be "calculate price".

Logical - this stage maps the discrete activities required. To calculate price, we need some information from a number of sources, such as the gross price, a taxation rate, a discount and a profit margin. Further, architectural governance (standards) are applied, such as use of a Linux operating system, or mandating a particular security framework. Finally, Non-Functional Requirements (NFRs) are described, such as how quickly a system must respond or how many transactions per minute the system must satisfy.

Application - this stage is where we begin to apply some business logic about what to do with the information. It maps out what the information should be expected to look like, such as expressing numbers in Currency notation, with two decimal points of precision. It will also describe any user interfaces and other means of accessing information. It specifically maps business activities to Functional Requirements.

Physical - this final stage helps identify all of systems that are required. Items such as CPU utilization and storage requirements are calculated to determine how best to implement the system into a computing environment. It describes systems interactions in terms of protocols and transports.

This is not an exhaustive look at frameworks, and many Enterprise Architects will keenly assess missing elements from this simplistic framework. But, executed properly, a framework such as this one could be sufficient for an Enterprise to begin taking advantage of IT to realize their business strategy.

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P.O.W.E.R.

Lately I've been building a lot of models. As many may know, my role at my company is a mix of Enterprise Architecture and Technology Strategist, with project work to keep me busy. I spend the majority of my days working out how improving various technology systems relate to real business goals. I like to think my work provides information that supports good business decisions.

Sure, there are many different frameworks one can apply, such as TOGAF or Zachmann. But in the real world, few organizations adopt the entire framework. They take a smattering of TOGAF and a little of ITIL, then build out projects based on Waterfall or Agile project management methodologies. Finally, they bundle all that up & call it their "process". In my many roles in this industry I have seen how well this works - or doesn't !

 

A friend of mine has challenged me to write about how I have been successful using an adapted model, and how to re-apply that model to other Enterprises. I sought his counsel on how to go about doing that and he introduced me to a very simple (hence very elegant) writing method: P.O.W.E.R.

P - Plan: what are you writing about ? Who would the target audience be ? What style of book should it be ?

O - Outline: build out an imaginary table of contents. What should be included ? In what order ?

W - Write: simply go about the business of collecting your ideas on your word-processing application.

E - Edit: word-smith. Play with sentence structure. Play with the order of your ideas. Hack & slash as needed.

R - Release: it'll never be "perfect", so when it is good enough, stop. Publish. Think about the next book !

It's a simple yet powerful (you see what I did there ?) way to begin the process.I think I'm going to take a stab at it, and see what happens. But don't expect to see my name on the NYT Best-Seller list - it'll be a technical/architectural manual, so it might only appeal to a limited audience.

 

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