Yes! That is one of my favorite Beatle’s songs (along with a couple of others that we shall discuss in a future blog) 🙂 Question – when you find yourself in times of trouble, which systems come to the mind that can help you? What pain point is it addressing?
The “Then What? So What?” question
Several years ago, EVP of Architecture at a Fortune 10 bank posed me this question. “Say I documented all my Apps in a repository with associated business capabilities. Then what? So what if I have a well-documented heat map of Business Capabilities? What purpose does it serve beyond the first Aha moment?” This is a very critical question that goes to the very heart of EA repositories. Architects often model out the enterprise is beautiful heatmaps and hierarchies, but business feedback is “I already what capabilities my business needs! So what?”
Transactional systems subject to higher velocity of data changes are guaranteed high user engagement rates
A time card entry system engages users from transactions such as timecard submissions, approvals, and adjustments. An incident management system engages users via interactions such as incident management and resolution. However, in certain types of operational data store systems, the velocity of changes to the underlying data unit baseline is not necessarily a good thing. If we are bulking loading new apps, well, how good is that from an application rationalization perspective? If we are continually adding and changing our business capabilities because the tool makes it so simple to do that, how can you monitor against such a volatile baseline?
A sound ODS system will clearly articulate the specific set of questions that it can answer for its users.
To answer these questions, it will often need to aggregate data from other sources. And since the questions posed will change over a while, the ODS data set is highly dynamic. Within the IT Portfolio Management space, IIPA repositories around an application, technology, or business capability portfolios are perfect examples of ODS systems. What are some critical questions that your APM system answers from business impact or cost rationalization perspective? 5 years ago, the APM systems were being leveraged for readiness towards service-oriented architecture. Today it might be towards cloud modernizations assessments. Unlike a timecard entry or incident management systems whose attributes seldom change, the minimum viable data set of an application, technology, capabilities, or investment repository will be highly dynamic and frequently change.
ODS based portfolio repositories
Owners of ODS based portfolio repositories must pose questions such as what would drive users to engage with their systems? For what questions? How many questions? Can it address more problems in the future? Can it “control” who can ask what questions? Stated differently, ODS based portfolio repositories should have highly flexible data structures that can capture complex interlinkages, can support low to a very high number of data attributes without costly re-engineering. At EOS ITPM, we have clients ranging from 800+ characteristics per app to less than 50. These serve as cornerstones for our users to engage in times of need to address questions around:
Book your demo with us so we can be the system of choice when your organization finds itself in need to ask questions such as above 🙂
Unified Strategic Portfolio Management designed to optimize business objectives for maximum enterprise value.