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Enterprise Architecture in Government

Published: January 23, 2007

This installment describes how the principles of strategic modeling for the rapid delivery of enterprise architecture were used by a government department to develop its enterprise architecture portfolio plan in just 15 days.

This month, I continue the series of articles on enterprise architecture. In my first article, I introduced basic enterprise architecture concepts. I then discussed the principles of strategic modeling for the rapid delivery of enterprise architecture. Last month, I showed how these principles were used by a regional bank to manage its evolution to enterprise architecture. This month, I will describe how these principles were used by a government department to develop its enterprise architecture portfolio plan (EAPP) in just 15 days.

Government Enterprise Architecture Case Study
The Public Authority for Industry (PAI) in Kuwait was the focus of this enterprise architecture project. This strategic modeling project was for a new government department that had been established in 1996 to manage the introduction of manufacturing industries into the country following the invasion by Iraq in 1990-91.

The project defined the enterprise architecture and enterprise information architecture for PAI and was called the PAI EA/EIA project. This was used as the foundation for later development by PAI of a data warehouse and an enterprise portal.

I discussed in my second article on strategic modeling the importance of developing an enterprise architecture portfolio plan. This is used to manage development of a project map for the rapid delivery of priority business activities and processes into production in three-month increments. The EAPP is derived using entity dependency analysis of the strategic model, as also discussed in that second article. We will see examples of project map derivation in this article on PAI.

The PAI project was completed in three weeks, with a facilitated modeling session over two days with senior PAI management. The 15-day timeframe was a political objective of the sponsoring PAI manager; but it was a little too fast for all of the business managers to participate fully. A more realistic timeframe to complete this project should have been 20 days.

The EAPP report for this project can be downloaded as an example government EAPP in PDF as discussed at the end of this article.

PAI Articles of Law Were Catalysts for Strategic Modeling
When this project was undertaken, a strategic business plan had not been completed by PAI. But the legislative articles of law that defined the department were very precise. These articles were therefore used as the catalyst for the facilitated strategic modeling session, as shown in Figure 1.

This screenshot shows part of the PAI planning dictionary, with a planning statement highlighted in the planning outline window at the left and behind the front window. The front window shows the detail of that planning statement: “Granting of Industrial Licenses.”

Figure 1: PAI articles of law, used catalysts for strategic modeling.

The data supporting the highlighted statement in Figure 1 is shown in the right window, listed as model links. This data was aligned with the relevant planning statements using an Organization Unit – Data strategic alignment matrix as shown in Figure 2.

Strategic Alignment Matrices at PAI
The matrix in Figure 2 shows the entities (as data objects in columns) from the strategic model. These support articles of law as rows in Figure 2, such as: “Granting of Industrial Licenses.” We will see the strategic model that was developed from these articles of law shortly.

We saw other examples last month in the banking case study of the use of matrices for strategic alignment. These matrices are used for management purposes to align models across columns of the Zachman Framework for Enterprise Architecture.

Figure 2: Strategic alignment matrix showing data required by articles of law.

Figure 3: PAI organization structure.

The screenshot in Figure 3 shows the organization units that are part of the organization structure of PAI. These organization units are used in other matrices for strategic alignment, such as shown in Figure 4.

Figure 4 shows a matrix with articles of law (in column 6 – why – of the Zachman Framework) listed as rows, with the organization units (in column 4 – who) as defined in Figure 3 now shown as columns. One column has been highlighted to show the subset of law that applies to that organization unit. The subset of articles for this organization unit is listed in the right window.

Figure 4: Articles of law as rows, with organization units as columns.

Figure 4 shows that there are 15 articles of law that apply to the Industrial Specifications and Service organization unit column that has been highlighted – out of the 55 articles of law that make up the PAI legislation. This represents the subset of the legislation from which this organization unit can develop its tactical business plan as a program plan.

Subset of PAI Strategic Model
The screenshot in Figure 5 shows a subset of the PAI strategic model that was defined by the PAI managers in the two-day facilitated strategic modeling session. We can see from this strategic map that:

• PAI manages the introduction of new manufacturing industries as projects (which appears outside the screenshot above), with various activities and subtype activities. These are application, study, license and construction.
• New projects are advertised. On receipt of each application as the first sub-activity, it then moves to the second sub-activity: study.
• Following study assessment of all applicants, the successful applicant is awarded a license to establish a company. This company is issued a Certificate of Registration in the Industrial Register.
• The next sub-activity, construction, provides a government grant of land and interest-free government funding to the successful company to help establish its manufacturing plant and thus ensure its success.

Figure 5: Subset of PAI strategic model.

The content of the highlighted activity entity in the right window of Figure 5 is displayed in the left window. Any associations that are shown dimmed on the left are defined outside the organization unit that is the focus of these two windows.

Figure 6: Decomposition of many-to-many associations to identify business activities.

A critical business rule that was defined in the strategic model is shown in the data map fragment in Figure 6. This shows that a project must have at least one activity with its associated sub-activities as discussed in Figure 5. An activity can also relate to many projects.

The resulting many-to-many association is therefore decomposed into the intersecting entity project activity at the bottom of the diagram. This represents the business activity that PAI calls project activity management.

Project activity management must be closely managed through all PAI project stages as will see through derivation of the project plans for PAI.

Derivation of Project Plans Using Entity Dependency Analysis
In my second article, I discussed the principles involved in entity dependency analysis for derivation of project plans form a data model. We see in Figure 7 that the derived cluster for project activity management is quite complex. The project activity mangement cluster extends to seven phases, with the end-point entity project activity derived as Phase 7.

Figure 7: Derived project plan for project activity management.

However, notice that all entities in the cluster in Figure 7 are bold, indicating that project activity management is a prerequisite, reusable subproject. We will later see that it will most likely need to be implemented first, as a Stage 1 subproject. 

The description of the activity is also shown at the bottom of Figure 7. We will see in Figure 9 that this description can be documented using the derived cluster and entity phase numbers as a guide. The derived cluster for project activity management in Figure 7 is also shown in Figure 8 as a Gantt Chart. This shows the derived phase dependencies over seven phases, with the end-point entity project activity as Phase 7.

Figure 8: Gantt chart for project plan cluster in Figure 7.

The duration of each entity task in Figure 8 is later determined using rules of thumb based on anticipated entity complexity, described in Chapter 7 of my book: “Enterprise Architecture for Integration: Rapid Delivery Methods and Technologies” (Artech House: Norwood MA, March 2006).

Figure 9: Derived project plan for license management.

The derived cluster for license management shown in Figure 9 also has a number of entities in bold, as its end-point entity license depends directly on these bold entities.

It also includes project activity management as a prerequisite, reusable subproject, as these entities are shown here as not bold. (I discussed this entity dependency analysis concept also in my second article.) This shows that the end-point entity is indirectly dependent on these not bold entities. It is directly dependent on project (from Figure 7), which in turn is directly dependent on all of the entities shown here as not bold.

Also shown at the bottom of Figure 9 is the activity description. This has been documented by reading from the end-point entity at the bottom of the derived cluster … upwards, as shown by the relevant entity phase numbers (in brackets).

Derivation of Project Map for Rapid Delivery at PAI
We can now see in Figure 10 part of the derived project map. This clearly shows that project activity management is a Stage 1 subproject that precedes license management as a Stage 2 subproject.

Figure 10: Part of the derived PAI project map.

The derived cluster for industry resource management is shown in Figure 11, together with the description of this subproject. We can see that industry resource management reuses both project activity management and license management. It, therefore, appears that industry resource management may be a Stage 3 subproject, as we will see shortly.

Finally, the industrial lot management cluster has been derived, as shown in Figure 12 with its description. From its appearance, it seems that it may be a Stage 4 subproject, dependent on reusable subprojects that are shown included as not bold. These prerequisite subprojects are:

• Project Activity Management
• License Management
• Industry Resource Management

Figure 11: Derived project plan for industry resource management.

The final project map has been derived and is displayed in Figure 13. We were correct in our assumptions of the project map in our earlier discussions:

• Stage 1 subproject: Project Activity Management
• Stage 2 subproject: License Management
• Stage 3 subproject: Industry Resource Management
• Stage 4 subproject: Industrial Lot Management

Figure 12: Derived project plan for industrial lot management.

This is indeed the correct implementation sequence:

• With project activity management, a project must first be advertised to receive applications for study.
• The successful applicant is then awarded a license, as part of license management.
• The government organizes funding for the successful licensed company, as part of industrial resource management.
• The government then awards a grant of land for construction of the relevant manufacturing plant, as part of industrial lot management.  

Figure 13: Final derived project map for PAI.

Finally, the matrix in Figure 14 shows the alignment of business activities in column 2 (how) with organization units in column 4 (who). It shows by reading across each activity row “who” is involved, as organization units.  Also, by reading down each organization unit column, the matrix indicates all of the activity rows that a unit is involved in, which defines “how” it functions.

By reading across the strategic alignment matrix in Figure 14, we can therefore see that several organization units are responsible for coordinating their various activities as part of industrial lot management.  

PAI Project Results

1. The total elapsed time from start to finish of the complete strategic modeling project, with all analysis, was three weeks – 15 days, for the development of the strategic model and documentation of the EAPP. However, as I discussed at the start of this article, this condensed timeframe was to achieve a political objective of the sponsoring manager: it should have been four weeks – a 20-day strategic modeling project.
2. The business activities discussed in relation to Figure 7, Figure 9, Figure 11 and Figure 12 were the priority subprojects for subsequent logical data modeling, as shown in the project map in Figure 13.
3. PAI used these subprojects as input for implementation of the PAI enterprise portal.

Figure 14: Strategic alignment of business activities to organization units.

Today, with the availability of Web services and SOA technologies, PAI may take a different approach. Following logical data modeling of the priority subprojects, they would likely use activity modeling and activity based costing, together with workflow modeling. They would use modeling tools that support Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) to model these workflows. They would then automatically generate executable XML-based business process execution language (BPEL) code from the workflow models, for direct execution using BPEL engines. These would be executed as “composite applications” from the PAI enterprise portal.

I cover these rapid delivery technologies in Part 3 of my book: “Enterprise Architecture for Integration: Rapid Delivery Methods and Technologies” (Artech House: Norwood MA, March 2006). I will discuss these technologies in a later monthly article.

Strategic modeling projects that I have completed in other industries, with results similar to those discussed in these two case studies, include the following:

• Banking
• Securities
• Telecommunications
• Insurance
• Medical and Healthcare
• Law Enforcement: Police, Courts, Prisons, Community Welfare
• Government: Federal, State, Local
• Defense: Navy, Marines, Army, Air Force

Further information is available from the IES Website. Click on the projects, papers or courses links from any page.

Download PAI's Enterprise Architecture Portfolio Plan Report
As discussed earlier, this project was for the Public Authority for Industry (PAI) in Kuwait. The enterprise architecture portfolio plan (EAPP) developed from the PAI strategic model, is on the IES Website. The EAPP Report of this government project can be downloaded as an example of an EAPP Report in PDF. It includes a number of appendix cover pages that describe the content of each detailed appendix in the EAPP Report. However, you will understand that for reasons of PAI confidentiality, these appendices have not actually been published to the Internet.

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