EA case study - project portfolio update

We created a project portfolio six months ago and what happend since then?

The pan-epidemic was not in our project list, but as we setup our business to run without a main office was we in some ways prepared, but in others not.

Mobile app for time reporting on projects

1. Setting up a new business with employees and contractors with all associated administration takes it’s time. Delayed, but not critical.

2. Lack of needed contracts is paramount in majority of productions and we need to manage this area to be on the safe side. (Legal, HR, Sales, IT and Production). On track and updates on its way.

3. Utilization right now is to low, therefore we need to improve our sales process and implement an easy to use CRM-system to track sales and measure KPI’s (Sales and IT) New system configured and migration of data and data cleansing in progress.

4. We also need to be better at marketing and communication to reach new clients in prioritized customer segments & product categories (Marketing & communication) CRM system in place but no process defined, yet.

5. We need a better tracking of who have participated in which production and in with which role. We have a need for a common register that follows our Architecture Principles and our future infrastructure. New production system in place, but lots of manual data entry remains.

6. We need methods and IT-solutions for better estimation and planning of productions in deployment and pre-production (Production and IT) New production system in place, but workflow needs to be improved and integrated to CRM.

7. Better workflow in post production using new and/or other tools in both post production and earlier. This us very much sector specific IT-solutions like NLE’s etc. (Production and IT). Not started.

8. Implement KPI’s for GDPR. (Everywhere) Not started

9. Better risk management when running productions than the film business have today (Sales, Production and Management) Not started

Other goals was break even for 2019 and a small profit for 2020. So far according to plan.

EA case study - End of life

When your application reaches end-of-life and the vendor doesn’t support it any more, you still have the option to run it. But when a cloud application reaches end of life, you don’t have an option.

We have been using Microsoft Customer Manager as a lightweight CRM application. It’s included in one of the Office 365 subscriptions and is therefore a low-cost solution.

However, the application reaches end-of-life in June 2020 and we have to implement a new solution before then and migrate all data.

A parallel example that we also have is StudioBinder that is used for production planning. The cost per user is rather high and they have not added any functionality in a year. 

As I see development of new functionality in cloud service as a health-sign, and no development as the opposite, we are preparing to switch from this platform.

So currently, we are looking at Visma Project Management and Yamdu as new cloud services to replace Customer Manager and StudioBinder.

Lot of IT, yes and but we have defined processes for Film production and Sales as well as our high-level architecture principles.

Making it more corherent

Season 8 of Architecture Corner with only female guests

Sally Bean, Soina Sharma and Petra in’t Veld Brown talks about their views of Enterprise Architecture and why there are so few female architects.

This episode was recorded at British Computer Society in London, UK

See more episodes from Architecture Corner at https://youtube.com/c/architecturecorner     

© Artmann Media 2020 www://www.artmann.co.uk

Creative Commons License - Attribution Share Alike

Re-use of an EA case study

I’m now assisting a global company with enterprise architecture skills.

The organisation are changing to new business models and I use the same approach here for Enterprise Architecture as for my filmmaking company in the EA case study.

We start with the business model canvas, look at APQC processes as input for new processes. Then continue step by step until consumers can use the service all over the world.

Very straightforward, but not as easy as taming a wild horse.

Reference enterprise architecture checklist

What should a basic reference architecture contain?

These are the artefacts I use when doing a reference architecture for larger organisation.

• Business model canvas

• Capabilities

• Level 1 and level 2 processes

• Key business objects

• Key business metrics

• Information components / groups

• Architecture principles

• Key actors

• Critical business use-cases

• Main applications

• Business critical integrations

• Main stakeholders

• High-level organisation chart

• Constraints

The purpose of the reference architecture is to be a long term guide for development and/or transformation in a business unit or on a higher level. It must fit the future business model and include both business and IT-aspects.

From these part, you can compose a number of views for different purposes and stakeholders.