Capture project data

Projects are typically created in Alfabet in order to document a transformation project for the IT assets in the repository. Typical IT projects might be to upgrade applications, consolidate technologies for a segment of the business, or introduce new business processes to the organization.

In Alfabet, a project is an activity that is focused on achieving a specified goal in the IT landscape and typically has specific project deliverables. For each project, you can plan and assess the project costs and monitor milestones to ensure that the target dates of the project are met. You can document the IT architecture that will be impacted by the project in order to understand the assets in the as-is architecture that may be affected by the project as well as plan a target architecture that the project aims to deliver.

You can logically structure and bundle the projects into project groups in order to evaluate various aspects of the project portfolio.

In the navigation panel, click Project Architecture > Projects.​ Per default, the data workbench displays only a set of basic attributes. You can add more columns to capture other attributes directly in the data workbench or you can navigate to a project's content area and define it in more detail there. Click to learn about how to use data workbenches.

You can add a new project from anywhere in the product via the orange New button in the header. Or go to Investment Architecture > Projects.

Create a new project from scratch. Click New > Project. Specify the project's attributes as well as the relationships that the project has to other assets in the repository. All mandatory fields must be defined to create the project and save it.

A guided data entry view is available to help you provide relevant data and ensure data quality for the projects in your repository. When you create a new project in the editor, click the Close and Continue as Guided Editing button to open the data entry view. Or go to the project's content area toolbar and click Analysis View > Data Entry View.

You will see a content area page with an additional panel listing content items like Basic Data, Lifecycle Data, Evaluation. Click the content item caption to navigate to the content item in the data entry view.

Symbols indicate where data quality issues exist. Click the data quality issue symbol to navigate your focus directly to the spot where you can fix the issue.

Edit the attributes and relationships for a project. Click the Navigate  Navigate button next to a project to open its content area. Specify the project's attributes as well as the relationships that the project has to other assets in the repository.

Try to capture as much information as possible about the project because complete data considerably improves the results of business questions and other analytics.

A role represents a functional responsibility that a user or organization has for the project. Assigning users and organizations to roles is critical to understanding responsibility for assets in the IT and is required to answer the business question Who is responsible for our assets?.

Responsibilities are based on preconfigured role types. Your company may also configure custom role types via the Portfolio Admin user profile. Depending on the role type, a specified user and/or a specified organization may fulfill the responsibility for the project. A user assigned responsibility via a role has read-only permissions to the project. To change data about the project, they must also be specified as an authorized user or member of a n authorized user group.

Roles can be assigned to a project in the Projects data workbench or the project content area via Overview > Responsibilities. A person can have one of the following roles or a custom role added by your company:

To specify responsibilities for the project:

  1. Click in the relevant role field to open the selector.
  2. Expand the ORGANIZATION or USER sections in the selector and select the person or organization fulfilling the role.
  3. Click OK to save the role definition and close the selector.

An evaluation is a measurement of the performance of a project. Preconfigured indicator types and possibly custom indicator types added by your company are available to evaluate and are used in various analyses in Alfabet. Some indicator types are automatically computed by the system and others must be manually defined.

Define the project's indicators. Click the navigate  Navigate button of the project to open the content area. Go to the Overview page and scroll to the Evaluations view and open it. The evaluations Architectural Impact, Business Value, Project Monitoring, and Project Risk each have several indicators that should be defined. Point to the tooltip symbol  TooltipButton for each indicator to learn more about it.

Select an indicator type and click Edit Indicator or click Group Edit to open a dialog where all indicator types can be edited that are not automatically computed by the system.

Update computed indicators. Click the Calculate button to update computed indicators via the Calculate button. The indicators will be recalculated based on the current data.

A dependency indicates that the completion of one project is a prerequisite for the completion of another project. The dependency may be due to an issue of timing (project A must be completed to begin project B, therefore project B is dependent on project A) or the dependency may be caused by an architecture element (project A will provide the deliverable X and deliverable X is required to begin project B, therefore project B is dependent on project A).

You can specify the projects that are dependent on this project that you are currently working with. Or you can specify that this project that you are currently working with is dependent on other projects.

  1. Go to the project's content area > Overview > Project Dependency. The dataset displays all projects that currently have a dependency with the selected project. The table section Project Is Dependent Project For displays the projects that are dependent on the selected project. The Project Is Dependent Onsection displays the projects that the selected project is dependent on.
    • To specify that another project is dependent on the project you are working with, click New > Specify Dependent Project for Current Project.
    • To specify that the project you are working with is dependent on another project, click New > Specify Project Dependent on Current Project.
  2. Select a project in the selector to define the dependency and click OK.
  3. In the editor that opens, define the Architecture Type field. Select one of the following:
    • Time: The dependency is due to a scheduling issue. One project must be completed for the next one to begin.
    • Architecture: The dependency is due to an architecture element common to both projects.
    • Resource: The dependency is due to the availability of personnel or skill resources.
  4. Add details about the project dependency in the Comments field.

Go to Architecture > Architecture Overlap to view a visualization of the projects that have a dependency to this project and the assets in the architecture that the projects have in common.

The assets that are impacted by a project make up the architectural scope of the project. You can specify any application, business capability, business process, component, information flow, or organization as impacted by the project.

Users responsible for the assets in the project's architecture scope will see the projects that have an impact on their asset. To view all of the projects that an asset is impacted by, go to the asset's content area > Investment Context > Investment Overview.

To view all projects and understand their impact on all affected architecture elements, go to the Projects data workbench > Visualize > Project Analysis > Affected Architecture.

To understand all projects that impact a specific application, business capability, business process, component, information flow, or organization, go to the asset's content area > Investment Context > Investment Overview.

  1. Go to the project's content area > Architecture Scope > Affected Architecture.
  2. Select the cell below a class header to add an asset to the architectural scope of the project and click New > Add Existing Architecture Element.

    Information flows specified for applications that have been added to the project's architecture scope will not be automatically added to the project. You must explicitly add the relevant information flows to the project in the Affected Architecture view.

  3. Select one or more assets and click OK.
  4. To document the planned changes to one or more architecture elements assigned to the project's scope, click the ThreeDots_Black 3-dots button >  EditSingle  Edit. Provide a comment about the change and set the Change Category to describe the how the asset will be changed by the project:
    • New: The asset will be introduced in the scope of the project.
    • Updating: The asset will be significantly updated in the scope of the project.
    • Changing: The asset will be changed to some degree in the scope of the project.
    • Retiring: The asset will be retired in the scope of the project.

    The recommendation for an application should be considered when you plan the application architecture of the project. Consider whether the value set for the Change Category attribute of the application in the Affected Architecture Scope view aligns with the Recommendation attribute defined for the application.

The assets that are impacted by a project make up the architectural scope of the project. To view all projects and understand their impact on all affected architecture elements, go to the Projects data workbench > Visualize > Project Analysis > Affected Architecture.

You can specify any application, business capability, business process, component, information flow, or organization to be impacted by a project.

  1. Select the cell below a class header to add an asset to the architectural scope of the project and click New > Add Existing Architecture Element.
  2. Select one or more assets and click OK.

    Information flows specified for applications that have been added to the project's architecture scope will not be automatically added to the project. You must explicitly add the relevant information flows to the project in the Affected Architecture view.

  3. To document the planned changes to one or more architecture elements assigned to the project's scope, click the ThreeDots_Black 3-dots button >  EditSingle  Edit. Provide a comment about the change and set the Change Category to describe the how the asset will be changed by the project:
    • New: The asset will be introduced in the scope of the project.
    • Updating: The asset will be significantly updated in the scope of the project.
    • Changing: The asset will be changed to some degree in the scope of the project.
    • Retiring: The asset will be retired in the scope of the project.

    The recommendation for an application should be considered when you plan the application architecture of the project. Consider whether the value set for the Change Category attribute of the application in the Affected Architecture Scope view aligns with the Recommendation attribute defined for the application.

Review the recommendations for applications in the scope of a project. Compare recommendations made for the application with real-world application scores to help you make decisions about whether it is best to keep an application.

The recommendation for an application should be considered when you plan the application architecture of the project. Consider whether the value set for the Change Category attribute of the application in the Affected Architecture Scope view aligns with the Recommendation attribute defined for the application.

  1. Go to the Architecture Scope page and scroll to the TIME Portfolio Analysis view and open it.

The analysis looks at the business and technical scores of applications and places each application into one of four quadrants Tolerate, Invest, Migrate, or Eliminate. At the same time, the report colors the applications according to the value specified for the Recommendation attribute.

This allows you to assess whether the strategic recommendation of the application reflects the real world business and technical score. Understanding the application score will help in making decisions about whether it is best to keep an application ( Tolerate ), invest in the application ( Invest ), consider the application as a migration candidate ( Migrate ), or sundown the application ( Eliminate).

The report shows applications as bubbles analyzed across 4 dimensions. Point to an application to show a tooltip with the following information: Application name, business score (BS), technical score (TS), Recommendation value, current year operational expenditure (OpEx).

  • The bubble size indicates the application cost based on the current year operational expenditure (OpEx).
  • The bubble color indicates the correspondence of the business and technical scores with the strategic recommendation specified for the application
  • The X-axis value is the weighted business score based on application indicators
  • The Y-axis is the weighted technical score based on application indicators

The license package Strategic Portfolio Management is required to work with this view. The use case Project Portfolio Governance must be activated.

A project's business case explains the value, costs, and benefits of the proposed project and provides a structured approach to estimating the expected investment and operating costs. You can define, calculate, and view a business case based on the cost and income types configured by your solution designer for a predefined period starting with the first year of the selected project.

The Business Case view includes cost estimates generated in the project's Work Breakdown Structure view, allowing those values to flow directly into the business case. All project cost types can be populated from defined skill requests or, when no skill requests exist, from the corresponding resource requests.

Go to the project's content area > Financials > Business Case view and open it. The view shows the the requested, committed, and current budget for the project. You can capture the costs for all cost types over the specified period of time displayed in the view.

The license package IT Transformation - Enterprise is required to see and use the Request and Current columns and the Aggregate Cost Along Cost Hierarchy functionality.

Go to the project's content area > Financials > Cost Accrual view and open it. The view shows the the requested, committed, and current budget for the project. You can capture the costs for all cost types over the specified period of time displayed in the view.

Set the start and end years of the view. Click the  Filter local button and change the First Year and Last Year fields.

Specify the requested budget for the project by entering the costs directly in the Request column for the year and cost type. You can enter costs in any currency that your portfolio administrator has configured. The available currencies are listed in the drop-down available in the Currency column.

Specify the planned budget for the project by entering the costs directly in the Budget column for the year and cost type. You can enter costs in any currency that your portfolio administrator has configured. The available currencies are listed in the drop-down available in the Currency column.

Specify the current budget allocated for the project by entering the costs directly in the Current column for the year and cost type. You can enter costs in any currency that your portfolio administrator has configured. The available currencies are listed in the drop-down available in the Currency column.

The license package Strategic Portfolio Management is required to work with this view. The use case Investment Optimization must be activated.

Project buckets provide structure, transparency, and control over how project resources, costs, and value are managed. The Project Buckets view lets you specify which buckets you want to distribute the project's costs to. Costs are distributed based on the percentage assigned to each bucket, reflecting the share of the project’s costs assigned to that bucket.

Go to the project's content area > Financials > Project Buckets view and open it.

  • Assign the cost buckets that are relevant to the project. Click New > Add Bucket to assign existing project buckets to the current project. Select one or more project buckets.
  • Distribute the project's costs across buckets. Click the Edit Cost Allocation button. Costs are distributed based on the percentage assigned to each bucket. Adjust the allocation by moving the selector left or right. To lock a bucket’s value, click the lock icon on the left. When locked, the icon turns red and the value will no longer adjust automatically as other bucket values change. The total allocation must equal 100%. Once the cost distribution is correct, click OK. The values are automatically updated in the table.

The license package Strategic Portfolio Management is required to work with this view. The use case Project Portfolio Governance must be activated.

Benefit tracking allows you to measure whether a project actually delivers the value it promised. Whereas the project's business case describes the expected value, the Benefit Tracking view identifies, measures, and reports the benefits that the project was expected to achieve. This is relevant not just during delivery, but after the project goes live because it connects the business case to real world outcomes.

Go to the project's content area > Financials > Project Benefits view and open it.

Set the fiscal year of the view. Click the  Filter local button and change the Fiscal Year field.

Specify the planned income for the project by clicking Benefits > Edit Budget. Enter the income directly in the Budget column for each relevant month and income type. You can enter income in any currency that your portfolio administrator has configured. The available currencies are listed in the drop-down available in the Currency column.

Specify the accrued income for the project by clicking Benefits > Edit Current. Enter the income directly in the Current column for each relevant month and income type. You can enter income in any currency that your portfolio administrator has configured. The available currencies are listed in the drop-down available in the Currency column.

Transfer the income defined in the business case to the project by clicking Benefits > Equally Distribute Business Case Benefits to Budget. The budget values defined for the business case will be transferred to Budget columns. Any existing values will be overwritten by the transferred values.

Show income as an aggregation.

The license package Strategic Portfolio Management is required to work with this view. The use case Project Portfolio Governance must be activated.

Cash-out planning focuses on when project costs are actually paid rather than when they are planned or incurred. By forecasting and managing cash-out flows, you can ensure sufficient liquidity, avoid funding gaps, and align project spending with budget expectations and fiscal constraints. The Cash-Out Planning page view allows you to view and plan the monthly cash-out payments for project costs for a specified fiscal year for the selected project. By comparing planned cash-out amounts with forecasted costs, you can assess whether the budgeted values accurately reflect the expected financial outflow over time. This visibility helps identify potential discrepancies early and supports proactive financial decision-making. When you define the cash-out plan for a selected project, you specify the monthly cash-out values that represent how and when project costs will be paid during the fiscal year. This enables more accurate cash-flow forecasting, improves coordination with financial planning and controlling, and strengthens overall budget governance.

Go to the project's content area > Financials > Cash-Out Planning view and open it. The table displays the monthly cash out payments for the project costs for the specified fiscal year per cost type. Scroll to the right to view the following:

  • Annual Totals (Budget, Obligation, Current, and Forecast) columns display the planned costs ( Budget ), committed costs ( Obligation ), the current costs ( Current ), and the expected costs ( Forecast) based on an assessment of the project by the project manager, project controller, or project management office, for example.
  • Annual Totals (FYE Forecast) columns display the fiscal year end (FYE) forecast displays the cumulative sum of the forecast values for each cost type for the selected fiscal year. A highlighted cell represents a deviation from the budgeted value for the corresponding cost type. The FYE Forecast is computed as the sum of Forecast values from the current month to the end of the current fiscal year. Any months in the past are excluded from this calculation as these are covered by either the Current or Obligation values.
  • Business Case (Budget) column displays the cumulative sum of the budget values for each cost type as defined in the selected project’s business case for the selected fiscal year. A highlighted cell represents a deviation from the forecasted values for the corresponding cost type.

Set the fiscal year of the view. Click the  Filter local button and change the Fiscal Year field.

Manually enter or edit budget, obligation, current, or forecast values. Click Costs > Edit to choose the relevant edit functionality.

Transfer the project's business case values to the to the cash-out plan's Budget column. Click Costs > Equally Distribute Business Case Cost to Project to input the budgeted costs defined in the business case of the selected project. The budget values defined for the business case will be transferred to Budget columns. Any existing values will be overwritten by the transferred values.

Transfer the cash-out plan's budgeted values as expected costs to the Forecast column. the Forecast column for either the selected fiscal year or for the entire period of the project, determined by the project’s start and end dates. The forecast values can be further edited, as needed.

Show costs as an aggregation or sum.

  • Select View > Aggregate Cost Along Project Hierarchy to display the cost information for each cost type as an aggregation of the costs for the selected project and its work packages.
  • Select View > Aggregate Cost Along Cost Hierarchy to display the cost information as an aggregation of the selected project’s costs along the cost types defined in the cost type hierarchy.
  • Select View > Show Cumulative Values to display the sum of the project costs defined in each column for each month of the selected fiscal year.

You can create milestones for the project in order to track and manage the progress of the project in project timelines like the Work Breakdown Structure view and the business question What is the status of our project portfolio? . All existing milestones assigned to the project are displayed in the Project Milestones view. Here you can view whether a milestone has been completed or whether target dates have changed.

Go to the project's content area > Monitoring > Project Milestones. If the project has no milestones defined, you can add milestones based on a preconfigured milestone template or create your own milestones for the project.

Add preconfigured milestones to the project. Milestones including their target dates can be easily created for a project based on a preconfigured milestone template or they can be created ad-hoc.

  1. Click New > Create Milestones from Milestone Template. Select one of the preconfigured milestone templates:
    • Standard Template: Project milestones describe a linear, end-to-end project delivery flow that begins once the design work is finalized and ends with full project closure.
    • V-Model: Project milestones are based on the phases of the V-Model development lifecycle.
    • Milestone Model: Project milestones are based on percentages (10%-100%) to measure project progress by tying each major milestone to a fixed percentage of overall completion
  2. The project's targets dates are automatically generated and displayed for reference in the Start Date and End Date fields.
    • Adjust the dates in the Target Date column as needed.
    • Click Validate Sequence to check whether the target dates are set correctly. A target date highlighted red needs to be adjusted to follow its preceding date.
    • Select the milestones to add to the project and click OK.
  4. Validate the order of the milestones via the Validate Sequence button. Any milestones that are misaligned are marked red. Correct the target date and revalidate the sequence. Repeat until no dates are highlighted red. Click OK to save the project milestones.

Add your own milestones to the project.

  1. Click New > Create Ad-Hoc Milestone.
  2. Specify a caption and colors for the milestone. If the milestone is in the past and has been completed, check Completed. Click OK to add the milestone to the project.

Change a milestone's target date.

  1. Select a milestone and click the Edit button.
  2. Change the Target Date field and click OK.
  3. The Project Milestones view will show the original target date in the Original Target Date column and the new target date in the Target Date column. If the date has been changed several times, the most recently changed target date will be displayed in the Previous Target Date column.
  4. The Milestone Tracking view shows the project timeline with a bar showing the original milestones and a bar showing the current milestones.

Set a milestone to complete.

  1. Select a milestone and click the Edit button.
  2. Set a checkmark for the Completed field and click OK.
  3. The Project Milestones view will show Yes in the Completed column.

Transfer the milestones to the project's work packages.

  1. Select a milestone and click the Edit button.
  2. Go to the Sub-Projects page in the editor and select each sub-project that you want to copy the project milestones to and click OK.
  3. The project milestones will be visible in the Work Breakdown Structure view if View > Show Enterprise Milestones is selected in that view.

A project scenario represents an alternative scenario for the to-be architecture, budgeting and cost calculation, evaluations, resource planning, and scheduling. A project scenario is an independent copy of the project that it is based on. The work packages and tasks are copied from the base project to the project scenario as well as the authorization and roles, evaluations, milestones, budget, architecture scope, and work breakdown structure including skill and resource requests. You can create multiple project scenarios for a base project and modify each the project scenario as needed.

Once a project scenario has been defined and approved, it can be merged to the base project. The project scenario's attributes, roles, evaluations, milestones, budget, architecture scope, and work breakdown structure including skill and resource requests that have been added, removed, or modified will be updated to the base project. The project scenario as well as the base project will continue to exist after the merge and both can be further modified, if needed. The project scenario can be merged multiple times.

Go to the project's content area >< Scenarios > Project Scenarios.

Create project scenarios. Create one or more project scenarios to design various alternatives for a projects. Click the  New plus sign button > Create New Project Scenario. Specify the basic attributes of the project scenario. Click the  Navigate navigate button to open the content area of the project scenario. Go to the Overview page and specify evaluations, responsibilities, and milestones for the project scenario as needed. You can also go to the Financials page to specify a business case and the Architecture page to specify the architectural scope of the project scenario.

Compare project scenarios. Return to the base project's content area > Scenarios page. Review the project scenario comparison reports to understand the differences of the various project scenarios in terms of the lifecycles, cash flows, business cases, cost types, and architecture scopes. These reports can help you to understand which project scenario is more favorable and which you might like to merge to the base project.

Merge the project scenario with the base project. Go to the base project's content area > Scenarios > Project Scenarios. Select the project scenario you want to merge and click the  New plus sign button > Merge Project Scenario with Project. Specify comments in the dialog, click OK to trigger the merge, and click Close. The project scenario's attributes, roles, evaluations, milestones, budget, architecture scope, and work breakdown structure including skill and resource requests that have been added, removed, or modified will be updated to the base project.

The project baseline is a snapshot of the project at a specific time. It represents the scope of the base project at the time that you create the project baseline and allows you to measure the deviation of the current project from its original scope in terms of the evaluations, milestones, budget, architecture scope, and work breakdown structure including skill and resource requests. Multiple project baselines may be created at different points in time for the selected project. The project baseline is for documentation purposes and cannot be modified in any way.

Go to the project's content area Baselines > Project Baselines.

Create project baselines. Create a project baseline at any point to create a snapshot of the project for documentation purposes. Click the  New plus sign button > Create Project Baseline. The project baseline is added to the view and shows the date that it was created.

Review the details of the snapshot. Click the  Navigate navigate button to open the content area of a project baseline. Read-only views display the project's work breakdown including its work packages and tasks as well as the projects evaluations, milestones, business case.

Compare project baselines. Return to the base project's content area > Baselines page. Review the project baseline comparison reports to understand the differences of the various project baselines in terms of the lifecycles, cash flows, business cases, and KPIs.

The following business questions are relevant for the analysis of projects: