Capture project data

In Alfabet FastLane, a project is an activity that is focused on achieving a specified goal in the IT landscape. Typical IT projects might be to upgrade applications, consolidate technologies for a segment of the business, or introduce new business processes to the organization. You can document your 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. 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 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.

Add a new project. Click the New button. The edit panel opens on the right where you can define basic data.

Edit an existing project. Edit the project directly in the data table. Or select the checkbox  DWB_Checkbox for the project you want to edit and click the Edit  dlt-icon-edit_Teal button to open the edit panel.

Define the project's basic data. All mandatory fields must be defined to create the project and save it.

In Alfabet FastLane, responsibilities are documented via the concept of roles, whereby each role is based on a preconfigured role type or a custom role type defined by your company. In contrast to an authorized user who has read/write permissions, a person assigned a role for an asset will not have read/write permissions based on the role definition. The role is primarily for documentation purposes to provide information about stakeholders interested or responsible for the asset. If the user should have read/write permissions, they must either be the authorized user of the asset or assigned to an authorized user group associated with the asset.

Alfabet FastLane provides out-of-the-box role types that enable you to understand who is responsible for your IT assets in your IT portfolio. Additional role types that are relevant for your company can also be added.

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?.

To define the users and organizations that have a role for a project, click the navigate Navigate button of the project to open the content area. Go to the Overview page and scroll to the Responsibilities view and open it. Click in a column cell to open a selector to define a role for the project.

Depending on the role column, you may be able to select a person or an organization. If you can define a user and organization for the role, switch between Person or Organization in the selector.

A user can have one of the following roles or a custom role added by your company:

  • Architect: A person who is responsible for the governance of the assets targeted by the project.
  • Project Manager: A person who is responsible for planning, organizing, managing, and executing projects from beginning to end including the project's budget, resources, and scheduling.
  • Staffing Manager: A person who is responsible to allocate and balance the human resources required for the project.
  • Stakeholder: A person who has an interest in the project and therefore requires read-only access permissions.

An organization can have one of the following roles or a custom role added by your company:

  • Business Owner: An organization that owns the assets targeted by the project and is responsible for managing the functional requirements.
  • Stakeholder: An organization that has an interest in the project and therefore requires read-only access permissions.

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 FastLane. 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.

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).

The dataset displays all projects that currently have a dependency with the selected project. The section Project Is Dependent Project For displays the projects that are dependent on the selected project. The Project Is Dependent On displays the projects that the selected project is dependent on.

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. In the data table, click the navigate Navigate button of the project you want to define.
  2. Go to the Overview page and scroll to the Project Dependency view and open it.
    • 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.
  3. Select a project in the selector to define the dependency and click OK.
  4. 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.
  5. 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.

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 that is impacted by the project.

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 Scope view.

For every asset that is added to the project scope, you can go to the asset's content area and go to Investment Portfolio > Investment Overview to view all of the project's that the asset is included in.

  1. In the data table, click the navigate Navigate button of the project you want to define.
  2. Go to the Architecture page and scroll to the Affected Architecture Scope view and open it.
  3. 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.
  4. Select one or more assets and click OK.
  5. Click the Edit button and provide comments that are relevant to the asset in the project architecture.
  6. To document the planned changes to one or more architecture elements assigned to the project's scope, 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 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.

When you review the recommendations for applications in the scope of a project, you can 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. In the data table, click the navigate Navigate button of the project you want to define.
  2. Go to the Application Portfolio page and scroll to the Project Applications (TIME 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

You can capture the annual costs budgeted for the selected project, starting with the year specified for the start date of the project and ending with the year specified for the end date.

  1. In the data table, click the navigate Navigate button of the project you want to define.
  2. Go to the Finances page and scroll to the Project Budget view and open it.
  3. Click Costs > Edit:
    • For each cost type, select a currency value in the Currency column for the cost type.
    • For each cost type, enter or edit the cost values in the Budget column for the relevant year.
  4. Click OK to save the project costs.

You can create milestones for the project in order to track and manage the progress of the project. A milestone that has been reached can be set as complete. The timeline of the project and completion of its milestones is visualized in the Milestone Tracking view.

All projects and their milestones are displayed in the business question What is the status of our project portfolio?

  1. In the data table, click the navigate Navigate button of the project you want to define.
  2. Go to the Monitoring page and scroll to the Project Milestones view and open it.
  3. If the project has no milestones defined, you can add milestones based on a preconfigured milestone template. Click New > Create Milestones from Template
  5. Click OK to save the project milestones.