Capture project data

Projects are typically created in Alfabet in order to document a transformation project for the IT assets in the repository and the IT architecture that will be impacted by the project can be directly linked to the project. In Alfabet, 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.

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. Click New > 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.

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.

Each role column represents the responsibility that a user or organization has for the project. A person can have one of the following roles or a custom role added by your company:

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

  1. Click a column cell to open a selector to define the role for the project. Depending on the role column, the selector may have a section for both Person and Organization.
  2. Expand the relevant section and select the person or organization to assign their role to the project.

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.

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 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.

  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.
  3. Select one or more assets and click OK.
  4. Click the Edit button and provide comments that are relevant to the asset in the project architecture.
  5. 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 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.

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

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 Context 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 in the Capital Expenditures view starting with the year specified for the start date of the project and ending with the year specified for the end date. You can enter costs in any currency that your portfolio administrator has configured.

Click the navigate Navigate button for a project to open its content area. Go to the Overview page and scroll to the Capital Expenditures view.

For each cost type, enter the committed budget for the project in the corresponding year in the Budget column. You can specify the currency for each cost type you define. The available currencies are listed in the drop-down available in the Currency column.

To display the cost information as an aggregation of the project’s costs along the cost types, click View > Aggregate Cost Along Cost Hierarchy.

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. Go to the project's content area Monitoring > Project Milestones.
  2. If the project has no milestones defined, you can add milestones based on a preconfigured milestone template. Click New > Create Milestones from Milestone Template
  3. Click OK to save the project milestones.