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An organization describes an administrative or functional unit in the enterprise such as business units, divisions, regions and countries. An organization is not typically a legal entity but rather a business-driven governance structure to document roles and responsibilities and track roll-out plans. Organizations are supported in their business activities through the business support provided by applications.

Organizations form a self-referential hierarchy. An organizational hierarchy of 3 levels is sufficient for analysis in Alfabet.

Add organizations to the repository

Organizations are structured in a hierarchy. Before you begin, you should think about how you want to document the hierarchy of organizations.

Go to Business Portfolio > Organizations data workbench and click New > Organization.

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

Specify the organization's attributes

Once an organization is in the repository, you can define more details about it in the Organizations data workbench . Or specify and analyze the organization in detail in its content area . In the data workbench, click the Navigate button for an organization to open its content area > Overview page. All mandatory fields must be defined to create the organization and save it.

  • Name: (Mandatory) Enter a name for the organization. You can add an abbreviation (3-4 letters) of the name in the Short Name field to use in diagrams and other visualizations.
  • Short Name: Enter a short name of 3-4 letters that can be used for the description in diagrams and other visualizations.
  • Contact: Specify a person who is the contact person in the organization. The contact person must be a user in Alfabet.
  • Organization Type: Specify whether the organization is internal or external to your company.
  • Organization Scope: If you have selected External for the Organization Type attribute, specify whether the external organization is a solution partner, reseller partner, service provider, or technology provider.
  • Authorized Access tab: The user who creates the organization is the authorized user per default. This can be changed. Select one or more authorized user groups that shall have write permissions to the organization. All users in the authorized user group can edit the organization.

Specify applications that the organization uses

Ideally your company has documented its application . Applications should already be in the repository in order to define the applications that an organization uses. Some business questions in Alfabet can only be answered if the relationships between applications and organizations are defined.

Organizations are supported in their business activities by the business support provided by applications. For each application, you should specify the organization that uses it in order to understand the operational support in the company.

  1. Go to the content area of the organization.
  2. Go to Application Context > Used Organizations and select the d.
  3. Click outside of the selector to close it and update the Used Organizations field.

Define the users and organizations that have a role for the asset

In Alfabet, 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 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 an asset, click the navigate Navigate button of the asset you want to define. Go to the Overview page and scroll to the Responsibilities section. Depending on the role, you may be able to select a person or an organization. Switch between Person or Organization in the selector.

A person 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 asset.
  • Business Owner: A person or organization that owns the asset and is responsible for managing the functional requirements.
  • IT Owner: A person or IT organization that owns the asset and thus typically responsible for approval decisions.
  • Stakeholder: A person or organization that has an interest in the asset 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: A person or organization that owns the asset and is responsible for managing the functional requirements.
  • IT Owner: A person or IT organization that owns the asset and thus typically responsible for approval decisions.
  • Operations: An IT organization responsible for the operations of the asset.
  • Stakeholder: A person or organization that has an interest in the asset and therefore requires read-only access permissions.

Design or review an organization's application landscape diagram

  1. In the data table, click the navigate Navigate button of the organization you want to define. Go to its content area > Diagrams > Application Landscape Diagram. The diagram displays either a default view or a landscape diagram that has been designed by an authorized user. The landscape diagram may include applications, local components, and information flows.
  2. You can edit the basic attributes of any asset displayed in the diagram that you have access permissions for.
    • Click the asset to open the inspection pane, where you can edit the displayed attributes.
    • Double-click the asset to navigate to the content area, where you can edit the assets attributes and relationships.
  3. The Open Diagram button is visible for users who have been granted to the Diagram Designer access via an administrative user . To design or edit the application landscape diagram , click the  Edit edit button > Open Diagram.

Specify the projects that impact the organization

Assigning a project to an organization indicates that the information flow is part of the project's architectural scope and that it is impacted in some way by the project.

In the data table, click the navigate Navigate button of the organization you want to understand. Go to the organization's content area > Investment Context > Impacting Projects.

Create a new project for the organization. Click the  New plus sign button > Create 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.

Assign an existing project to the organization. Click the  New plus sign button > Add Project to select the project to assign to the organization.

Edit a project. Select a project and click the  EditSingle edit button to specify the project's attributes. You can also navigate to the project's content area to understand more about the project.

Remove a project from the organization. Select a project and  ThreeDots_Black 3-dots button > Detach to remove the project from the organization.

Understand the time schedule of all projects impacting the organization. In the Investment Context page, go to Impacting Projects - Lifecycles and review the schedule for each project as well as whether the projects are within the budget and resource allotment.