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 an 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.

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.

Once a project is in the repository, you can define more details about it in the Projects data workbench.

Per default, the data workbench displays a limited set of basic attributes. You can add more columns via the Structure column to capture other attributes directly in the data workbench.

Or specify and analyze the project in detail in its content area . In the data workbench, click the Navigate button for a project to open its content area > Overview page.

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

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.

The license package Strategic Portfolio Management is required to work with work packages and tasks.

A project can have multiple work packages made up of tasks that describe the work that needs to be done to realize a project. The work packages and tasks are added to the Work Breakdown Structure view in the project's content area, where the relevant skills and resources that are needed for the project can be tracked.

  1. Go to the project's content area Overview > Work Packages.
  2. Click the New plus sign button > Create Work Package. Specify the basic attributes including the start and end date of the work package in the editor and click OK.
  3. Click the Navigate navigate button to open the content area of the work package. Go to the Overview > Tasks to break the work package down in manageable tasks that can be distributed to responsible users.
  4. Click the Navigate navigate button to open the content area of the task. Specify the dependencies and document the project's milestones to capture relevant details about the tasks.

The license package Strategic Portfolio Management is required to work with skills and resources.

The Work Breakdown Structure view allows you to carry out high-level planning of skills and resources required to realize a project. You can assess the alignment of the overall project schedule with the scheduling of the work packages and tasks and make necessary modifications to the project plan, as needed. Additionally, you can further refine and plan your projects by defining new work packages and specify skill requests and resource requests for the project.

Go to the project's content area Overview > Work Breakdown Structure. Here's how to interpret the information in the view:

  • The timeline covers the project's planned start date to the planned end date. The vertical blue line shows the current date.
  • The view shows the time schedule of the selected project Project , its work packages  WorkPackage , and their defined tasks  Task. The colored bars show the start and end dates of the project, work packages, and tasks.
  • Skill requests SkillRequest and resource requests  ResourceRequest are displayed below the respective projects, work packages, and tasks. The colored bars show that start and end dates of the skill and resource requests.

Request a skill for the project. Request a skill required to work on a project, work package, or task in the view . Click the project  Project , work package  WorkPackage , or task  Task that you want to request a skill for and click  New > Create Skill Request. Specify the skill and time period when the skill is needed in the editor and click OK. The skill request  SkillRequest is added as below the project, work package, or task requesting the skill.

Request an organization as a resource for the project. Request an organization as a resource that is required to work on a project, work package, or task in the view . Click the project  Project , work package  WorkPackage , or task  Task that you want to request a resource for and click  New > Request Resources. Specify the organization to provide the resource and time period when the resource is needed in the editor and click OK.  SkillRequest is added below the project, work package, or task requesting the resource.

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.

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.

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.

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. 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 project 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.

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.

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: