Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Enterprise Modeling
for Strategic Support
Michael E. Whitman
Michael L. Gibson
Exhibit 1.
Exhibit 2.
Exhibit 3.
process of evaluation and engineering. Again, enterprise modeling provides a useful tool in evaluating the organization to determine the feasibility of the various alternative strategies.
Strategy Implementation. The next phase of the strategy life cycle involves
implementing the developed strategy, focusing on achieving results, and
relying heavily on change management, organizational behavior analysis,
and performance measures. SBE during implementation concentrates on
organizational structure, relationships, and processes, and on the behavior
of the firms top leadership. Modeling the structures and associations
within the organization coupled with an aggressive implementation strategy provides a fundamental blueprint for a successful implementation.
Strategy Assessment. During the implementation stage, the simultaneous
evaluation of strategy development and strategy implementation directly
affect final strategies. The engineering phase of implementation and reorganization is ideally suited to support the integration of the strategy into
the business environment. As the strategy is implemented, the engineering
constructs are regained in the process, creating an atmosphere conducive
to the ongoing change that characterizes reengineering and strategy implementation.
Strategy Control and Maintenance. Success in strategic planning is a relative concept. Reengineering does not ensure the success or failure of a
strategy; rather it serves to report the state of the organization as it
responds to the planning process. Strategy maintenance is a continuous
looping process whereby the organization continues existing strategies
and develops new ones throughout the strategy life cycle. The continuing
analysis, design, and implementation steps in enterprise modeling and
engineering facilitate strategy maintenance. The relationship between SBE
and strategic planning is symbiotic-the constructs behind each support
the other.
FIS operations.
The FIS director and his staff would use the enterprise model for the
long-term strategic planning process and as a blueprint for processes redesign. By shedding additional light on the operations and expertise of FIS,
the models would also allow the Office of Business and Finance and the
Office of the Vice-President of Academic Affairs to support their long-range
planning.
The various constituency groups served by FIS are also affected by the
project. These include the bursars office, the bookstore, the police depart-
Exhibit 5.
The functional decomposition was examined for responsibility and correspondence with the organizational goals. Then the corresponding subfunctions were identified and their subfunctions, and so on down the line
until major processes were identified. Exhibit 7 presents one path of the
provide-computer-support function.
Exhibit 7.
Once the functions and goals were identified, the critical success factors
(CSFs) were identified and associated with functions and goals. Examples
of CSFs for FIS are presented in Exhibit 8.
Next association matrices were created. These matrices relate three
aspects to one another: functions to organizational units, goals to organizational units, and functions to goals. The purpose of doing this is to see
which organizational units and subunits and which functions and subfunctions support which goals. At this point, factor critical to the success
(CSFs) of FIS entered into a series of matrices to determine which activities
of FIS supported the achievement of success for the department.
Data model (entity-relationship) diagrams were created for each subfunction. Theses depict the various entities tracked by the organization,
and the relationship between them. Thus, for example, the first diagram
clearly shows what entities are involved in establishing priorities to guide
the installation of applications on the universitys mainframe computer.
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2.
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4.
5.
6.
7.
Also shown on this diagram are the ways in which the entities relate to one
another in the course of establishing these priorities. The encyclopedia
tracks these relationships to facilitate analysis of which entities support
which subfunctions and processes of FIS.
The resulting matrix of entities and business functions was augmented
by showing the involvement of the entities that have responsibilities for
the functions. The classification included: direct management responsibility, executive or policy-making authority, functional involvement, technical
expertise, and actual execution of the work. The association matrices
resulted in the following comparisons (the order of mention is vertical axis,
then horizontal axis):
Following the creation of these matrices, a collection of property matrices was developed based on the entity type (either fundamental, associative or attributive); organizational units; critical success factors; and goals.
Through the modeling process, several interactive sessions were conducted to integrate the director of FIS and selected staff into the development of the models. The director acknowledged that he really hadnt
comprehended the departments complexity until it was laid out in the
models. Integrating various members of the modeling team and end users
resulted in a much more comprehensive analysis of the business opera-
tions. These interactive sessions are better known as joint strategic planning (JSP) sessions.
Joint Strategic Planning
JSP sessions involve end users in collaborative strategy development
and planning sessions. IE methodology is used to provide an overview
enterprise model of the organization, including its strategies and plans.
CASE systems, particularly an upper-case system, may be used to support
interactive and more productive sessions. During these sessions, executive and top-level systems personnel interact to develop or modify strategies and plans and subsequently develop the enterprise model for the
functional activities of the organization. These sessions can also be used to
determine how to use information technology strategically.
The earlier stages (statement of objectives, development of user
requirements, and logical design) of the traditional systems development
life cycle are the most important for user participation. From the IE perspective, these stages correspond roughly to the strategy, planning, analysis, and design stages.
There are three compelling reasons for stressing user participation during these phase/stages. First, when CASE is employed, the use of JSP sessions followed by joint application development sessions permits strategic
specifications to be integrated with analysis and design specifications. Second, during the early stages, the users experience and contributions are
strongest and the IS professionals are weakest. Third, the potential cost
associated with detecting and correcting errors in the later stages of the
systems development of complete and accurate user requirements.
JSP may require many participants. To be most effective, each participant (both user and IS professional) must have the authority to make decisions concerning user requirements that will not later be overruled by
high-level management. For this reason, it is important that participants be
experts in the areas they represent.
During sessions with the modeling team, the director of FIS helped evaluate and define the functional relationships incorporated into the CASEdriven enterprise model. The JSP sessions employed by this project
enabled the business modeler to fully and quickly engage the director in
the accurate description and subsequent modeling of the business. As the
director of FIS was able to see the model being built interactively, he was able
to suggest changes from previous sessions, thus deriving a better model in
the earlier stages. The Information Engineering Workbench (IEW) software
enabled interactive changes to be made in the model that automatically
made subsequent changes in all related parts of the model. Use of JSP