E-business value web

• US 20050043977A1
• Filed: 08/20/2003
• Published: 02/24/2005
• Est. Priority Date: 08/20/2003
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Kyndryl Incorporated
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Ahern, Marybeth, Law, Michael J.
• Granted Patent: US 8,548,837 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 705/7
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06 Resources, workflows, human or project management; Enterprise or organisation planning; Enterprise or organisation modelling
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/0631 Resource planning, allocation, distributing or scheduling for enterprises or organisations
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06312 Adjustment or analysis of established resource schedule, e.g. resource or task levelling, or dynamic rescheduling
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06375 Prediction of business process outcome or impact based on a proposed change
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/0639 Performance analysis of employees; Performance analysis of enterprise or organisation operations
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/783 Distributed allocation of resources, e.g. bandwidth brokers
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/83 based on usage prediction

Abstract

A method and system is provided to manage and track changes in enterprise architectures. The invention provides a hierarchical visual management tool to manage and update relational information within an enterprise in a controlled fashion. The relationship may be maintained in a database and displayed via graphical user interface. Enterprise assets are categorized into such categories as goals, customer values or requirements, capabilities, resources, and the like. A hierarchy is constructed so that relationships between these various categories are identified and captured using the invention. Weights may be assigned to each element of the categories so that any proposed change to an enterprise architecture may be viewed so that a value can be ascertained and compared between other values of other proposed changes. In this manner, tracking and management of evolutionary changes to an architecture may be accomplished using relational information.

Claims

1. A method for managing and tracking changes, the method comprising the steps of:

defining at least one customer requirement for an enhancement to an enterprise architecture;

identifying at least one capability to provide the enhancement to the enterprise architecture;

estimating at least one of a revenue increase and a cost saving associated with the at least one capability; and

determining a value provided by the at least one capability based upon an implementation cost and the at least one of the revenue increase and the cost saving.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising the steps of:

mapping the at least one customer requirement to the at least one capability; and

comparing the value provided by the at least one capability with another value provided by at least one other capability and determining which capability provides optimum value.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the identifying step includes identifying one or more strategic resources to support the at least one capability.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein the identifying at least one capability step includes identifying at least one of a business process, a personnel skill/competency, a physical entity, an information technology, a system component, and an infrastructure component.

5. The method of claim 3, further comprising assigning a weight to the one or more strategic resources and prioritizing the one or more strategic resources based on the assigned weight.

6. The method of claim 3, further comprising the step of assigning outcome based performance metrics to the one or more strategic resources.

7. The method of claim 6, further comprising the step of implementing the one or more strategic resources and tracking the one or more strategic resources based on the outcome based performance metrics.

8. The method of claim 1, further comprising the steps of:

assigning a weight to the at least one capability; and

prioritizing the at least one capability based on the assigned weight.

10. The method of claim 1, further comprising the steps of:

assigning outcome based performance metrics to the at least one capability; and

implementing the at least one capability and tracking the at least one capability based on the outcome based performance metrics.

9. (canceled and (not entered)

11. A method for providing a service for tracking and managing changes, the method comprising the steps of:

establishing at least one goal for establishing an endpoint of an evolutionary change to an enterprise architecture;

associating one or more values that define requirements of the evolutionary change with the at least one goal;

affiliating with the one or more values, one or more strategic capabilities that represent functions that are present to support the one or more values;

identifying one or more resources that represent enterprise components with the one or more strategic capabilities; and

hierarchically maintaining relationships of the at least one goal, the one or more values, the one or more strategic capabilities and the one or more resources.

12. The method of claim 11, further comprising the step of tracking and managing the evolutionary change using the maintained hierarchical relationships.

13. The method of claim 11, further comprising the step of ensuring the one or more values align with the at least one goal.

14. The method of claim 11, further comprising the steps of:

defining a relationship between the one or more values and the one or more strategic capabilities; and

defining a relationship between the one or more strategic capabilities and the one or more resources.

15. The method of claim 11, wherein the affiliating step identifies and affiliates one of a new workforce capability and a new technology capability with the one or more values.

16. The method of claim 11, wherein the identifying step includes identifying and affiliating with the one or more strategic capabilities at least one of a process, a personnel skills/competencies, an information technology, a system component, information, and an infrastructure component.

17. The method of claim 11, further comprising maintaining a database reflecting the hierarchically maintained relationship of the at least one goal, the one or more values, the one or more strategic capabilities and the one or more resources.

18. The method of claim 11, further comprising the steps of establishing weights for at least one of the at least one goal, the one or more values, the one or more strategic capabilities, and the one or more resources, the weights providing a relative priority of importance.

19. The method of claim 11, further comprising the step of determining a cost factor for at least one alternative evolutionary change.

20. The method of claim 19, wherein the determining step includes comparing a cost factor for more than one alternative evolutionary change for optimum value.

21. The method of claim 11, wherein in at least one of the steps the relationship of the at least one goal, the one or more values, the one or more strategic capabilities and the one or more resources are hierarchically maintained in a database and are viewable via a graphical user interface.

22. A method for tracking and managing changes, the method comprising the steps of:

identifying a new enterprise asset to an enterprise architecture;

identifying one or more defined capabilities associated with the new enterprise asset;

identifying one or more new resources associated with the new enterprise asset;

implementing the one or more defined capabilities and one or more new resources; and

tracking the one or more defined capabilities and one or more new resources based on assigned performance based metrics.

23. The method of claim 22, wherein the identifying a new enterprise asset step includes identifying at least one of a new customer value, a new technology, a new workforce skill and a new process.

24. The method of claim 23, wherein when identifying a new customer value, the steps further comprise:

providing a new shareholder value;

ensuring the customer value aligns with one or more goals;

evaluating current capabilities to determine whether the current capabilities satisfy the new customer value; and

if so, defining a relationship between the current capabilities and the new customer value.

25. The method of claim 24, wherein in any step a hierarchical relationship is maintained between any of the new customer value, one or more goals, the current capabilities, the one or more defined capabilities, and the one or more new resources, and the hierarchical relationship is viewable via a graphical user interface.

26. The method of claim 23, wherein when the identifying step includes identifying at least one of the new customer value, a new technology, and a new workforce skill, one or more defined capabilities, the step further comprise:

determining whether one or more current resources satisfy the one or more defined capabilities; and

if so, defining a relationship between the one or more defined capabilities and the one or more current resources.

27. The method of claim 22, further comprises the steps of:

defining a relationship between the one or more new resources and the one or more defined capabilities to determine which one or more resources supports which one or more defined capabilities;

establishing measures for the one or more new resources; and

evaluating the one or more new resources contribution to the one or more defined capabilities based on the established measures.

28. The method of claim 27, further comprising the steps of:

establishing weights for the one or more resources;

evaluating the one or more capabilities based on each of the assigned new resource'"'"'s weights;

if the established weights are not within defined parameters, then reprioritizing the one or more defined capabilities;

performing a tradeoff analyses to determine the one or more defined capabilities implementation phases.

29. The method of claim 28, further comprising the step of conducting a business case analysis based on the one or more defined capabilities implementation phases.

30. The method of claim 28, further comprising the steps of:

assigning outcome based performance metrics to the one or more defined capabilities and one or more new resources; and

evaluating effectiveness of the one or more defined capabilities and one or more new resources to an enterprise stakeholder.

31. The method of claim 22, wherein in any of the steps, a graphical user interface is used to display a hierarchical relationship between the one or more defined capabilities and the one or more new resources.

32. A system for managing and tracking a change, the system comprising:

a component to define at least one customer requirement for an enhancement to an enterprise architecture;

a component to identify at least one capability to provide the enhancement to the enterprise architecture;

a component to estimate at least one of a revenue increase and a cost saving associated with the at least one capability; and

a component to determine a value provided by the at least one capability based upon the implementation cost and the at least one of a revenue increase and the cost saving.

33. The system of claim 32, further comprising a component to map the at least one customer requirement to the at least one capability.

34. The system of claim 32, further comprising a component to compare the value provided by the at least one capability with a value provided by at least one other capability and to determine which capability provides optimum value.

35. The system of claim 32, wherein the enterprise architecture includes at least one of a hardware architecture and a software architecture.

36. The system of claim 32, wherein the component to identify at least one capability identifies one or more strategic resources to support the at least one capability and the one or more strategic resources includes at least one of a business process, a personnel skill/competency, a physical entity, an information technology, a system component, and an infrastructure component.

37. The system of claim 36, further includes a component to assign a weight to the one or more strategic resources and a component to prioritize the one or more resources based on the assigned weight.

38. The system of claim 36, further includes a component to assign outcome based performance metrics to the one or more strategic resources.

39. The system of claim 38, further includes a component to track the one or more strategic resources based on the outcome based performance metrics.

40. The system of claim 32, further comprising:

a component to assign a weight to the at least one capability; and

a component to prioritize the at least one capability based on the assigned weight.

41. The system of claim 32, further comprising a component to assign outcome based performance metrics to the at least one capability.

42. A system for providing a service for tracking and managing changes, the system comprising:

a means for establishing at least one goal for establishing an endpoint of an evolutionary change to an enterprise architecture;

a means for associating one or more values that defines requirements of the evolutionary change with the at least one goal;

a means for affiliating with the one or more values, one or more strategic capabilities that represent functions that must be present to support the one or more values; and

a means for identifying one or more resources that represent enterprise components with the one or more strategic capabilities,

wherein the relationship of the at least one goal, the one or more values, the one or more strategic capabilities and the one or more resources are hierarchically maintained to provide tracking and managing capabilities of the evolutionary change.

43. The system of claim 42, further comprising a means for ensuring the one or more values align with the at least one goal.

44. The system of claim 42, further comprising a means for defining a relationship between the one or more values and the one or more strategic capabilities.

45. The system of claim 42, further comprising a means for defining a relationship between the one or more strategic capabilities and the one or more resources.

46. The system of claim 42, wherein the means for affiliating provides a means for the one or more strategic capabilities to identify and affiliate one of a new workforce capability and a new technology capability with the one or more values.

47. The system of claim 42, wherein the means for identifying one or more resources identifies and affiliates at least one of a process, a personnel skill/competency, an information technology, a system component, an information, and an infrastructure component.

48. The system of claim 42, further comprising a means for maintaining a database that reflects the hierarchical relationship of the at least one goal, the one or more values, the one or more strategic capabilities and the one or more resources.

49. The system of claim 42, further comprising a means for establishing weights for at least one of the at least one goal, the one or more values, the one or more strategic capabilities and the one or more resources, the weights providing a relative priority of importance.

50. The system of claim 42, further comprising a means for determining a cost factor for at least one alternative evolutionary change.

51. The system of claim 42, wherein the relationship of the at least one goal, the one or more values, the one or more strategic capabilities and the one or more resources are hierarchically maintained in a database and are viewable via a graphical user interface.

52. A computer program product comprising a computer usable medium having readable program code embodied in the medium, the computer program product includes:

a first computer code to define at least one customer requirement for an enhancement to an enterprise architecture;

a second computer code to identify at least one capability to provide the enhancement to the enterprise architecture;

a third computer code to estimate at least one of a revenue increase and a cost saving associated with the at least one capability; and

a fourth computer code to determine a value provided by the at least one capability based upon the implementation cost and the at least one of a revenue increase and the cost saving.