E-Business value web

• US 9,691,042 B2
• Filed: 05/24/2012
• Issued: 06/27/2017
• Est. Priority Date: 08/20/2003
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Kyndryl Incorporated (Kyndryl Holdings, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Ahern, Marybeth, Law, Michael J.
• Primary Examiner(s): Gart, Matthew
• Assistant Examiner(s): Swartz, Stephen S
• Application Number:
  US13/479,407
• Publication Number:
  US 20120232962A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,860 Days
• 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 tracking and managing changes by interaction with buttons displayed on a graphical user interface, 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 the one or more new resources;

maintaining a hierarchical relationship of the one or more defined capabilities and the one or more new resources, and tracking the one or more defined capabilities and the one or more new resources based on assigned performance based metrics;

defining the hierarchical 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;

providing a hierarchical visual management tool comprised of the graphical user interface implemented in a processor and configured to generate a display of the hierarchical relationship between the one or more defined capabilities and the one or more new resources to allow a user viewing the graphical user interface to define and test the assigned performance based metrics in a prototype environment to obtain estimates on performance of the one or more defined capabilities and the one or more new resources, wherein the graphical user interface is configured to display different levels of the hierarchical relationship in response to activating of buttons displayed on the graphical user interface, and wherein at one level of the displayed hierarchical relationship a plurality of capabilities are displayed and at a lower level of the displayed hierarchical relationship one or more resources determined to support a selected one of the capabilities are displayed;

traversing between different levels of the hierarchical relationship by activating selected ones of the buttons on the level of the hierarchical relationship currently displayed by the graphical user interface to thereby move up or down the hierarchical relationship to display different levels of the hierarchical relationship depending on the selected buttons;

displaying, by a traceability scale indicator on the graphical user interface, a current level of the hierarchical relationship which has been selected by the activation of the buttons displayed on the graphical user interface to identify to the user in real time the current level as a capability level when the current level is the one level where a plurality of capabilities are displayed, and to identify to the user in real time the current level as a resource level when the current level is the lower level where the one or more resources determined to support a selected one of the capabilities are displayed;

modifying the obtained estimates on performance using real performance information as the real performance information is observed from the implementing the one or more defined capabilities and the one or more new resources in order to determine whether the hierarchical relationship of the one or more defined capabilities and the one or more new resources is configured to satisfy the assigned performance based metrics; and

evaluating evolutionary changes of the new enterprise asset, comprising;

estimating a revenue increase or a cost saving associated with at least one capability of the one or more defined capabilities or a new capability;

determining a value provided by the at least one capability based on the estimating;

comparing the value to another value provided by another capability of the one or more defined capabilities; and

determining an optimum value of the new enterprise asset based on the comparison; and

providing a download mechanism on each of the levels of the display to provide for downloading display data shown on a currently displayed level of the display into database formats other than eBVW database format for at least one of maintenance and reports.

2. The method of claim 1, 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.

3. The method of claim 2, 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 the hierarchical relationship between the current capabilities and the new customer value;

when the current capabilities do not satisfy the new customer value, identify new capabilities further comprising;

determining whether one or more current resources satisfy the new capabilities;

if so, defining the hierarchical relationship between the new capabilities and the one or more current resources;

when the current resources do not satisfy the new capabilities, identify new resources; and

defining the hierarchical relationship between the new resources and the new capabilities.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein in any step the 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 the graphical user interface.

5. The method of claim 2, 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 comprises:

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

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

6. The method of claim 1, further comprises the steps of:

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.

7. The method of claim 6, 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; and

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

8. The method of claim 7, further comprising the step of conducting a business case analysis based on the one or more defined capabilities implementation phases.

9. The method of claim 7, 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.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein in any of the steps, the graphical user interface is used to display the hierarchical relationship between the one or more defined capabilities and the one or more new resources.

14. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

establishing weights for the one or more defined capabilities to assign a relative priority among the one or more defined capabilities, the establishing the weights comprising assigning a numeric value to each of the one or more defined capabilities;

evaluating the one or more defined capabilities based on the weights;

when priorities of the one or more defined capabilities are deemed correct, using relational information to quantify a value of an enterprise business model progressing through an evolutionary change from a current “

as-is”

state to a proposed “

to-be”

state that includes the new enterprise asset;

when the priorities of the one or more defined capabilities are deemed not correct then reprioritizing the one or more defined capabilities and subsequently using the reprioritized relational information to quantify a value of the enterprise business model progressing through the evolutionary change from the current “

as-is”

state to the proposed “

to-be”

state that includes the new enterprise asset; and

once the priorities of the one or more defined capabilities are deemed correct, defining and assigning the performance based metrics to the one or more defined capabilities and the one or more new resources such that the one or more defined capabilities and the one or more new resources are tracked and tested in the prototype environment.

15. The method of claim 14, wherein the performance based metrics are defined and tested by building simulated models for business process or technology resource enablers.

16. The method of claim 15, further comprising managing and updating the one or more defined capabilities and the one or more new resources within the hierarchical relationship, wherein the one or more defined capabilities and the one or more new resources are manipulated by a user via a graphical user interface, which is configured to display each level of the hierarchical relationship such that a hierarchy tree is maintained for the user'"'"'s visual relational comprehension.

19. The method of claim 1, wherein the traceability scale indicator is located on the graphical user interface at each level of display of the hierarchical relationship to permit the user to move up and down the different levels of the hierarchical relationship by selecting a desired level of the hierarchical relationship by a point-and-click operation for forward and backward functionality.

11. A method for tracking and managing changes by interaction with buttons displayed on a graphical user interface, the method comprising the steps of:

identifying a new enterprise asset to an enterprise architecture, comprising identifying at least one of a new customer value, a new technology, a new workforce skill and a new process;

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

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

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

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

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

defining a hierarchical 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, and tracking the one or more defined capabilities and the one or more new resources based on assigned performance based metrics;

providing a hierarchical visual management tool comprised of the graphical user interface implemented in a processor and configured to generate a display of the hierarchical relationship between the one or more defined capabilities and the one or more new resources to allow a user viewing the graphical user interface to define and test the assigned performance based metrics in a prototype environment to obtain estimates on performance of the one or more defined capabilities and the one or more new resources, wherein the graphical user interface is configured to display different levels of the hierarchical relationship in response to activating of buttons displayed on the graphical user interface, and wherein at one level of the displayed hierarchical relationship a plurality of capabilities are displayed and at a lower level of the displayed hierarchical relationship one or more resources determined to support a selected one of the capabilities are displayed;

wherein the testing comprises;

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;

displaying, by a traceability scale indicator on the graphical user interface, a current level of the hierarchical relationship which has been selected by the activation of the buttons displayed on the graphical user interface to identify to the user in real time the current level as a capability level when the current level is the one level where a plurality of capabilities are displayed, and to identify to the user in real time the current level as a resource level when the current level is the lower level where the one or more resources determined to support a selected one of the capabilities are displayed;

modifying the obtained estimates on performance using real performance information as the real performance information is observed from the implementing the one or more defined capabilities and the one or more new resources in order to determine whether the hierarchical relationship of the one or more defined capabilities and the one or more new resources is configured to satisfy the assigned performance based metrics, wherein the obtained estimates on performance are modified without modifying the hierarchical relationship of the one or more defined capabilities and the one or more new resources; and

evaluating evolutionary changes of the new enterprise asset, comprising;

estimating a revenue increase or a cost saving associated with at least one capability of the one or more defined capabilities or a new capability;

determining a value provided by the at least one capability based on the estimating;

comparing the value to another value provided by another capability of the one or more defined capabilities; and

determining an optimum value of the new enterprise asset based on the comparison; and

providing a download mechanism on each of the levels of the display to provide for downloading display data shown on a currently displayed level of the display into database formats other than eBVW database format for at least one of maintenance and reports.

12. The method of claim 11, 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; and

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

13. The method of claim 12, further comprising the step of conducting a business case analysis based on the one or more defined capabilities implementation phases.

17. The method of claim 11, further comprising

establishing measures for the one or more new resources;

evaluating a contribution of the one or more new resources to the one or more defined capabilities based on the established measures;

establishing weights for the one or more new resources;

evaluating the one or more defined capabilities based on each of the weights established for the one or more new resources;

assigning outcome based performance metrics to the one or more defined capabilities and the 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 based on the assigned outcome.

18. The method of claim 11, wherein the new enterprise asset is one of a new customer value, a new workforce skill, and a new process.

20. The method of claim 11, wherein the traceability scale indicator is located on the graphical user interface at each level of display of the hierarchical relationship to permit the user to move up and down the different levels of the hierarchical relationship by selecting a desired level of the hierarchical relationship by a point-and-click operation for forward and backward functionality.