Structuring and graphically representing requirements can be challenging for large projects.  Today I figured out how to draw the equivalent of several pages in excel into one single archimate diagram.

The requirements are structured in 3 columns : requirement family, description and concerned stakeholders.

Using archimate I drew actors corresponding to stakeholders vertically, as a kind of first column. Then I drew all requirements families at the top as a kind of first line by using xxx of the archimate motivation extension.

Requirements can then be represented as a kind of cell in the actors/ family table.

In order to simplify the drawing and trace the requirements dependencies I used a simple association between actor and requirement and an aggregation relationship between requirement family and requirement. Actors can link to any requirement.

The result looks like this :

This needs to be done in several phases: after some modeling, clusters of requirements can be identified and the drawing can be reorganized by reordering actors and requirements to improve readability.

The next step will be to map requirements to the solution processes,  functions and components.

Pas mal d’articles sur mes blogs, mon compte Twitter, facebook sont  en réalité des bouteilles à la mer.

Ce sont des messages que je lâche sans savoir s’ils atteindront un jour leurs cibles. Ils reflètent ma solitude par rapport à une situation, un problème, un événement, une frustration, une joie.

Tous les jours des milliards de bouteilles à la mer électroniques sont ainsi jetées dans l’océan Internet.

What is the first thing to do if you want to improve your company’s information management maturity ?

A. Buy a new datawarehouse

B. Buy a new ETL

C. Assign a Chief Data Officer

D. Invite Oracle

E. Fire all the DBAs

The right answer is C : assign a Chief Data Officer (CDO). Data is too important to be left to all and no one.

The CDO will have to start in the following tasks:

• identify the strategic data needs of the company
• conduct a data management maturity assessment
• set up an information management governance (data stewards, standards, procedures, concils…)
• plan information management projects: short, mid and long term.  The CDO can have a look at the DAMA DMBok for inspiration.

CDO on Wikipedia

“consumers are choosing to engage only with content that is personally relevant to them, their purpose and their passions”

Direction is so much more important than speed.  Many are going nowhere fast.