Achieve Affordable Architectural Evolution With Acceptable Levels of Risk
Architex is an application used to create, integrate, collaborate and present enterprise evolution options including architectural transitions, programmatic budgets, integrated risks and driving requirements. Leveraging a centralized repository for this information helps empower decision makers with a clear view of all information driving their program.
Architex provides a modular approach to managing the different workflows required to capture and maintain all aspects of data needed for making informed decisions. This approach allows each individual group to stay within their respective workflow while providing decision makers the ability to correlate and understand all aspects of the data to make informed decisions.
Leveraging a centralized repository to host and maintain all data ensures all groups have access to and work with the most current information available. It can be deployed on a cloud, inter/intranets and/or standalone systems with a floating license model designed to provide the highest level of access for all members in the team.
ENSCO views architectural evolution through the lens of affordability, and we developed Architex to address the complex balance between the Technical Trades (associated with architectural objectives, driving requirements and topologies) and the Programmatic Trades (associated with an investment-driven roadmap, budgetary limitations and risk).
If enterprise objectives are not affordable, decision makers have three options that can be traded within Architex: reduce enterprise objectives, slip the implementation schedule or accept a higher level of risk. Architex can identify those requirements that disproportionately drive costs and budgetary requirements.
Architex is a modular approach to design, capture and create data visualization for decision support:
Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) enter data into an architecture from the designed framework.
Collector provides a streamlined data capture interface where SMEs can focus on data collection instead of understanding how to draw and connect objects.
- Relational data is displayed using drop downs ensuring users select from the correct values available and minimizing the risk of capturing bad data.
- Can easily import and export data using Excel.
Chief Architects create or modify frameworks to establish a metamodel structure for architectures.
Architex employs an open-ended framework design methodology allowing organizations to create, adapt and modify data frameworks to match organizational needs instead of the organization adapting to a preset framework design.
Designer has a unique approach to allow users the ability to link between common frameworks while maintaining the original structure. This enables groups to extend existing frameworks, like UPDM 2.1, and incorporate new concepts, such as risks and requirements.
Cost Experts perform program and roadmap planning correlating projects, dependencies, schedule and costs.
- Visualize, manage and relate project costs, schedules, colors-of-money and project dependencies.
- Identify impacts to changes in project completion and their impact to the enterprise architecture.
- Assess project costs and funding inputs to create and analyze architecture roadmap affordability scenarios based on constrained budgets.
- Understand the relationship between program requirements and budgetary requirements to support project funding prioritization for affordable architectural evolution at acceptable risk.
Risk Analysts develop and quantify an enterprise risk register, linking to Life cycle Affordability Module (LAM) projects to accurately analyze mitigation costs and track the posture.
RAM employs a powerful Risk Registry allowing the user to reflow information and understand how risks apply and cross into organizations, programs, and mission areas.
- Identify mitigation tasks and corrective actions and link them to projects in LAM.
- Visualize risk reports including risk summaries, risk waterfalls, mitigation cost profiles and risk rollups.
- Attribute risks to the enterprise architecture elements, capabilities, organizations, individuals, etc.
- Track and manage the status of enterprise project risks.
- Analyze costs to mitigate risks while assessing areas for greatest Return on Investment (ROI) in budget constrained environments.
- Track and project overall enterprise risk posture.
Administrators can configure role-based access by module and architecture to control what data users can see and use.
The User Manager module provides administrators the ability to control and manage organizational structure and individual user accounts, management of accessibility to modules and architectures. Administrators can also see key insights into how the service is being used, simultaneous seats used at any one time and review of user session durations and access points.
- Control access to module(s) and architecture(s) on none or a read/write level.
- Access enhanced security measures such has limited access only from specific systems.
- View service usage metrics such as user logins, session times, maximum license seats used simultaneously, and total time spent using the system.
Stakeholders can auto-generate data-driven reports for visualization or export.
Reporter uses a data-driven approach to creating reports and products from the data captured within the various workflows allowing a rapid generation of results with the push of a button. These reports leverage to most current information available within the system ensuring the products are accurate and up to date. Report templates are defined in advance to capture the source of the information, how it will be related and displayed ensuring all products have a desired consistency every time they are generated.
- Auto-generate data-driven reports for rapid analysis.
- Fully customizable with line types, colors, and imported icons.
- Many layout algorithm and routing options.
- Export reports – Reporter supports exporting all report products in common office formats including PNG, PDF, HTML, Word, and Excel formats.
- Supported Report Types – Reporter supports 20 different report types including most common UML diagrams, Timelines, Gantts Cross-Matrices. All report types are Fit for Purpose allowing the user to completely customize information from different architectures into a single report and showing insight beyond traditional reporting systems.
- Diagram types include Class, Object, Component, Entity Relationship, State, Use Case, Activity and Sequence diagrams.
- Document reports are generated from templates to populate Table, Dictionary, and Detail types.
- Additional report types include Charts, Cross Table, Timeline, Gantt and static reports which store PDF or Word documents.
