Ardoq, an Enterprise Architecture tool for digital transformation

An Enterprise Architecture tool for a Digital Transformation roadmap: feedback from Ardoq

A few months ago, we shared our thoughts on the new challenge that Digital Transformation represents for Enterprise Architecture.

We highlighted the new challenges of an agile and collaborative approach to enterprise architecture in order to manage the dual alignment of changing and unpredictable developments in business models and operations on the one hand, and technological innovations on the other, brought about by digital transformation.

We went on to discuss the central role played in an agile Enterprise Architecture model by the business capacity map, both in terms of its relationship to the company's strategic challenges and its projections on the application, data, and technology levels, in the context of a digital overhaul of the information system. And its ability to provide the value analyses necessary for prioritizing the digital information system roadmap.

This approach, driven by business challenges and added value, makes Enterprise Architecture factual by adapting it to the business context and, beyond the necessary sharing of information, enables its adoption by all stakeholders involved in the Digital Transformation project.

Here, we propose to illustrate this approach with an example inspired by a current client project concerning the audit and roadmap for the digital renovation of our client's information system. We will share a few examples of artifacts built with the Ardoq tool, an innovative Norwegian company that publishes a new generation of fully collaborative Enterprise Architecture tools offered in SaaS mode and duly referenced by Forrester and Gartner.

What customer context?

Our client is a cooperative of plant breeders and has been managing the intellectual property rights entrusted to it for over 70 years. It acts as a trusted third party between plant breeders and licensed producers who use their varieties. Through these actions, our client establishes a framework for fair competition and contributes to the overall vitality of the agricultural sector. This SME, which is very compact in terms of staff numbers, nevertheless handles significant financial flows at the heart of its ecosystem. Its operations are based on a legacy information system built nearly 20 years ago, which is currently being renovated in certain areas and gradually enhanced with satellite Web and Extranet applications.

Our client decided to entrust Gabriel Greenfield with auditing its information system in order to ensure its technological sustainability, identify new service needs for internal and external use, and thoroughly improve the organization of relations between the IT and business teams.

This audit, which began two months ago, is now being finalized. We conducted it using an agile enterprise architecture framework, characterized by numerous short, agile workshops and iterative capitalization of existing resources and needs in model spaces equipped by Ardoq. It should be noted that despite the ongoing health crisis, we were able to complete this mission remotely thanks to the collaborative tools we used (Teams, Ardoq), including workshops that were deliberately extended to include broad collaboration across all departments of our client (CEO, CIO, Operations, CFO/HR) and Gabriel Greenfield's expertise (enterprise architect, digital expert, agility expert).

The first step was the (traditional) collection of existing business and IT elements and the identification of the pain points and strengths of the information system. Carried out through a series of workshops, this phase was facilitated by Ardoq's collaborative capabilities, in particular online collection via forms (surveys) generated by the tool.

The first artifacts of business capacity mapping and functional coverage by applications were thus constructed iteratively.

The second step was to classify the requirements gathered (business and technical developments) according to the challenges involved. This study and construction phase made it possible to identify all the projects to be carried out in order to consolidate, open up, and perpetuate the technical foundation currently undergoing renovation, respond to various business needs, and implement new digital services, including the exploitation of company data.

It also enabled us to classify these projects according to their added value (Business Strategic Fit) and to project them onto the application blocks in transition.

Modeling these elements in Ardoq, facilitated by the artifact templates provided by the tool (roadmap, dependency matrix), enabled us to share them visually and thus in a way that was understandable to all stakeholders involved.

The third step was to evaluate the “perceived cost” of the projects to be implemented. Using a “cost/value” model inspired by Lean Change Management practices, we were able to make all of the company's stakeholders aware of the challenges associated with the projects, their usefulness, their contribution, and also their cost. This step, which is inherent in any issue-driven Enterprise Architecture approach, is particularly important in our case given the misunderstandings and even frustrations that have built up over time between the IT and business teams.

Today, we are finalizing the audit with the final stage of consolidation, collaborative development, and prioritization of the company-wide digital information system roadmap. Thanks to the participation of senior management, who provided fundamental support throughout the audit, we will have contributed to the development of our client's digital transformation roadmap for their information system.

This roadmap is tailored to our client's mission and medium- and long-term objectives, which were identified, reformulated, and shared during our assignment. It leverages the technological innovations offered by digitalization (API, cloud, data/enterprise intelligence) in a way that is consistent with the legacy information system.