Map out Customer Experience, Operating Model, Strategic Drivers and other relevant perspectives on your enterprise ecosystem and organization. Translate, connect and make sense of all the pieces to create a shared view on the enterprise as a whole, identify opportunities and design transformations.
Mapping out a Scenario allows a diverse group of enterprise designers and stakeholders to create a shared visual model of the enterprise, looking at it from different angles. Scenarios are using the Stack to navigate the lenses to apply and what to map. They apply the unified Enterprise Design Modelling Language (EDML) to express a variety of aspects and explore the links between them. Similar to drawings and blueprints for a building, this provides a basis for sharing ideas and insights, joint decision-making and planning.
Scenarios are particularly useful when a diverse design team needs to make sense of the insights gathered, collaboratively process what they found and spot opportunities to explore. Especially in complex environments, good ideas are not enough and solutions don't come out of thin air. Map out scenarios for analysis and exploration to identify opportunities, understanding of trade-offs, and joint thinking and decision-making involving a variety of stakeholders.
Map out relevant parts of the current (as-is) state of the enterprise environment to transform, typically informed by running a Scan. This works best when opportunistically choosing what to look into, and what to put aside for now using the Stack. Start with simple maps collecting elements of a single aspect, such as operational processes, services, stakeholders or personas, and bring in relevant data. Then connect the dots by mapping relations in composite models, such as standard journey maps or blueprints -- or design custom canvases or matrices mapping what you need to map to make your point. Use these maps in Sprints and workshops to develop a shared vision of a desired future state (to-be) of the enterprise, steps how to get there, and the transformation impact.
Get EDML to map your enterprise scenario Book a free mentoring sessionDesigners, architects and analysts habitually produce maps and visualizations. EDML is designed to be a visual language to create mappings and visualizations as perspectives on an enterprise model. Instead of just producing more and more isolated artefacts, we create individual mappings as representations of an integrated semantic model. EDML is complimentary to more specific visual languages such as ArchiMate or UML, and follows similar basic principles.
3 Vocabulary Elements
EDML uses just three elements for its basic vocabulary, reused across all mappings and models, modelled after everyday language:
3 Relations
To map out the links between elements and express "sentences" that describe an enterprise design, EDML supports just three relations:
Using Stack Aspects to add meaning
In EDML, the generic language elements are being combined with the Stack icons to specify what aspects of the enterprise your models capture. For example, an activity can express a business process (Operation aspect) or a customer task (Experience aspect). An entity can be used to model a stakeholder (Actors aspect), a product (Business aspect) or a digital/IT system (Technology aspect). This way, we can capture what matters and avoid getting cought up in irrelevant details.
Simple and Composite Templates
To create mappings, EDML supports standard canvases, blueprints and journey maps, flows and hierarchies, circular and matrix maps, as well as more sophisticated mapping patterns. Simple mappings use just a single Stack aspect to map the enterprise from exactly that perspective, while Composite mappings map out the relationship between different aspects. You can choose from the template library, but also create your own templates according to what you need to map.
EDML supports standard templates and language configurations for the most common mappings and artifacts produced in Enterprise Design practice. By using a consistent language to express a variety of viewpoints on the enterprise, elements can be reused across various mappings, making them part of an integrated model rather than producing a collection of separate artefacts.
EDML Standard Scenario mappings cover the full 7 step Enterprise Design Approach from initial stakeholder engagement to tracking delivery, integrating the typical three levels of initiatives: enterprise, product/program and project level.
Using EDML, teams can jumpstart their practice and make meaningful mappings across the different levels of initiatives right away, simply by using a wide range of standard templates available. Elements are being reused and interlinked, allowing to navigate across different relevant viewpoints and trace decisions to earlier stages of the process. By adding more links over time, teams will develop an integrated model of the current and future state of the enterprise, driving coherence between different domains and between initiatives at different levels.
Experienced analysts, architects and designers know that using a standard mapping will only get them so far. The best visual mappings are custom designs created and tested to fit a purpose: they make sense to many stakeholders, help bridge their viewpoints, collaboratively make sense of the mess and achieve a shared expression of a desired future state, and ultimately be adopted as a working tool by teams helping us to get there.
EDML is designed to be used as a shared language to express current (as-is), intermediary and future (to be) states across a wide range of interrelated viewpoints on the enterprise, connecting and translating between them. Language elements can be freely combined to express what needs to expressed, and create killer mappings that people can relate to and use for collaborative thinking.
Topics include, but are not limited to:
To come up with mappings that fit, EDML supports defining custom meta-models as a subset of Stack aspects supported by the language. This enables teams to define what to include in their mapping, and to define a set of interrelated viewpoints expressed as simple and composite mappings. A set of generic templates such as circular networks, hierarchies, time-based flow charts or structural canvases are available to accelerate the mapping design process.
Achieving meaningful transformation when dealing with complex environments requires more than a few charts. Even when using EDML as a coherent language, key challenges remain: creating the right content, making it visually compelling and comprehensible, ensuring accessibility to all audiences, and maintaining this knowledge consistently over time. Enterprise Design Scenarios support a set of advanced Enterprise Modelling techniques to address these challenges:
Instead of using file sharing or publishing platforms, Enterprise Design Scenarios can be managed in a repository provided by an Enterprise Modelling tool. Every elements and all relations are managed and tracked in a database as part of one model, allowing for tracing links and navigation, versioning, web/mobile publishing and access control, advanced analysis and automated model creation. Currently, the QualiWare Enterprise Modelling Environment supports EDML mappings.
Any mapping is just a means to an end: communicating the underlying mesages and information. EDML mappings support alternative visualizations in order to tailor mappings to their audience and make information better accessible. The elements, syntax and relationships captured in the EDML mapping behind are preserved, while their visual expression can make use of custom graphics or other formats such as lists or diagrams.
Scenarios are meant to be adopted as working tools by teams to externalize knowledge and share insights, ideas and concepts. EDML mappings come with support for paper-based scenario mappings used in workshops and Sprints, lightweight digital sketching and managed repositories, and ways to switch between these modes. This way, the model adapts to the preferred mode of collaboration, not the other way around.
EDML is complimentary to other mapping and modelling techniques such as ArchiMate, BPMN or UML, and easy to integrate to enable seamless navigation. As an example, a high-level operating model described using EDML's Operation aspect can be further detailed using a BPMN diagram, or a domain model using the Structure aspect can be the high level basis for a class diagram or data model in UML. Standard mappings such as Business Model Canvas or Service Blueprints can be captured as EDML composite mappings, enabling reuse and linking between elements for an integrated model. Equally, EDML mappings can be used to fill complementary frameworks such as Zachman or TOGAF.
