AIM provides the foundation for digital transformation

The main problem that AIM solves is improved understanding of how your business works, by allowing you to model core information flows and functions. This is foundational to enabling good decision making and design choices.

The main direct users of AIM are likely to be:

  • Enterprise Architects, working with the business and helping to create the AIM digital business model.
  • Business Stakeholders, providing direction on how their business unit works, and defining work products exchanged with other business units and external stakeholders.
  • Solution Architects, using an OpenExchange export from AIM to use in their favourite Solution Architecture design tool when designing a project architecture aligned to the top level AIM digital transformation business model.
  • Project Management Office, analyzing the overall cost and benefits of projects mapped to the AIM model and deciding which projects will be funded.
  • Project Managers, understanding how their project fits into the overall digital business model.
  • Everyone in the business, understanding and helping to refine the narrative around the overall digital transformation

You might benefit from AIM if you’re seeing these symptoms

There are several signs that you may likely benefit from using AIM.

Slow service delivery

You’re pretty sure that service delivery to your customers is slow but not sure where the problem is…

…and to fix this you’d like to create a digital business model that can visualize which parts of the business are slow, and then use that to obtain funding to fix the problem.

Unknown impact of buying vendor solutions

You often buy 3rd party vendor IT solutions to use, but don’t really have any insight into how they fit into the overall IT platform…

…and to fix this you’d like to update your digital business model with the vendor’s solution in advance of making a buying decision to see if it helps with your digital transformation.

 

Out of control duplicate projects

You don’t have any sort of view on the extent to which multiple IT projects may be doing the same thing, or making changes in the same area of your business…

…and to fix this you’d like to manage your IT portfolio against a digital business model that lets you detect duplicate projects and assess project benefits in a uniform way.

Lack of co-ordinating design guiding projects

Projects are viewed as an end unto themselves, rather than just a ‘transaction’ that should make overall holistic information processing better…

…and to fix this you’d like projects to be identified and shaped against a holistic digital business model. You’d like the subsequent development of a project architecture to remain true to the original scope and intent.

No standardization around goals and benefits

You spend a lot of energy recreating requirements and goals/drivers per project, and these tend to be different for each project which makes it difficult to compare projects…

…and you’d like there to be a standard set of Enterprise benefits and a standard digital business model so that project scope and benefits can be more easily compared.

Lack of IT portfolio management

You have difficulty deciding where to allocate IT spending because you don’t have a common Enterprise model against which to view and trade-off project cost/benefits.

No concept of project shaping in your organization

Projects are conceived and initiated as “Install System X” or “Integrate System X with System Y” without anyone really understanding whether or not that makes sense in the overall scheme of Enterprise information flows.

You’re a big organization with lots of complexity

Your business is starting to get to a size where you really need a better way to communicate and consolidate changes to the IT platform to support the business.