Application Strategy

Definitions

Application Strategy is the architecture work product produced during the business architecting activity that documents the customer organization’s strategy for producing future applications.

Objectives

The typical objectives of the application strategy are to document the customer organization’s business in terms of its:

• Future applications.

Benefits

The typical benefits of the application strategy are:

• It enables the customer organization to plan and prioritize its future applications.

Contents

The typical contents of the application strategy are:

• Overview:
  • Organizational Goals
• For each Application X:
  • Description
  • Goals
  • Application Success Criteria
  • Planned Benefits (value proposition)
  • Stakeholders
  • Cost/Benefit Analysis (by reference)
  • Priority
• Conclusion
• Appendices:
  • Major Issues
  • TBDs
  • Assumptions

Stakeholders

The typical stakeholders of the application strategy are:

• Producers:
  • Architecture Team
• Evaluators:
  • Architecture Inspection Team
  • Customer Organization, which inspects the content for correctness
• Approvers:
  • Technical Leader
  • Project Manager
  • Customer Representative
• Maintainer: Architecture Team
• Users:
  • Business engineering architecture team, which uses the application strategy during the rearchitecting of the customer organization's business.
  • Application development requirements team, which uses the application strategy to develop the application vision statement.

Phases

• Initiation: Started
• Construction: Completed
• Delivery: Maintained
• Usage: Maintained
• Retirement: Archived

Preconditions

The application strategy typically can be started if the following preconditions hold:

• The initiation phase is started.
• The architecture team has been staffed and trained in application planning.

Inputs

The typical inputs to the application strategy include:

• Work Products:
  • Glossary
  • Customer Analysis
  • Market Analysis
  • User Analysis
  • Business Vision Statement
  • Business Object Model
  • Business Process Model
  • Application Business Case
• Stakeholders:
  • Business Domain Experts

Guidelines

• This is a living document that is developed incrementally and iteratively in parallel with other documents.

Conventions

The application strategy is typically constrained by the following conventions:

• Work Flow
• Content and Format Standard
• MS Word Template
• XML Template
• Inspection Checklist

Examples

• Example Application Business Case

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