“When you have achieved consensus on how the elephant looks, you can start discussing what to do with it.”
Aalto University is a new university with over a century of experience. Created from a high-profile merger between three leading universities in Finland – the Helsinki School of Economics, Helsinki University of Technology, and the University of Art and Design Helsinki – Aalto University opens up new possibilities for strong multidisciplinary education and research. The university has 20 000 students and a staff of 5 000 including 370 professors.
The University’s total annual budget exceeds 400 million euros.
Aalto is using QPR EnterpriseArchitect software as its enterprise architecture tool. The software allows modeling and managing all dimensions and layers of enterprise architecture.
Aalto University uses enterprise architecture for communication, responding to and managing change agilely, prioritizing projects, and meeting its 2020 vision. Foremost it is a communication tool: it tells the “as-is” and what wanted positions are.
“If you are not able to keep up with the phase of time and change, you will not survive. Enterprise architecture is our way to managing change. And the agility it delivers will allow us to reach our 2020 vision of being an institution internationally recognized for the impact of its science, art and design, and education”, Mr. Patrik Maltusch, the head of enterprise architecture at Aalto crystallizes the value of enterprise architecture to the university.
Aalto University is a new university with over a century of experience. Created from a high-profile merger between three leading universities in Finland – the Helsinki School of Economics, Helsinki University of Technology, and the University of Art and Design Helsinki – Aalto University opens up new possibilities for strong multidisciplinary education and research. The university has 20 000 students and a staff of 5 000 including 370 professors.
The University’s total annual budget exceeds 400 million euros.
Aalto is using QPR EnterpriseArchitect software as its enterprise architecture tool. The software allows modeling and managing all dimensions and layers of enterprise architecture.
Aalto University uses enterprise architecture for communication, responding to and managing change agilely, prioritizing projects, and meeting its 2020 vision. Foremost it is a communication tool: it tells the “as-is” and what wanted positions are.
“If you are not able to keep up with the phase of time and change, you will not survive. Enterprise architecture is our way to managing change. And the agility it delivers will allow us to reach our 2020 vision of being an institution internationally recognized for the impact of its science, art and design, and education”, Mr. Patrik Maltusch, the head of enterprise architecture at Aalto crystallizes the value of enterprise architecture to the university.
“QPR EnterpriseArchitect allows us to model not just how things are, but also what has been envisioned, where we are going, and where we want to go. This way we can determine how changing one system affects other systems. Key advice when acquiring an enterprise architecture tool is to consider if changes in one system affects your other systems.”
– Patrik Maltusch, Head of enterprise architecture, Aalto University
Enterprise architecture with a solid business case
As a merger case, the Aalto University fits perfectly into the solution area of QPR EnterpriseArchitect and the Enterprise Architecture based Operational Development Model embedded into the software. The model’s main benefits are achieved in mergers, acquisitions, and divestitures or outsourcing cases.
As all enterprise architecture initiatives should, Aalto University enterprise architecture is based on a business case. In Aalto’s case, it laid in the quest to minimize the complexity inherited from the merger. Due to this, the IT function of the new university had a strong development need as it had to combine IT systems from three universities.
“What to replace? What new needs to be acquired? What transactions will take place? Those were some of the questions we had to wrestle with”, recalls Patrik Maltusch.
At the time when Aalto University started its enterprise architecture exercise, the discipline had already been introduced to the Finnish Public Sector. Also, the Finnish universities had, had their own common initiative for modeling higher education services as well as individual initiatives. This work also aimed at securing the use of their knowledge bases.
Existing enterprise architecture frameworks, such as The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF) and the NATO Architecture Framework (NAF), were utilized. The target was to build a unified and common reporting model for the universities.
However, when Aalto decided that all post-merger development must focus on supporting research and teaching, customer orientation became the driving force in its enterprise architecture work – instead of the traditional administration and reporting.
Enterprise architecture was the solution that made it possible to introduce a business-outcome-orientated approach, although, in Aalto’s case, the work was launched with an IT emphasis. Maltusch recalls that at this point enterprise architecture was still seen as more of a framework and TOGAF as the most central framework.
Securing interoperability on a logical level
Enterprise architecture work started in Aalto first with standard office tools (see picture on next page). One year after the merger, Aalto’s management gave an assignment to define whether a professional tool is needed for documenting the operational environment or could the work continue with the standard office tools. The outcome was to abandon the office tools and acquire a professional tool for unified “documentation” (– modeling was not the word used, yet).
According to Maltusch the added value of any enterprise architecture tool is the interoperability it makes possible. It is not enough that various tools connect technically well. Most important is to secure that interoperability takes place on a logical level – and the logical entities cannot be modeled with just a picture and a pen. With QPR EnterpriseArchitect this is tackled by supporting many views of the same entities but also with the possibility of setting some limits on which notations can be used in different modeling situations. The tool also supports the definition of roles and tasks as well as decision-making model.
An invitation was sent to other universities to find out whether they are interested in joining in the selection of the tool. Two replied positively, the University of Jyväskylä and the Sibelius Academy (one of the biggest music universities in Europe).
A list of requirements was set for the tool. Among them were modularity, interoperability, general capability to support the use of frameworks, and the possibility to use existing enterprise architecture frameworks – including the ones already in use in the higher education sector.
Transparency was a focal requirement as the aim was to get everyone in the university as a user. Transparency is also one of Aalto’s core values. Thus, whichever tool would be selected, it must be easy to communicate and publish all deliverables of the enterprise architecture work.
With transparency comes benchmarking and the ability to learn from the work of others. Accordingly, Aalto has walked the walk and utilized the Finnish Public Sector enterprise architecture and process modeling service in its enterprise architecture work. QPR Software is delivering this service to the Finnish Ministry of Finance.
Aalto University’s enterprise architecture tool journey (picture courtesy of Aalto University).
Fast implementation with imbedded enterprise architecture model
An embedded reference model or at least the option to embed one into the tool was another must. With the embedded Operational Development Model QPR EnterpriseArchitect met this pre-requirement. With this model, Aalto University got a ready framework into which it could introduce its own existing enterprise architecture work. Thanks to this, both execution and implementation were considerably faster and cost-efficient.
“The single main benefit introduced by QPR EnterpriseArchitect is that it allows us to model – not just how things are – but also what has been envisioned, where we are going, and where we want to go. This way we could define how changing one system affects other systems. My key advice to anyone who is thinking about acquiring an enterprise architecture tool is to consider how often you will have cases when a change in one of your systems affects your other systems,” says Patrik Maltusch.
Fast implementation with imbedded enterprise architecture model
An embedded reference model or at least the option to embed one into the tool was another must. With the embedded Operational Development Model QPR EnterpriseArchitect met this pre-requirement. With this model, Aalto University got a ready framework into which it could introduce its own existing enterprise architecture work. Thanks to this, both execution and implementation were considerably faster and cost-efficient.
“The single main benefit introduced by QPR EnterpriseArchitect is that it allows us to model – not just how things are – but also what has been envisioned, where we are going, and where we want to go. This way we could define how changing one system affects other systems. My key advice to anyone who is thinking about acquiring an enterprise architecture tool is to consider how often you will have cases when a change in one of your systems affects your other systems,” says Patrik Maltusch.
By displaying a project and system views side by side you can see the similarities and connection points (picture courtesy of Aalto University)
Prioritize projects by linking them to strategy
The decision to focus on securing operational activities in the first phase of the merger meant that not all IT systems would be merged in the first phase. Again enterprise architecture was found to be the solution responding to this need. Projects were prioritized by linking them to the university’s strategy with QPR EnterpriseArchitect.
Aalto introduced a common project planning template after the merger. University functions prepared their projects independently with it. When the plans were later collected together it was discovered that all projects had scheduled changes to be executed simultaneously. Allowing this would mean focusing all resources on renewing the existing systems and requiring in practice closing the teaching for a year. The total monetary value of this “mega” change would have reached 10 million euros. Enterprise architecture was the vehicle to get out of this impossible situation.
Although all the change projects had used a common template, they had done their work from the point-of-view of their own university function. Thus all plans lacked information on their effect on any other function. A unified way of modeling was needed, and QPR EnterpriseArchitect as a common tool gave this. The common way of modeling was also secured by training. In addition to selecting which modeling tools are available in which view Aalto could – and can – secure that only things belonging to that view are modeled.
The “Big” target for the Aalto merger project was built from the smaller projects’ targets. This was done by opening each project with QPR EnterpriseArchitect by dismantling their key elements, such as capabilities, stakeholders, services, requirements, process areas, applications, system requirements, and application realization from the project plans.
This practical enterprise architecture exercise in Aalto confirmed that one of the benefits of QPR EnterpriseArchitect is that it allows modeling many objects from different viewpoints at the same time and combining the modeling work later. For example based on the information model you can decide who owns the master data used in several systems.
“With QPR EnterpriseArchitect we re-modeled what was already modeled, but now from a new angle. When you display a project and a system side by side you can see the similarities and connection points for example between system and project views. Then you can take the needs of the neighboring project into account when for example drafting a request for quotation for your own project”, Patrik Maltusch describes.
Enterprise architecture is communication
According to Patrik Maltusch, no enterprise architecture tool is a decision-making tool. However, the better it supports decision-making, the more effective it is. But foremost enterprise architecture software is a communication tool: it tells what the “as-is” and the wanted positions are.
A major challenge related to this is how the current “as-is” situation can be modeled from various viewpoints without changing it. This is related to how a diagram that the target audience can understand is created.
“When each audience is entitled to have its own view, then we can talk to it with its own language. This supports information sharing and helps align diagrams. In the best situation we can create innovations delivering genuine added value when we see something we did not expect to see”, he continues.
One way of securing the easiest understanding of diagrams for each audience is to use the framework that fits best to the case. QPR EnterpriseArchitect allows using in parallel several notations, like ArchiMate and BPMN. According to Maltusch, this is a huge benefit, for example, ArchiMate fits modeling upper layers, but does not allow to model processes in process metrics level. There one would use BPMN.
Expansion and quality through crowd sourcing
Aalto University’s Portal has four views for its enterprise architecture framework in the current first phase. The Public view is open to anyone with a relationship to Aalto thus mainly the 30,000 university staff and students. The Business view is open to a few hundred users, having a key role in the organization.
The Transform view is for persons working in the merger project management and has approximately 100 users. The fourth, the Enterprise architecture view, is for approximately a dozen modelers.
“Openness to all views is our way of introducing the power of crowd-sourcing into our enterprise architecture work. Another way of doing it is to use QPR EnterpriseArchitect in our own university education. By giving real cases with ready data and diagrams we can use the expertise of our students to improve them”, Patrik Maltusch says.
The second phase will introduce a commenting functionality. The last, and third phase will add publishing targets when the Aalto enterprise architecture work has progressed to a detailed enough level.
Above: Aalto’s web-based QPR Portal makes enterprise architecture work available for everybody.
Below: Aalto University’s conceptual enterprise architecture journey (pictures courtesy of Aalto University).
Let us help you in your enterprise architecture development!
QPR Software is specialized in the operational development of private and public sector organizations. Our mission is to help our customers to become agile and efficient in their operations. We offer software and services in areas of enterprise architecture development, process modeling, and analysis as well as performance management. We have more than 1,500 customers in over 50 countries and our shares are listed on the NASDAQ OMX Helsinki Ltd.
Let us help you in your enterprise architecture development!
QPR Software is specialized in the operational development of private and public sector organizations. Our mission is to help our customers to become agile and efficient in their operations. We offer software and services in areas of enterprise architecture development, process modeling, and analysis as well as performance management. We have more than 1,500 customers in over 50 countries and our shares are listed on the NASDAQ OMX Helsinki Ltd.
“The added value of an enterprise architecture tool is the interoperability it makes possible. It is not enough that various tools can connect technically well. Most important is to secure that the interoperability takes place on the logical level – and the logical entities cannot be modeled with just a picture and a pen.”
– Patrik Maltusch, Head of enterprise architecture, Aalto University
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Tel. +358 290 001 150,
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Tel. +7 495 737-63-03,
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To find a reseller in our own country or region, please visit:
www.qpr.com/Partners/reseller-network.htm.
QPR Community:
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QPR Software Plc Head Office (Finland):
Tel. +358 290 001 150,
www.qpr.com.
QPR Moscow Office (Russia):
Tel. +7 495 737-63-03,
www.qpronline.ru.
To find a reseller in our own country or region, please visit:
www.qpr.com/Partners/reseller-network.htm.
QPR Community:
community.qpr.com
