A Better Enterprise Architecture    (Click for a PDF of this page)

The Knowledge Genome^TM of your whole organization

Getting Started   (back to top)

Create the strategic Knowledge Gene^®

Create a strategic Knowledge Gene^® covering the high level architecture of the business - WHY does the organization exist? WHAT are the key things that need to be done and HOW? You can start from scratch or use an existing template as a guide to the areas that need covering. We recommend the Balance Scorecard as a useful guide:

The Balanced Scorecard (click to go to the Knowledge Gene^®)




Choose other Knowledge Genes^®



And, if you can't find what you are looking for, we'd be delighted to create a Knowledge Gene^® for you
... click here



Create your own knowledge

Of course you will have your own specific knowledge that you want to codify. This can be done at any time by opening a new Knowledge Gene^® ... click here to see how this works

Workshops and/or facilitation

The approach works well for individuals thinking on their own but also works very well in workshops. Consider bringing together the various stakeholders and build a Knowledge Gene^® together - Knowledge Genes^® is ideal for big screen projection. The simple but powerful WHAT-HOW-WHY structure quickly enables a consensus view to appear, even in situations where opposing views at first seem irreconcilable. The process is an enjoyable but penetrating therapy that ends up uniting people behind a common purpose.

As an alternative or in addition, we can provide facilitators who can build Knowledge Genes^® on your behalf or run the whole project for you.





Add text and metadata

As a Knowledge Gene^® is being created, it's often convenient to capture some information in the form of conventional text.



The percentage split between Knowledge Gene^® and text is entirely at the discretion of the author. But of course, conventional text can't be WHY tested and is harder to assimilate than a Knowledge Gene^®. For this reason, most people capture the key components of the mind map in Knowledge Genes^® and use text to add description, examples, notes for later attention, useful attachments and so on.




Metadata templates are available, together with a metadata schema, enabling formatted text entry and database search for a wide variety of predefined metadata items (for Enterprise Space subscibers only – please contact your account representative for more information).


Publishing a Knowledge Gene^®

When you are ready to share the Enterprise Architecture, you can set up a multi-user Enterprise Space - totally secure environment where all the Knowledge Genes^® you build will be private. It also includes comprehensive, hierarchical category management, user permission control by category or by individual Knowledge Gene^®, and collaborative authoring.

Ongoing use can be as low as $1 per user per month and if you want you can have Knowledge Genes^® as an in-house installation
... click here for more information







Communication

A Knowledge Gene^® is an ideal way to communicate the Enterprise Architecture between all staff in the IT organization and all interested parties in the business community. It's built around the fundamental questions that a reader needs to understand – WHAT, HOW, WHY. And because of this the communication has a perfect structure, leaving no questions unanswered but guiding you to avoid unnecessary words.



And the Enterprise Architecture provides the idea framework for defining individual project boundaries. The inherent structure ensures separate projects are properly aligned to the Enterprise Architecture and the organization's purpose. Significant time and cost inefficiencies are avoided.



Knowledge Genes^® for detailed requirements

Once your strategic Knowledge Gene^® is created, supporting Knowledge Genes^® can be separately created to focus in on specific functions within an overall architecture, or to define specific project requirements. Many Knowledge Genes^® may be accumulated in large organizations as, increasingly, all operational areas are covered.

Don't necessarily limit Knowledge Genes^® to defining best practice ways of working. Sometimes, it's just useful to create simple Knowledge Genes^® to capture ideas and stimulate discussion on specific topics that need to be thought through.

Knowledge Genes^® related to any specific topic will automatically be listed in the Genes tab.



Additionally, you can specifically link one Knowledge Gene^® to another. (for Enterprise Space subscibers only – please contact your account representative for more information).



Export to UML

Once requirements are established, they can be exported to your chosen development environment at the level of detail you feel appropriate:
- Just the requirement agreed with business users can be exported, or
- The WHAT HOW WHY analysis can be continued down into detailed component (class) design

The advantage of using Knowledge Genes^® to document actual component designs is the likelihood of better design and better documentation by using the penetrating WHAT HOW WHY approach.

Any Knowledge Gene^® can be automatically transformed to UML diagrams for further design or for interoperability with other tools.

... click here to contact us about exporting your Knowledge Gene to UML or other industry standards



Semantic Map of the corporate web

The WHAT-HOW-WHY Knowledge Genome^TM of your organization is used to automatically create an intelligent index – a Semantic Map of your corporate web.

Information from the Web or corporate web is automatically indexed into each Knowledge Gene^® so that your information schema is automatically 100% aligned with your Enterprise Architecture.

Because Knowledge Genes^® know WHAT you are trying to understand, WHY and HOW they can more intelligently find related information from the Web.



Additionally, you can connect Knowledge Genes^® to your enterprise search environment, enabling documents from the corporate web to be automatically and intelligently indexed into your enterprise knowledgebase
Behind the scenes, Knowledge Genes^® can be connected to the leading information access environments (requires the Application Orchestration Engine – please contact your account representative for more information).



... Learn more about connecting to information access environments.



Knowledge Genes^® for application control and orchestration

Because a Knowledge Gene^® knows WHAT needs to be done, HOW, and most importantly WHY, it can be used to control and orchestrate application components. A number of prebuilt application components are available but the Application Orchestration Engine, comes with a comprehensive API for those wishing to use this control and orchestration capability, including:

• WhatHowWhy API - gives access to the WHAT, HOW and WHY structure within a Knowledge Gene^®
• Context API - gives access to the context (current action) of the orchestration of a Knowledge Gene^®
• Alerting API - allows the setup of alerts to users of Knowledge Genes^®
• User API - gives access to the people who will be using your application components
• plus others...

And at any time, the Knowledge Gene^® behind the application can be viewed to provide an integrated help system for the user, an integrated definition of manual process, and total transparency about any automated process - WHAT it's doing, WHY and HOW.

Click here to get more information about using our Application Orchestration Engine.