The Art of Visualizing Software Architecture in EA

 Bob Hruska

 Ask somebody in the building industry to visually communicate the architecture of a building and you’ll be presented with site plans, floor plans, elevation views, cross-section views and detail drawings. In contrast, ask a software developer to communicate the software architecture of a software system using diagrams and you’ll likely get a confused mess of boxes and lines.   This workshop aims to provide a lightweight Simon Brown’s “C4 model” approach that software development teams can use to visualize their software in Enterprise Architect. The MDG Technology for C4 Model provides predefined model structure together with diagrams and relevant elements enabling you to draw diagrams at varying levels of abstraction to visualize the static structure of a software system.

Advanced Document Generation with Enterprise Architect

Geert Bellekens

 Document generation is important in most organisations that work with Enterprise Architect. Storing information in the model is good, but most stakeholders still require documents. Enterprise Architect comes with a sophisticated document generator that has seen great improvements in the last versions (v10, v11, v12 and v13). You also get a standard set of document templates that will quickly generate a document for a part of your model. In this training Geert will teach you how to tackle this problem using a Virtual Documents, Template Fragments and Scripting in order to create professional documents from your EA model.

Sparx EA and ArchiMate for Architects

Gillian Adens 

This 1/2 day training session is aimed at business, solution, technology and enterprise architects. (Using EA V13 and ArchiMate V3) It provides an accelerated introduction to creating ArchiMate V3 models within Sparx EA. Delegates will learn how ArchiMate is structured and how it relates to TOGAF, UML and BPMN. The session will cover notation for the most commonly used ArchiMate concepts and show how to create layer specific and multi-layer viewpoints within Sparx EA. It will also demonstrate key decision making techniques within Sparx EA such as using traceability to understand the impact of change, using tagged values to hold properties of architectural significance, using auto-colour legends to create a heat map and documenting technology roadmaps. Delegates who bring a laptop running Sparx EA will have the opportunity to follow demonstrations and create their own ArchiMate models. 

Model Curation – Getting other people to understand your models

Ian Mitchell 

As EA users we’re great at creating ever more complex and wonderful models, using multiple modelling languages, and maybe with subtle improvements of our own. These take lots of effort and thought to create, and even more to maintain. So it’s especially annoying when other people don’t understand or appreciate what we have created. This makes it hard to check that the content of our models is right, and makes them much less useful to the rest of the business. This workshop will explore some ways of making models more accessible to non-EA experts.  We’ll quickly review some the EA features which allow this, and some of the other ways we can ‘curate’ content for other people. Most of the workshop will be spent looking at particular scenarios and examples, and collecting together some “best practice”, using the knowledge and experience of all the delegates.  Come along and be prepared to learn AND contribute.

TOGAF – How to operate an Architectural Framework for success

Matthew Thomas 

Building a model and changing it over and over until it is right, is quicker, less costly and less risky than doing the same thing in the real world. As project size and complexity increase, the more modelling can pay off. Equally, the more challenging the modelling work itself. This is where architectural frameworks can bring value, by guiding and structuring the architectural effort.  Embodying very many years’ experience of executing architecture successfully, TOGAF – The Open Group Architectural Framework – is a leading architectural framework. Sparx has a TOGAF MDG plug-in that puts some structure to your model, and defines 13 additional diagram types and toolbars. Good to go! But are you?  This hands-on interactive workshop introduces the Sparx TOGAF MDG, and ways to build upon it to execute architecture successfully. It addresses the limitations of the MDG, and gets us to think about how the TOGAF specification help to fill the gaps. It then focusses on how a model structured in Sparx around TOGAF can be used to describe baseline and target architectures. The gap analysis and impact analysis features of Sparx will be examined and practised.

Business Process Modelling using EA v13 and BPMN 2.0

Phil Chudley

For anyone who needs to model business processes using BPMN 2.0 in EA version 13, this training is hands-on and supplemented with presentations and demonstrations, ideally attendees will have their own laptop with EA version 13 installed. Covering the four diagrams of BPMN, their use and potential target audience, Conversation Choreography, Collaboration, Business Process.  Modelling approach using EA, focussing on re-useable elements. Practical Business Process Modelling in EA using Collaboration and Business Process Diagrams: Use and role of owning Process Model elements, Re-using Pools and Lanes, Re-using Activities, Use of Callable Sub-Processes.