Reading 2023 – Session Abstracts – Enterprise Architect User Group

Day 1 – Training

9.30 am: OPTION 1 = Model Maturity Model – Live!

Peter Lieber, Enterprise Architecture Enthusiast, Sparx Systems CE / Lieber.Group

Related to the CMMI (Capability Maturity Model Integration) we defined the MMMI (Model Maturity Model Integration). The goal of the MMMI is to constantly develop the value of models within organisations over different levels.

The 5 levels of maturity are – once clearly defined – a step-by-step process.

Level 0: No Model,
Level 1: My, Myself and I,
Level 2: Collaboration,
Level 3: Advanced Collaboration and Publication,
Level 4: Regulation and Optimization.

What is needed to jump from one level to the next, and what benefit does it bring to the organisation? In this training session, we discuss conditions and goals so this development can take place without (bigger) hurdles. One of the most important parts in this process is also how to develop the value acknowledgement that models are creating. We look at this 5M-development process not only from the organization’s perspective but will also reflect your role as enterprise architect and modelling expert, acting in an ecosystem.

9.30 am: OPTION 2 = Getting started with EA – Setting up Sparx EA for success

Nizam Mohamed

KISS is the key to Sparx EA success (Keep it Simple) Sparx EA is a multi-faceted modeling tool that may be used for a range of purposes; however, due to perceived complexity and intrinsic resistance from project teams and stakeholders, most Sparx EA teams fail to achieve scale and acceptance.The biggest reason for this is attempting to use the tool as-is, right out of the box. Sparx EA’s range of capabilities is extremely valuable for experienced users, but novice users are frequently overwhelmed and puzzled. Several years of working with Sparx EA teams has shown that the initial effort in configuring the tool to help teams achieve the intended use cases, and hiding everything else, to provide a more focused, simple, governed platform to start with, is the fine line between success and failure of an EA practice.In this session, we will go through the required steps in configuring EA to get started

Understanding the Use cases – The tool can accomplish a lot of things, but the team’s priorities are mostly limited to a select few. Clarity on this is a vital step prior to applying the tool.
Developing a metamodel – the use cases will enable us to create a metamodel that will assist us in achieving the use cases. A big bang approach to modeling has not been effective for many teams; but, if we can start with a subset of a broader framework and implement them to satisfy the targeted usecases, our chances of success increase significantly.
EA Configuration – EA introduced various possibilities to assist with configuring the tool to offer a simpler, more focused (less cluttered) interface.
Model harvesting – Before onboarding the larger team, it is critical to create a baseline repository based on the stated metamodel and using the EA Configuration.
Define publishing options – in EA, Prolaborate, or Confluence, define stakeholder-specific public options to ensure the tool also caters to the targeted stakeholders (beyond modeling community)

Train the teams – All of the above steps will provide us with a well-defined framework and sample models to teach and onboard the architectural teams and stakeholders.

9.30 am: OPTION 3 = EA Requirements and Use Case Masterclass

Gillian Adens, Hippo Software (Sparx Services UK)

This ½ day fully interactive workshop is aimed at anyone wishing to learn more about capturing requirements in Enterprise Architect. Delegates will learn how to:

capture, document, present and view requirements details
colour-code requirements based on status and add custom properties
perform stakeholder analysis and create an actor catalogue
build a use case model incorporating include, extend and inheritance relationships
document scenarios and auto-generate activity and test case diagrams
demonstrate traceability using window, diagram and relationship matrix

Delegates who bring their own laptops running Sparx EA V15 or V16 will have the opportunity to follow demonstrations and create their own requirements and use case models.

1.30 pm: PLENARY = The Great Version Control Workshop

Panel: Ian Mitchell | Daniel Siegl | Nizam Mohamed

Several different versioning solutions exist in the EA World: LemonTree, Portfolio Manager, and the built-in EA stuff like TAW and RAS.

There is no single solution for everyone: there are just lots of use cases, and some solutions are better at some use cases, and less good at others.

In this workshop we will:

explain the problems each solution is trying to solve
show some highlights of each solution.
Open the floor for everyone present to discuss, question and learn which solution could be best for them and their organisation

Day 2 – Community Day

	9.30 am
1.1	Visualise your process to use Enterprise Architect effectively Usually, we need to make various kinds of diagrams to describe specifications and designs. It is necessary to define the order in which they are to be created as a process. The process is the key to effective use of Enterprise Architect (EA). In Japan, there is a notation called ‘Process Flow Diagram’ (PFD) to visualise and manage the system/software development process. I would like to share the benefits and basic usage of this PFD. I will share the PFD profile for EA in advance, so you can try the PFD during my session. https://www.sparxsystems.jp/en/pfd/
1.1	Takeshi Kouno Sparx Systems Japan
1.2	Our journey with Enterprise Architect This presentation will describe our development in the use of EA as an organisation. We initially used EA for diagramming, later for modelling and simulation and finally as a tool for standards development. I’ll share some of the pictures that we have developed over the last three years.
1.2	Jon Maybury Solution Architect at Rail Delivery Group
1.3	Data lineage Keeping track of your data throughout your systems and processes Organisations deal with a lot of data. A lot of data is coming in, being processed, stored and possibly sent to other organisations. Data lineage is the process of tracking that flow of data, providing a clear understanding of where the data originated, how it has changed, and where it goes. With regulations like GDPR, and concerns about data quality, this is becoming more important than ever. In this talk we’ll discuss actual examples of how organisations in Belgium and the Netherlands have put this into practice using EA.
1.3	Geert Bellekens Bellekens.com

	10.45 am
2.1	Three tips for more Useful, Scalable models Models, and modelling teams, are getting larger. And models are getting more complex, which makes it even harder to get real business value from the modelling we do. In this session Ian will look at 3 new techniques for getting more value from your modelling: making sense of the data you have imported, understanding the implications of the connections you’ve made, and making it easier to deliver these new insights to the people who need them.
2.1	Ian Mitchell, Ability Engineering Ltd
2.2	Don’t Blame the Tool! REAL reasons why deployments fail and what you can do to avoid them. Many EA tooling deployments end in failure and it’s often the tool that gets the blame. Whether it’s low user adoption, unreliable content, a poor user experience, or management questioning the value of it all, the journey to a successful EA tooling implementation can be a difficult (and often unsuccessful) one. In this session I will share real experience (good and bad) from work I’ve done with some of our major clients, helping to select, deliver and run their enterprise architecture tools. I’ll look across a range of implementations, some big and some small, to give you my thoughts on what you can do to successfully land your specific tool of choice.
2.2	John Stanton, Mosaic Island
2.3	SPONSORED SESSION – “Write your requirements with AI” Requirements engineering is one of the most crucial stages in software design and development as it addresses the critical problem of designing the right software for the customer. Qualisist is a requirements engineering add-in for Enterprise Architect launched by DDG and the University of Qualisist is designed and tested for (1) defining, modelling, and optimising technical requirements, (2) providing requirements authoring support, (3) reconciling between requirements models, and (4) automatically generating full deliverables, as well as (5) automatically generating acceptance criteria written as Gherkin test scenarios (syntax acclaimed by the software development community).
2.3	Daniel Rodríguez Miguel & Seung Yeob

	11.45 am
3.1	Application Portfolio Management (APM) using Sparx Platform In this session, we will look at a defined and proven approach to efficiently managing an application inventory using Sparx EA and setting up the platform for effective application portfolio management using an example. APM is a major architecture use case, and Sparx EA and Prolaborate have been utilized by multiple teams to successfully establish an APM approach. This session will go over a structured approach, complete with pre-defined templates, tools, and dashboards, that is available in the Sparx Platform to assist teams in getting started with APM and providing the necessary insights to stakeholders.
3.1	Nizam Mohamed, Product Manager @ Sparx Systems Prolaborate and EA SaaS
3.2	The approach we took to create a Bank of England Metamodel There are many excellent videos on how to create a metamodel in EA Sparx, but what should be in it, what links do you need, what attributes do you require, what symbology should you use, which standards do you follow? This presentation, which will include a demonstration of our work, takes you through our thought processes to end up with a metamodel that is suitable for us to create what we call our Bank Digital Twin
3.2	Martin Sharp Enterprise Business Architect & Stephen Ford Enterprise Architect
3.3	The efficient use of Custom tags and Legends to create multiple views If you use the ‘colouring’ option on elements and multiple identical diagrams to create multiple views this talk might be just what you need. By using ‘standard’ custom tags and the legend element, you would achieve the same results, eliminate side effects and save (valuable) time During this presentation Dennis will give an insight into the experiences and best-practices of DiVetro. These best-practices were created as the result of several consulting assignments and the experience of DiVetro consultants with EA. We will create a simple setup to visualise the progress of a development team of a process (Feature) and scoping issues (in scope, out scope or unclear).
3.3	Dennis Geluk, DiVetro

	13:45 pm
	PLENARY Successfully Failing with Models We all know the success stories about modelling projects and non-successful projects get out of sight. Statistics show us that 50% + of all IT projects fail. In this session, we change the focus, because profound learning comes from both: failure and success. We discuss and share our experiences about failed modelling projects in an interactive format. Why and where did we see and experience hurdles? How to best overcome those? We will be considering not only prevention tactics, but also how to move forward once we fail. “If it’s not ok, it’s not the end.”
	Peter Lieber, Enterprise Architecture Enthusiast, Sparx Systems CE / Lieber.Group & Salomé Wagner

	3.00pm
4.1	Model Add-ins Friend or Foe? Model add-ins are a feature of Enterprise Architect that allows a Script to react to events broadcast by Enterprise Architect. This presentation describes: •What is a Model Add-in •What a Model Add-in can do and what a Model Add-in cannot do •What is required in a model to use / develop a Model Add-in •Development and testing workflow for a Model Add-in The presentation will also include a live demonstration of a Model Add-in, but will not conduct a “deep dive” into the code.
4.1	Phil Chudley, Dunstan Thomas Consulting Ltd
4.2	Building Enterprise Knowledge Management system based on Sparx Systems Ecosystem The Concept of 3Rs – Right Information for Right Role in Right Time From a Single source of truth 2 a Trusted Single source of Truth
4.2	Roman Kazička, SystemThinking spol.
4.3	SPONSORED SESSION: Automated Quality Gates for Enterprise Architect As UML and SysML are becoming first-class artefacts of engineering workflows in many industries, there is an increased need to ensure that these projects meet quality standards that are necessary not just for documentation practices but also for traceability management and code generation purposes, as well as integration with advanced engineering domains such as simulation and analysis. While many UML tools offer built-in error-checking, these are typically simple features limited to basic capabilities. Additionally, it is left up to the user to run them regularly, which is often missed or neglected – resulting in UML projects plagued by numerous issues like incorrect profile applications, missing attribute values, non-standard-compliant models, design errors, or anti-patterns. As they accumulate over time, they become a major productivity hindrance and source of missed deadlines and cost overruns. To help you overcome this problem, we introduce IncQuery Validator for Enterprise Architect, a novel product that can generate validation reports for Enterprise Architect projects. It can check for UML and SysML standards-conformance, profile / stereotype application correctness, basic sanity checks for diagrams, and perform in-depth design error and anti-pattern analysis based on the SAIC Digital Engineering Validation rules. With easy integration options into CI/CD DevOps pipelines, you can easily add powerful automated validation capabilities into your UML/SysML workflows. This way, stakeholders can get quick feedback on the quality of their work, find and fix issues quickly, and maintain high quality UML/SysML models across the entire project lifecycle – thus saving your valuable time, and helping you meet deadlines and budgets.
4.3	Dr. István Ráth IncQuery Group

	4.00pm
5.1	And now for something completely different: Using Sparx to explore systems and cybernetics with concept graphs There is an established body of knowledge that relates systems and cybernetics to organisation design (indeed, the origin of the word cybernetics is the Greek for “pilot” or “governor”). This presentation shows how I used a variety of Sparx features (my own MDG Technology, data import witheaDocX, concept mapping, queries, reports, and web publishing) to explore these ideas. In this respect, I present Sparx as a useful research tool with practical applications in knowledge management. The presentation is supported by an actual demo model and the published HTML output.
5.1	Malcolm Cawood, Kybernetica .
5.2	NAFv4 – Viewpoints on the NATO framework The NATO Framework NAFv4 is a comprehensive framework for the application of enterprise architectures in both military and non-military contexts and provides a standard for the development and description of architectures. The framework was designed in such a way that NATO member states and partners can extend it according to their own requirements. Germany and Switzerland, for example, use this possibility to create their own views, e.g. requirement views, in their projects. In his presentation, Ewald will cover the following aspects of the NAFv4: Overview about the framework: how is defined, examples The development of NAFv4, the prerunner model and related frameworks Viewpoints and comparison of preexisting and related frameworks Use Cases and scenarios of NAFv4 viewpoints: not all of them are really meaningful
5.2	Dipl.-Ing. Franz Müller, Trainer & Consultant Sparx Systems CE
5.3	Continuous Modelling – Automated Model Integration and Validation Daniel always likes to have the latest toys! In this talk he will explain some of the amazing use cases that can be realised for all sorts of modelling, by using technology and workflows well established in the software engineering field.
5.3	Daniel Siegl, Lieber Lieber