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Discover

Discover all use cases in the given scope, short-term and long-term, create a “Use Case Tree” that shows a viable, realistic, logical, and successful pathway towards strategic goals. This is about “the what” and how it relates to "the why".

Discover all strategic use cases in the given scope that support the agreed vision and strategy. Create the initial UCT for the organization. Identify desired mid and long term business outcomes. Select the primary branch in the use case tree to focus on, break that part of the use case tree down into deeper levels, identify the shortest pathway to real business value.

The Discover phase translates organizational and business priorities into strategic use cases. We convert your priorities into data requirements devoid of any technical considerations. The output aligns all stakeholders on intermediate deliverables and emphasizes those with the greatest reuse potential. This helps you refine your business case and plan your implementation as a series of steppingstones toward more strategic goals.

Approach

The team works with business experts and change managers in a series of interactive workshops to define requirements. The team adopts the business language in the selected context to capture goals, data requirements, data stories and process/work flows. These are aligned as a set of visual roadmaps to be used to create onward business cases. The team leverages the knowledge graph maturity model to help frame each deliverable in terms of staged business capabilities.

Audience

  • Business Audience, “the customer”, product owners, business experts, change managers, SMEs
  • EKG Champion(s)

Outputs

All outputs below describe the properties of what a Use Case Tree is:

  • Identification of strategic use cases, priorities and desired business outcomes
  • Initial scope in the form of one priority strategic use case, one branch of the Use Case Tree to focus on
  • Evaluation criteria from both a business process and data perspective to ensure EKG synchronization with defined requirements
  • Conversion of strategic priorities into a staged “use case tree” specifying business functionality and data requirements
  • A shared understanding of the requirements for success including the investments needed to deliver against expected functionality
  • Well managed and agreed expectations with "the business"
    • A "Contract" with the business in plain English, devoid of any technology assumptions
    • One-to-one and end-to-end linkage between a plain english business user story and the evidence that this user story has been delivered, works and stays working1
  • A permanent artifact, a shared model, continuously being improved, that all stakeholders across the enterprise can talk to for the whole life-cycle of any given use case (even in production)
  • Living data structure that becomes part of the EKG itself for its whole life-cycle
  • Modular structure of components that allows for an ecosystem of internal and external reusable components compliant with standards set by the EKGF.

Topics

The Use Case Tree practice

Explanation of the key principles of how your EKG and its development can be structured and what leads to successful and modular implementations.

Examples of Strategic Use Cases

Discuss some “standard” strategic use cases (at this helicopter-level these “use cases” are more like “domains”) such as Enterprise Fraud Detection, Enterprise Compliance Management, Connected Inventory and Customer 360.

  • Reg problems. Lineage. CCAR esp. threat of Fines.
  • Data privacy. Sharing agreements. Cataloging PII data. GDPR and CCPA. The threat of fines.
  • Reducing data estate/sprawl. Cost.
  • Move data to the cloud. Cost & capability
  • Improving Data Quality generally. Risk
  • Supporting the digitalization / Transform / Innovation agenda, capability play

Identity your Strategic Use Cases & Business Outcomes

Identify your own corporate “strategic use cases” and formulate their expected business outcomes. Think outside the box, “dream a little”, think long term, set long term goals so that a reuse strategy can be derived. Rough sketch of areas where the organization could (and should) possibly go if innovations, technology & org could deliver.

Select a Strategic Use Case & Identify Stakeholders

After step 3 we can select one area to dive into, with the agreement of all key stakeholders for that area.

Deep-dive Strategic Use Case & Business Outcomes

Develop the details of the “use case tree” of the selected top-level strategic use case.

Work out Use Case Roadmap

Practical roadmap (short and long term) of use cases, reusable EKG components that can be delivered in a logical sequence. All stakeholders have realistic expectations and know exactly what is going to be delivered, why, and in which order.

TODO

  • What is "the right use case" (to start with)
  • What is a "strategic use case"

  1. this relates to all the further detail that will be added to each use case and its stories in all subsequent phases allowing the business to get insights to any level of depth and exactly trace cost, risk, timelines etc. ↩

Author: Jacobus Geluk

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