Report from the first ever

Scottish Gathering of Enterprise Architect Users

Held in Livingston on Wednesday 8th June 2016

Written by Gillian Adens, Director at Hippo Software

In June Hippo Software hosted a local gathering of Enterprise Architect users in Scotland. Forty-five delegates from twenty different organisations signed up to attend this event. This included some delegates travelling from as far afield as London, Nottingham and Northern Ireland as well as lots of delegates travelling the length and breadth of Scotland, coming from Livingston, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Hamilton, Perth, Glenrothes and Inverness. For the vast majority of these delegates, this was their first ever EA user group experience and an excellent opportunity to exchange ideas, share challenges and propose solutions.

A Journey to a More Collaborative Future?

Our first speaker was Darren Campbell, Senior Solution Designer at ACCA (Association of Chartered Certified Accountants). Darren provided an honest and open account of ACCA’s journey so far. He explained the starting position with the company using a wide range of disparate tools for architecture, business process, data and design models. ACCA identified EA as an environment supporting ArchiMate, BPMN and UML in a single repository. The aim was to bring together all these various disciplines and allow traceability between high level architecture and detailed BPMN and UML models.

With a little training and strong support from a newly formed Enterprise Architecture team, this aim has been largely achieved. Darren spoke candidly about some of the challenges encountered and others that still face their team. The setup of a cloud repository was a substantial challenge at the time and the focus now is on developing some templates to facilitate automatic document generation and encourage the use of EA. In addition the team wish to establish more governance to ensure the consistency and quality of models in EA.

Transforming Scottish Local Government Services

Our second speakers presented a very entertaining and lively double-act – Gordon Hunter, Digital Business Architect at Fife Council and Lee Brown, Business Analyst for Improvement Service. Gordon and Lee provided some background on the challenges facing Scottish councils, eloquently describing the complexity, diversity and scale of services supported by councils.

They have been instrumental in the development of a common framework and creation of a local government reference architecture using ArchiMate within EA. Gordon talked about the mapping that they did between TOGAF and ArchiMate terminology and shared their meta model. Example EA diagrams were used to demonstrate the motivation for the reference model and the advantages and benefits it offers to the thirty-two Scottish councils in terms of reusable model artifacts.

Interactive ‘Grumbles’ Session

Hippo Software than facilitated a ‘grumbles’ session, organising the delegates into small groups and giving them an opportunity to discuss those aspects of EA that irritate, annoy or challenge them. The delegates were tasked with choosing their top two or three grumbles and presenting these to the rest of the delegates. The main grumbles were fed back to Sparx Systems for their assessment and will hopefully influence future EA development plans. On a positive note some of the new features in EA V13 should address some of these grumbles and delegates were also able to share their own ’work-arounds’.

Effective Collaboration with Use Cases and BPMN

After lunch we introduced Ian Freeman, Business Systems Architect at Scottish and Southern Energy Power Distribution. Ian gave a fascinating presentation covering some of the projects he has worked on at SSE and others where collaboration has taken place at the Energy Networks Association.

Ian explained how much the power industry has changed over that last couple of decades with a focus on renewable energy sources and how the introduction of smart metering
requires the industry to collaborate and adapt to new business processes. He explained how EA was used to create BPMN and Use Case models to provide a common narrative and allow exchange of information and ideas. Ian showed some examples of good architecture models and roadmaps to assist strategic planning.

New Features of EA V13

We were delighted to welcome Ken Harkin, Global Business Development Manager and Tom O’Reilly, Chief Operations Officer from Sparx Systems who joined us at our EA Gathering. The audience was enthusiastic and pleased to have the opportunity to meet with representatives from Sparx Systems and provide face to face feedback on their experiences with EA.

Tom O’Reilly showed us some of the new features in EA V13 including the new ribbon interface, improved diagram filters and time aware models. Everyone seemed keen to try out the new beta version of EA V13.

Interactive ‘Highlights’ Sessions

The day concluded with another interactive session facilitated by Hippo Software. This time we asked delegates to share their highlights – things they have discovered in EA that delight and greatly assist them. To get things started, our consultant Gareth Tuckwell shared some of our favourite keyboard and mouse shortcuts. Delegates then discussed their own highlights including the use of the diagram context filer and using scripts to automate repetitive tasks.

Following the recent EA user group meeting in London, we took a moment to interview attendee Rasheed Amzart, an Enterprise Data Architect with the Association of Train Operating Companies (ATOC). Here he details his recent work and his impressions on EA and user group meetings.

The ATOC also recently published a case study with Sparx Systems partner Dunstan Thomas.

Full Name: Rasheed Amzart

Job Title: Enterprise Data Architect

Organization: Association of Train Operating Companies

Attended the London user group meeting in May 2016 (have you attended any others?): Yes. I attended the User Group Meeting in 2015

How long have you been using Enterprise Architect (EA)?
Approximately two years.

How is EA deployed where you are? (EA versions, floating licenses, repositories, cloud, etc.):

• Version: 12.1
• Floating licences
• Central repository
• Cloud based

What are you working on at the moment?
Developing a number of logical ‘as is’ and ‘to be’ data models and a number of supporting documents, such as business process maps and models.

What have the challenges been?
Knowledge Acquisition has been shortcoming due to poor documentation

How has Enterprise Architect helped you and your team?
Yes in a number of key areas, requirements, system modelling, business modelling and data modelling. This has enabled the various project teams to work on a single platform and share areas of expertise and data and so help reduce the number of silos within the organisation.

What do you like about your job?
Being the Enterprise Data Architect has given me the opportunity to engage with a number of departments within my organisation and to help a more holistic view of the complex architecture systems using various types of system and data models.

What functionality would you like to see Enterprise Architect support in the future?

• A quick browser based web client would be extremely helpful.
• The ability to undo any action carried out within EA.
• Ability to generate reports ie attributes, elements etc.

Is this your first User Group Meeting? No

Did you enjoy your time at the User Group meeting in London? Yes very much.

What have you gained from it? I have been able to liaise with other users and share idea and also gain new knowledge and tips which I feel will improve my productivity.

Would you recommend user groups to other people in your role? Yes.

Hippo Software has announced the Event Schedule for the first Enterprise Architect User Group being held in Scotland, the long standing Sparx Systems Global Partner will be hosting the event on the 8th of June.

When: Wednesday 8th June 2016 9.30am - 4pm

Location: Mercure Livingston, Almondview, Livingston, West Lothian, EH54 6QB

Details and Registration: Visit the Hippo Software website

16 quality presentations across 3 topic streams, including keynotes from IATA, Schiphol Group, The Future Group, with a preview presentation on Enterprise Architect 13 Beta from Sparx Systems COO Tom O'Reilly.

Calling all Enterprise Architects, Software Designers, Business Analysts and Business Process Analysts! Attend the Dutch EA User Conference event at Schiphol on June 10th 2016 for a day full of information exchange on the usage of Sparx Enterprise Architect.

The full event program has just been finalised (see attached PDF above), with various keynotes and presentations from international speakers like Geert Bellekens, Ian Mitchell and Rodrigo Nascimento but also Dutch speakers who have successfully applied EA solutions from such organisations as Enexis, NS, VZVZ or UMCG.

Download the attached event schedule (PDF Link above) and visit the event page at www.eausergroup.com for more information and to reserve your space.

The EA User Group returns to London this May

On the 17th May the annual London meeting of the Enterprise Architect User Group will be happening at Skillsmatter's Code Node venue.

The final agenda has been confirmed today and we've got a great day lined up...

Agenda

Tickets

Tickets are available from the EA User Group website at the price of £65.00 +Vat per person.

The next EA User Group events are scheduled for 17th September 2015 in Paris and 18th September in Brussels.

For just €75, attend either of these events and get instant access to all the presentations from both!

Our sponsors:

EA User Group Paris

VISEO will host the first EAUG in France on Thursday, September 17th 2015.

This first edition will introduce talks and presentations in French on a wide array of topics including Enterprise Architecture (TOGAF, ArchiMate), modelling IT and software applications, generating and validating documentation from the models, and Systems Engineering (MBSE, SysML).

Enterprise Architect add ins will be shown in a dedicated area, where users and experts will be able to share their opinions and experiences on notations, languages, methodologies around a coffee, tea or other refreshment.

You can view the agenda for the day here.

EA User Group Brussels

The next English speaking Enterprise Architect User Group event will be in Brussels on September 18th 2015, sponsored by ACV-CSC.

This conference will provide an opportunity to discuss many aspects of Enterprise Architect and its use. We are currently appealing for speakers to make this a memorable day.

The preliminary agenda for Brussels is available here.

BOOK NOW

The full agenda for the next EAUG in Paris is available.

Register now from the EventBrite website (ticket: 75€).

EA User Group France 2015 Agenda

EA User Group - London 2015

The response to the London User Group conference call to speakers has been phenomenal this year and even right at the 11th hour we've had another great speaker proposal through to finish off the line up.

So without further ado here's the official line up for May; 

Obviously the massive coup for us on the organisation committee is to have Tom O'Reilly at the event to deliver the keynote!

The Venue

The venue for this conference is; the Park Plaza County Hall, 1 Addington Street, London, SE1 7RY, United Kingdom.

Tickets

"Where can I get my ticket(s)?" I hear you cry, well, I'm glad that you asked! Tickets for the London User Group conference are available from the EA User Group website at a bargain £65.00 per person. Do swing by & pick up your ticket now to avoid disappointment.  

We hope to see you all in London on May 19th for what is promising to be the best London EA User Group meet yet.

EA User Group Conference; London - The agenda takes shape...

We have received an amazing level of response to the call for speakers for the London conference and can now provide a preview of how the agenda is shaping up for London; 

We're still in the draft stages and so timings and presentations are still subject to change.

The call for speakers doesn't close until the end of the month so if you have a story to share and would feel like sharing it with the community then This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

The conference will be taking place at the Park Plaza County Hall, 1 Addington Street, London, SE1 7RY, United Kingdom.

Tickets for this event are already on sale via the EA User Group website.

We look forward to seeing you all in London.