Digital White Papers

8 WWW.ILTANET.ORG | ILTA WHITE PAPER KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT Architecting Information for Business Transformation Meanings and interpretations of information can become distorted, particularly where a business has many functions spread across multiple offices and jurisdictions. Take the time to understand what the business goals are and what and how information can support them. Where Do We Start? Once you know where your journey must take you, the next step is to identify where you are starting from. This is oen the most time- consuming and complex part of architecture development, and geing this wrong will create failure down the road. For example, you might establish a future state too aspirational and misaligned with the organization's maturity or readiness. In enterprises comprising different offices and types of businesses across the world, this exercise can cause analysis paralysis as you aempt to document at too detailed a level. Recognize that all parts of the analysis will not require the same priority, despite some stakeholders' expectations. Your priorities will be determined by your earlier research into the business's strategic direction. Do not be overly ambitious; find a balance between being thorough and being practical, acknowledging that not all current- state information problems warrant the same aention. Consider information in the context of business drivers, determining what processes the information supports and how critical those processes are to the business's strategy. Do You Mean What I Mean? As you conduct your current-state analysis, you will quickly realize that information architects must have translation skills. Meanings and interpretations of information can become distorted, particularly where a business has many functions spread across multiple offices and jurisdictions. What a term means in one office or business function could mean something different in another. Unfortunately, linguistic ambiguity can undermine an effective information architecture strategy. It helps to agree on some business-wide definitions early, recognizing that it will be an iterative process. Take care to adopt standard definitions for where the business is going and the direction of its strategic transformation. Include key stakeholders on the journey or you will never get to where you want to be. The first priority should be to develop common vocabularies for the following categories that comprise the core of any information architecture strategy: » Master Data: Defined by the business's strategic direction and has the highest value (get these right early on!) –– Examples include client name and location » Reference Data: Usually externally sourced or otherwise internally managed and support the business's ability to effectively process transactions and manage master data –– Examples include user IDs and client numbers » Metadata: Also known as "data about data" or "descriptors of data," they help a business understand the information it works with –– Examples include author, date created and date modified » Taxonomies: Classification lists used to categorize information in a way that makes sense to the business –– Examples include standard industrial classifications, work types and jurisdictions

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