Please see the post for VDML for Business Architects: Part 1
of 11, for the introduction to this series of posts. This part describes how VDML represents the
accountability of people and organizations for the management and operation of
the business.
1.
Collaboration accountability
Collaborations are the context for all work of the
enterprise and interactions with customers and business partners. Participants in collaborations are
accountable for their roles in collaboration activities and organization units
in which they are assigned to positions.
Collaborations generally will have a leader/manager role that carries
primary responsibility for the overall performance of the collaboration.
2.
Value contribution accountability
Value contributions including cost, timeliness,
quality/defects are attributed to capability methods and their activities that
are associated with organization units that apply and/or are responsible for
the implementation, staffing and improvement of those capability methods.
3.
Accountability to multiple value streams
VDML value streams trace the values of value propositions
back to their sources of value.
Conversely, the values of a single activity or capability method can
have an impact on multiple value streams.
Both dimensions are important for understanding the impact of changes,
particularly for shared capability methods.
4.
Personnel and resource accountability
Organization units are the focus of operational management
of the application of capabilities (capability methods). As such, they have primary responsibility for
staffing those capability methods and ensuring availability of the resources
required to perform those methods. Value
stream analysis and comparison to actual performance or benchmarks provide a
basis for holding specific organization units responsible for their
performance.
5.
Policy compliance accountability (proposed VDML
extension)
A directory of regulations, policies and requirements must
identify the capabilities and activities where compliance must be enforced by
the associated organization units. In
some cases this is a matter of monitoring measurements, and in other cases, it
involves reporting of oversight/monitoring activities.
6.
Accountability for objectives (proposed VDML
extension)
Objectives are elements for monitoring measurements toward a
target. An objective may monitor a single
measurement or a complex of measurements, including dependence on completion of
other objective(s). An objective is
linked to the responsible organization unit or organizational role. And the overseeing organization unit or
role. Reporting methods must provide
displays of selected sets of objectives of interest to the organization units
or roles involved.
7.
Accountability for transformation
contribution(s) (proposed VDML extension)
Each phase of a transformation plan identifies the
capability methods and/or activities that must be changed, added or
deleted. These are linked to the
organization units responsible for the development/acquisition of
method/activity design, personnel and acquisition of resources. and
implementation. These provide the basis
for setting objectives for the currently pending transformation phase.
8.
Capability performance accountability
Performance of a value chain stage (ref. Michael Porter) is
the responsibility of the organization unit responsible for the collaboration
or capability method(s) that compose that stage—generally responsibility for
the specific stage of a line of business.
The value streams of that stage identify the contributions and thus the
performance of capability methods recursively engaged to support that value
chain stage.
Many of these capability methods are shared with other lines
of business and value streams, and they may not be in the same management
chain. Thus, each capability method is
responsible to the users of its services and the operations that consume its
deliverables in addition to the organization that manages the capability method
operation, resources and the people that perform its roles. The VDML model represents all these
relationships and supports measurement of the dependencies and the impact of
changes.
