MBA™ Stages
The exploitation of X-Act™ Technology to deliver optimization is driven by a structured methodology and planning process known as MBA™ (Model Based Architecture). The implementation goes through five main conceptual stages namely Capture, Structure, Emulate, Predict and Act. The objective is to build a model that accurately reflects corporate business processes, its systems stack and associated technology components. Then, the constructed model becomes an efficient apparatus that is used to determine improvement and transformation actions through scenario computation and causal analysis.
Capture
Through a series of workshops, capture key data and information about the business, its current and future performance requirements, system architecture, policies, constraints, processes and infrastructure. These workshops will follow the defined X-Act MBA process and investigation questionnaire technique. During the process we identity any constraints and aspirations for the service, qualify and quantify where possible the types of technologies utilized and how they are currently deployed and determine appropriate management objectives and critical success factors for the emulation to achieve. Any key assumptions are noted at this stage and the likely predictive scenarios described.
Structure
This stage focuses on building a representative model of the target business services. The X-Act MBA process is followed to input and structure information into the model using the X-Act design tool. Client's data can be supplemented with information from the X-Act libraries to build a representative model as defined in the Capture phase. We use this model to incrementally qualify that it is representative of the environment as defined in the Capture phase. The deliverable of this phase is a model that is able to compute performance for emulation purposes but is not triangulated from a real world measurements perspective. This is very useful when considering new application development projects.
Emulate
This stage focuses fully on triangulation and measurement to gain confidence in the computed model ensuring that it is accurate, representative and produces reproducible results. We will build a system resource model based upon measurement from the existing environment on a non-intrusive basis. After validating the two models are consistent and representative of the real world environment they converge to become the Reference model and the baseline for the X-Act emulation.
Predict
During this stage, the reference model is available to run scenarios to determine the system limit, determine the cause of the limit and consequently identify solutions to stretch the limit of the existing environment. It is normal to prioritize and categorize these solutions at this stage into quick wins, and medium/long term solutions.
Act
Prioritize and implement solutions and actions determined in the Predict, to decide, to justify and/or to transform.