Rahul Sharma (Editor)

Iteraplan

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Stable release
  
5.4 / October 2016

Operating system
  
platform independent

Written in
  
Java, JavaScript

Website
  
iteraplan.org

iteraplan is a simple effective tool to manage Enterprise architecture with focus on the IT landscape. The aim of iteraplan is to quickly introduce EAM into an organisation, enable tool support for managing the enterprise architecture and facilitate collaboration between different EA relevant stakeholders, such as enterprise architects, project managers, IT staff.

Contents

Features

With iteraplan different fields of enterprise architecture can be analysed. The focus not only lies on IT relevant parts, but the whole company is considered, like business architecture, information system architecture and technical architecture. The best practice meta-model is structured as follows.

  • Business domains are structural elements that serve to group associated elements in the business landscape.
  • Business processes are sequences of logically connected activities or sub-processes that contribute in some way to the enterprise‘s value added. Each process has a defined start and end, is expressed in terms of performing some action for customers.
  • Business function is a distinct, cohesive set of business functionality such as “customer relationship management”. The enterprise’s capabilities are expressed in terms of the business functions it carries out.
  • A product is the outcome or deliverable of an enterprise’s service process. Products can be either material (e.g. goods such as cars or computers) or immaterial (services).
  • Business units are logical or structural units of the enterprise, such as departments, sites and plants, also logical user groups such as field sales team or internal administration.
  • A Business object represents a real-world entity – abstract or concrete – which encapsulates some part of the business activity of an enterprise (customers, for example, products or orders). Business objects can be associated with one another by relationships and are used by business processes.
  • An information system domain combines information systems based on one or more criteria. It is used to categorize information systems based on the application landscape or on the responsibility.
  • An information system is software or a software package, which supports business functions.
  • Using IT-Services you can model you IT-services catalogue.
  • Interfaces define the dependencies of information systems, whereby mostly the information flow is modelled.
  • Architecture domains are structures of the blueprint, the standardization catalogue of technical components.
  • A Technical Component provides information on technical implementations or interfaces. Technical components are standardized by technical standardization processes. The result is a catalogue (named technical blueprint) of standardised technical building blocks. As well as the standardised components, it might be necessary in documenting the as-is landscape to include non-standardised technical components as well.
  • Infrastructure Elements are infrastructure units such as hardware or networks on which applications run (e.g. client, server, database).
  • A project is essentially a one-off activity overall, e.g. in terms of objectives, restricted time frame, funding, personnel and other parameters, and is clear demarcation from other projects. In addition it will also have a separate organisation.

    • After capturing the as-is state of the architecture, the desired to-be situation can be modelled. It is possible to develop different (e.g. sequential) to-be states. Furthermore, different graphical reports can be derived from iteraplan. For example, a portfolio- or information flow diagram, allocation tables or lists. All graphical reports can be configured to your needs and saved.

    With the Excel or XMI import & export function data can be processed by other programs. A REST interface is available as well.

    Licence

    In addition to the free Lite Edition, there is also a paid Corporate Edition available with several additional features.

  • While the Lite Edition only supports HSQLDB databases, the Corporate Edition can also be run with MySQL or Oracle databases.
  • The use of different users, roles and permissions is possible in the Corporate Edition.
  • With individual appearance provided with the Corporate Edition it is possible to integrate the look & feel of an enterprise.
  • While the Lite Edition supports only 10 user defined attributes with the Corporate Edition an unlimited number is available.
  • The Corporate Edition can be integrated with an existing LDAP-Server.
  • Over an data import interface initial gathering of existing data is facilitated.
  • To enable the migration to a new iteraplan release, migration scripts for the Corporate Edition are available. With their help, existing data will easily be migrated into the new version.
  • The Graphics Reactor and the Plugin API are part of the Corporate Edition only.

    • History

    The first version of the tool was developed in 2004 and used with customers of iteratec GmbH. The versions 1.0 up to 1.8 (mid of 2007) were only available as closed source.

    At the beginning of 2008 iteraplan (now version 2.0) became the first open source EAM tool by providing a completely revised source code on SourceForge. It was released under the open source licence AGPL. Since then, iteraplan has received increasing attention, e.g. from companies like HUK-COBURG, Otto, VKB-Bank but also public authorities like Hamburg Port Authority.

    In May 2008 the version 2.1 with fixed bugs and numerous new functions was released. In February 2009 the version 2.2 including many Refactorings was published. In May 2009 version 2.3 added plenty of comfort functions.

    The next major update to version 3.0 in April 2012 introduced a clearer user interface based on Twitter Bootstrap. Moreover, the responsive web design enabled usage of iteraplan on smartphones and tablets. The version 3.1 (July 2013) brought new functionality for life cycle management and roadmap planning as well as usability improvements. The version 3.2 from October 2013 introduces a REST-Interface and improves the dashboard functionality and the visualizations. Version 3.3 was developed with a focus on integration and ease of use. In the version 3.4, the integration and especially the import and export has been improved and accelerated. From version 3.4 on the iteraplan source code is no longer available under AGPL-license.

    With the current version 5 two major topics were covered: metamodel extensions and introduction of a new interactive client. With the new type " IT-Service " and numerous new relationships between existing types iteraplan 5 offers excellent opportunities to capture diverse IT landscapes. The new and innovative interaction client allows a much simpler EAM by combining visualization and maintenance of the data in a unique way. With version 5.0.5 of iteraplan the Graphics Reactor was introduced. Any customer-specific report or visualization can be created with the Graphics Reactor based on XSLT transformations. The releases 5.1 and 5.2 extends the new client introduced in release 5 and the visualizations contained therein significantly.

    With the release 5.3 in August 2016 a plugin API was introduced, with which data calculations can be automated, amongst others. In addition, the Graphics Reactor has been extended so that up-to-date reports and visualizations can be provided to the whole organisation. The release 5.4 adds three new diagrams to the interactive client, amongst other things.

    For the next years updates are scheduled for April and October. The company iteratec employs all active developers of this project and offers consulting, training and support, among other things.

    Literature

  • Inge Hanschke: Strategisches Management der IT Landschaft. Ein praktischer Leitfaden für das Enterprise Architecture Management, Hanser Fachbuch, München 2013, ISBN 978-3-446-43509-4
  • Inge Hanschke: Strategic IT Management: A Toolkit for Enterprise Architecture Management, Springer, München 2010, ISBN 3-642-05033-6

    • iteraplan in the press

  • Forrester Research: Are Open Source And Low-Priced Solutions Available For Tooling EA?
  • The Gartner Enterprise Architecture Summit 2010 – English
  • The Gartner Enterprise Architecture Summit 2010 – German

    • References

    Iteraplan Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA