Newbie Pitfalls

Hi Dave,

My main advice, based on our 5 years with LeanIX is: 

• start small, and then grow.

LeanIX has been deployed in 2019 in my company (I joined in Q1 2022) and , at the beginning.
We started with very ambition (all applications, all interfaces, all data elements, all processes, ...) but forgetting that our organization was probably not mature enough for such a big change, and that adoption would require time.

Therefore, when I joined , we rolled back a bit and reshaped our journey with a more “step by step” approach.

Thanks for the reply Didier. That gives great comfort that we are potentially heading in the right direction. I have already stated to our senior sponsor that we need to contract on our core applications initially. The applications we know most about. Following the onboarding recommendations we are looking to just to use the the 3 key fact sheets (Organisation, Business Capability and Applications) initially and once we start getting wider engagement incorporate interfaces, data and the tech layer.  

We are approaching it from a project-based/ change standpoint.

We only model those thi gs that are relevant to a certain project or change in order to have a better grasp of what the project or change touches, the business value or cost a certain project or change may have, and the stakeholders we haven’t yet talked to who should be included.

That way the organization is organically becoming more familiar with an enterprise architecture mindset and way of working plus immediately see the benefits.

Thanks mvanrooijen ,a very interesting approach. At this stage we have commitment agreed with our sponsor to include core system during the onboarding process. Although I see this approach as a potential strategy to get wider business engagement after onboarding .You reply has given me a good suggested approach to our core team to embed LeanIX in ongoing processes.

​@Dave L, welcome to the LeanIX community. I am assuming you have already read and understand the LeanIX onboarding materials  provided by your CSM, so I won’t repeat that but would emphasise the following:

• Consider who is actually going to use LeanIX and what use case and outcomes they are expecting - Try this out on a small but flexible group first.
• Don’t be afraid to tailor LeanIX to your business and culture. Create “landing page” dashboards and configure factsheets to how your business operates.
• Embed data quality early; use mandatory fields, user access rights and quality seals/states to validate data is good and meets your use cases.

Happy to chat if you want more information.

​@Justin Swift thanks for the advice. Yes, we have being going through our onboarding. A concern was that if we kept strictly aligned to the general approach we may not be serving our company the best from the start, so your advice on not being afraid to tailor is reassuring. My gut feel was that data quality from start should be king and your advice has confirmed that for me. Thanks again for the advice and hopefully as we progress I will be again engage on more specific topics.