A paper discussing how models must be treated as more than just static ‘objects’ and should be actively used within an organization in order to truly support decision making.

As we explained in a previous white paper Definition Documents and Naming Standards: Key to an effective Business Information Repository, enterprise architecture and business process analysis repositories have become key sources of organizational knowledge and consequently important sources of information to support decision making within organizations.

However, making the best decisions for an organization requires the availability of best quality information. To ensure you have this information, you must be confident that it is not only built and maintained within the repository, but is also being actively used within the organization.

Why? If the information is not being actively used, it is highly likely that the models and information contained with the repository do not reflect how processes, data, application and technology are actually being applied within the organization.

Consequently, a big risk to any modeling initiative is that it ends up being seen as nothing more than a ‘wall hanging’ or ‘shelf-ware’.

What do we mean by ‘wall hangings’ or ‘shelf-ware’? Essentially we mean that the models become seen by people within the organization as nothing more than pretty snap-shots, which are useful only to put on the wall for show or to stick on the bookshelf for use as a reference to show someone, but not actively used on a day-to-day or even minute by minute basis.

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