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cazh1: on Business, Information, and Technology

Thoughts and observations on the intersection of technology and business; searching for better understanding of what's relevant, where's the value, and (always) what's the goal ...

Tuesday, December 27, 2005

Build a Framework: Your chart junk is my roadmap / vision statement

Build a Framework: Your chart junk is my roadmap / vision statement

I remember in the late 90's, seeing many examples of the little train of wedgies that folks used to characterize their business processes:

Click on the picture for a full-size image!




I've used them myself (some of the above samples are mine, I'm comfortable in admitting it) - of course, I typically don't make this stuff up, I adapt from other examples, like everyone else. As I searched for a reasonable picture / schematic / "framework" for a "supply chain", I stumbled across what I believe to be the originator of the wedgie charts - the value chain, popularized by Porter in the 80's.

An interesting sense of satisfaction came with this discovery; I always used to wonder where the ubiquitous wedgies originated, as if I wasn't giving the right credit / citing the correct references, or jumping on some meme-hack's visual bandwagon instead of really understanding the pretty pictures I was drawing.

Still, I remain a big fan of this visual "framework" approach. I've used it for business / technical alignment architectures, for laying out a complex program of interdependent projects, and for abstracting a data warehouse architecture so folks could see the pattern(s) in the multiple legacy systems (enough to identify opportunities for compressing into a smaller set of technologies).

Anyway, I also found this site, and with it my latest model for a framework to capture the Supply Chain ...

Click on the picture for a full-size image!

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