Project 1: Architecture Improvement Project Blackboard, MS Word Format, MS Power
ID: 1711573 • Letter: P
Question
Project 1: Architecture Improvement Project
Blackboard, MS Word Format, MS PowerPoint, MagicDraw (as appropriate)
Note: This project will extend into the MBSE course (for those of you who are taking it).
Thanks to your Detroit Mercy training, you have been promoted to the position of system architect. You have been assigned the task of evaluating the architecture of one of your company’s complex systems. You will need to draw upon the principles from the books, lectures, and videos to succeed in this effort.
Your Mission:
Compare an existing architecture to competitive benchmarks in your industry. Assess the logical architecture and supporting requirements of the existing system and propose a reasonable improvement to the architecture.
Constraints:
The assessment must be your own work, not merely copies of manuals or corporate documents. No proprietary information can be in the report, there is no promise of confidentiality. This is an individual assignment. If you receive any help from another student, you MUST cite the work of the other student, but will not get credit for that student’s contribution to your paper.
Feasibility:
While we do not expect detailed designs, you should conduct reasonable back-of-the-envelope calculations to ensure feasibility (e.g., no concepts that require 4,000 tons of batteries to work).
Resources:
SysML Modelling methodologies can and should be used (by those taking the MBSE course). You may use any available resources, including consultation with your company’s architects, to develop your assessment.
Deliverables:
Write a report describing the observed architecture of the system. Include assumptions, analyses, and models to clearly define and identify the needs the system addresses, how the system is structured and how it behaves. This needs to be focused on WHAT the system must DO and any constraints or requirements that impact it. Be sure to include:
Use cases (as appropriate)
High level activity diagrams
Primary functions
Requirements table (But only the highest level requirements)
Include descriptions of at least one high-level logical architectures with alternate functional inheritances (a common failure mode in the “real world” is to not consider more than one architecture). Either architecture, the existing or your proposed improvement, should deliver all of the functions but different elements may provide them in each.
WARNING: I do NOT want a LOT of requirements at this point; just those relevant to describing this up-front exploration, not detailed minutiae related to specific design concepts.
WARNING: I am not specifying lengths for this. Your goal is to demonstrate mastery of course material/techniques and that you can apply them to an open-ended assignment. Do not attempt to substitute length for rigor, but brevity is not necessarily an indication of completeness, either. Strive for elegance. Note that a report is a narrative and is professional in tone.
Presentation:
I normally require a formal presentation; because of the remote nature of the class I will substitute a 7-minute video from each individual. Submit a link via BlackBoard and post your video to YouTube so we can stream/discuss it live on to the class.
Assume your audience is your company’s CEO and you are pitching your proposal for the improved architecture. That doesn’t mean political showmanship, but a good discussion of how you framed the problem and why your proposed architecture is the benefit to the company. Describe the architecture, novel features, etc.
Remember to look over course content; look at traits of good/bad architectures (make sure yours has more good traits than bad).
Have you identified the system context (what’s “in” and what’s “out”)?
Have you identified solution-neutral system behaviors?
Are all functions captured in the functional architecture with inputs/outputs?
Have you considered all elements of the nine-element model?
Have you <<satisfied>> all requirements?
Strive for a well-defined, complete architecture and system model that’s 100% defined and makes sense; you should be confident that if you handed the model off to a complete stranger (who knew Systems Architecting) that they could understand the system and execute it for you.
Explanation / Answer
The purpose is to gain a level of insight that allows you to evolve your digital marketing strategy based on competitor insight. It's not that you should be dictated by what you learn about competitors, since being very reactive to that can be worse than doing nothing. Yet common sense tells us that knowledge is power - simply knowing how you compare, finding quick wins and defining your medium to long term strategy gives you more control and power.
A simple approach to Ecommerce competitor benchmarking
This approach is explained further in our Competitor benchmarking guide - a "how to"
1. Select 1-3 direct competitors
2. Identify out-of-sector or indirect competitors to gain ideas from beyond sector
3. Create a table comparing competitors based on criteria you select relevant to your business or assignment, for example:
How can it go wrong?
There are still pitfalls to be aware of, here are the five main ones:
Be careful not to get too worried about your competition, of course it's important, yet not all of your answers will lie within your competitors - we think that looking outside of your market can be just as beneficial for driving ideas and innovation - a source of inspiration for asking new questions.
Competitor analysis & benchmarking definition
What is online competitor benchmarking?
Benchmarking, in the case of digital marketing, is best done as part of a larger framework for strategic planning (for example, using our RACE framework).
Once all factors which affect the commercial performance of a company are identified, metrics can be defined for the key performance indicators (KPI's) of the industry or marketplace - these measures or "benchmarks" are then used to develop new initiatives for the marketing team to enhance its overall competitive position.
Remember in this instance we're talking about digital marketing, in reality digital marketing is but one area for benchmarking yourself against the competition, it's not new and has been done for a long time in benchmarking products, logistics and manufacturing processes.
Physical Architecture Model Development may be used as a task of the activity "Develop candidate architectures models and views", or a sub-process of the System Architecture Definition process (see System Architecture article).Its purpose is to elaborate models and views of a physical, concrete solution that accommodates the logical architecture model and satisfies and trades-off system requirements. Once a logical architecture model is defined (see Logical Architecture Model Development), concrete physical elements have to be identified that can support functional, behavioral, and temporal features as well as the expected properties of the system deduced from non-functional system requirements (e.g. constraint of replacement of obsolescence, and/or continued product support).
Disease registers aim to collect information about all instances of a disease or condition in a defined population of individuals. Traditionally methods of operating disease registers have required that notifications of cases be identified by unique identifiers such as social security number or national identification number, or by ensembles of non-unique identifying data items, such as name, sex and date of birth. However, growing concern over the privacy and confidentiality aspects of disease registers may hinder their future operation. Technical solutions to these legitimate concerns are needed.
An alternative method of operation is proposed which involves splitting the personal identifiers from the medical details at the source of notification, and separately encrypting each part using asymmetrical (public key) cryptographic methods. The identifying information is sent to a single Population Register, and the medical details to the relevant disease register. The Population Register uses probabilistic record linkage to assign a unique personal identification (UPI) number to each person notified to it, although not necessarily everyone in the entire population. This UPI is shared only with a single trusted third party whose sole function is to translate between this UPI and separate series of personal identification numbers which are specific to each disease register.
The system proposed would significantly improve the protection of privacy and confidentiality, while still allowing the efficient linkage of records between disease registers, under the control and supervision of the trusted third party and independent ethics committees. The proposed architecture could accommodate genetic databases and tissue banks as well as a wide range of other health and social data collections. It is important that proposals such as this are subject to widespread scrutiny by information security experts, researchers and interested members of the general public, alike.
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