Gap Analysis

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At the latest now, it will have come to your mind, that implementing a new business model ist much more than just programming an application and bring it into operations. By comparing the base and the target process landscape and the associated enterprise architecture, you find the gap to be bridged.

The gap analysis results in a specification of all working packages to be done and all deliverables (documents, software, hardware, workflows, regulations, etc.) to be provided to achieve your objectives. This list of working packages and deliverables is the basis for a substantiated effort estimation and a very important information for the decision you have to make, namely whether to implement your new business model or not.

The following figure shows a small part of the complete gap analysis for our example company.

When you omit the gap analysis it is very likely that you miss some important aspects of your enterprise architecture. Implementing a new business model and redesigning your enterprise architecture does not only mean to implement new things and change some old things. It might also mean to retire an application, a piece of hardware, a business service or even an organisational structure in your enterprise. These activities require a detailed, methodical and sustainable change management ­ we will come back to this later.

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