Glossary

Glossary

Action

An activity performed by employees or other people.

Application

A piece of software supporting activities via user or data interfaces.

Brand perception

A metric evaluating how a brand is perceived by people on the market it addresses.

Brand valuation

A metric estimating the total financial value of a brand.

Business

An economically or organisationally separate area of our enterprise activity. Examples: legal entities such as public institution, company, association, NGO, or their subdivisions for specific product areas or geographic regions.

Business cycle

A high-level overview of a sequence of activities we are doing again and again as a business , e.g. from making/sourcing to delivering/learning.

Business function

An activity or group of activities carried out by an organisational unit that occurs regularly and realises a capability of the enterprise.

Business model

A model of how an organisation creates, delivers and captures value.³

Business object

A business object represents a concept used within a particular business domain 1). Business objects are modelled in EDGY as objects.

Business unit

Synonym for organisational unit.

Co-creator

A person that participates in the collaborative enterprise design process. Examples: employee, customer, partner, regulator, investor.

Constraint

A constraint represents a factor that limits the realization of goals 1).

Creation

Something people co-create during the enterprise design process. Examples: sketch, board, story, principle, dashboard, prototype.

Customer A person or an enterprise that buys products from an enterprise.

Customer segment The group of customers that you are aiming to sell your products to.

Data Facts or information, especially when examined and used to find out things or to make decisions. 2)

Examples: physical properties of a locomotive, geolocation of our tracks, current speed of a train

Driver A driver represents an external or internal condition that motivates an enterprise to define its goals and implement the changes necessary to achieve them. 2)

Ecosystem An economic community supported by a foundation of interacting organizations and individuals—the organisms of the business world. The economic community produces goods and services of value to customers, who are themselves members of the ecosystem. The member organisms include suppliers, lead producers, competitors, and other stakeholders.

James F. Moore "Predators and Prey: A New Ecology of Competition"

EDGY An Open Source tool for co-creating better enterprises. EDGY stands for Enterprise Design Graph interplaY (see references to learn more).

Employee A person who is paid to work for somebody. 2)

Enterprise An enterprise is an endeavour of people with a shared ambition.

An enterprise's most important characteristic is that it brings together people and enables them to realise ambitions that go beyond fulfilling their day-to-day needs and can be (much) bigger than they can achieve alone. Enterprises have a purpose ranging from commercial, not-for-profit, government to ideological motivations. They consist of people performing tasks, using capabilities that make it possible to achieve the desired outcomes.

This definition of "enterprise" moves beyond the prevalent legal and financial view on companies towards a holistic, people-centered view.

There are many ways people can get together to achieve ambitions. People can self-organise or even interact spontaneously without any clearly recognisable form of organisation behind their interactions. When enterprises scale up we usually see more formal, often legal, entities arise, such as companies, associations, groups of companies, departments or institutes. Those organisations are not the enterprise, but serve the enterprise by providing structures, tools and processes that support people's collaboration and enhancing the predictability and (legal) compliance of that collaboration.

The words "enterprise" and "organisation" are often used interchangeably, as if they refer to the same entity. For enterprise design purposes, however, it is important to remember that an "organisation" seldom, if ever, covers the entire enterprise it serves. In most cases, there will be parts of the enterprise that exist outside the boundaries of the organisation, which means outside its control, yet within its sphere of (mutual) influence.

The EDGY specification uses the word "we" or "us" to refer to the enterprise in focus and subject to Enterprise Design efforts.

Enterprise design Enterprise design is the collaborative practice of designing coherent enterprise architectures, identities and experiences to realise an underlying purpose. See About Enterprise Design

Event

Events are activities by unspecified agents that happen inside or around the enterprise that trigger people's activities in response.

Externality An outcome (cost or benefit) that affects an uninvolved third party and arises as an effect of an enterprise's activity.

Goal An intended outcome that is aligned with the identity and strategy of the enterprise.

Impact Outcomes in our ecosystem that we only partially influence or control.

Information Facts or details about somebody/something. 2) In EDGY information is modelled using the element object tagged as data.

Initiative A plan for dealing with a particular problem or for achieving a particular purpose. 2)

Interface Where two elements meet and interact, enabling flow passing data or other objects.

Example: data interface between applications, user interface communicating information to people.

Investment Allocated money or other resources (time, energy, effort) in the expectation of some benefit/return in the future. 3)

Investor A person or an enterprise that invests money or other valuable resources in another enterprise.

Journey (funnel) A journey that guides people towards completing a transaction, such as buying a product.

Journey (lifecycle) A journey experienced by people over a long period of time with a set beginning and end, going through a set of changes or stages.

Example: a career at a company from getting hired to leaving.

Journey (task related) A journey breaking down the activity people do when completing a task into a set of stages or phases.

Journey (transaction) A journey describing the phases or stages people go through when completing a transaction.

Example: going through the check-out process in an online store.

Management The activity of running and controlling a business by dealing with or controlling things or people. 2)

Oxford Dictionary

Map A diagram to show the positions of things over an area. 2)

In enterprise design, maps are used to represent the relationships between enterprise elements as part of a structured model, with a clarity suggestive of a geographical map.

Media The physical form in which information is communicated to people or stored as data for future use. Examples: software, print, screen, audio.

Metric A quantifiable means of evaluating an outcome.

Mission statement A mission statement is content that describes the purpose of the enterprise. It positions the enterprise, implicitly or explicitly, in one or more industries or sectors and specifies what it aims to do within these industries.

Model An informative representation of an object, person or system.³

In EDGY enterprise elements and relationships are used to create a model of (parts of) enterprises.

Object (deterministic) An object that is simple or complicated and can be engineered to exact specifications such as a machine or an application.

Object (emergent) An object that is complex and unpredictable and may be influenced to a certain degree only, because much of its form and function emerges from its interactions with other objects and its environment (like plants or social structures).

Objective A measurable, quantified goal with an associated timeframe.

Organisational unit A group of people working together to realise capabilities (e.g. teams, departments, committees, project teams) All organisational units together form the organisation of the enterprise.

Output An object that a person, a machine or an organisation produces. Can be a product or an intermediary output. Leads to intended or unintended outcomes (depending on the context and way of usage).

Partner A person or an enterprise that has an agreement with another enterprise. 2)

Persona A fictional character created to represent a type of people that might all engage with a brand or use a product in a similar way.

Project Synonym for initiative.

Regulator An enterprise that officially controls an area of business or industry to ensure that businesses within its scope of control are operating fairly.

Resource Synonym for asset.

Role The function or position that somebody has in an enterprise. 2)

Service A service is an activity that adds a benefit to people. Services are modelled using the EDGY element product, combined with the elements process and journey to model production and consumption over time.

Stakeholder Synonym for co-creator.

Story (explanatory) A story giving instructions or explanations related to a task, such as "how to use this product".

Story (promotional) A story to describe or draw attention to a product, brand or content.

Story (transactional) A story describing a transaction related to a task, such as "where to buy this product".

Strategy An actionable pathway towards achieving the purpose of the enterprise. Strategy sets direction for the design and realisation of goals and capabilities.

System Software System software is software that is required to run applications. Examples: operating systems, databases.

Task (emotional) How people want to feel while completing a task.

Task (functional) A problem or need people want to solve or address by completing a task.

Task (social) How people want to be perceived by others while completing a task.

Team A group of people who work together on a particular job. 2)

Touchpoint A touchpoint is a moment of interaction between and enterprise and people. Touchpoints can be modelled using the EDGY element journey to represent moments over time, or channel to represent the means of interaction.

Value The quality of being useful or important. 2) A belief about what is right and wrong and what is important in life. 2)

In enterprises, value is created as intended outcomes often outside the company when the right product supports the right tasks for the right people in the right context.

Value stream Value streams are the major horizontal processes in any enterprise with a clear goal: to satisfy or to delight the customer. 4)

Value streams are modelled using the EDGY element process.

Vision An idea or a picture of the enterprise in your imagination. 2) In EDGY the enterprise vision is a depiction of an idealised, usually future version of the enterprise, captured as stories and communicated as content.