Asset Architecture Basics

What is asset architecture

Asset Architecture in its simplest form is about organising the assets into an integrated system that describes all aspects of how an organisation shall, and shall not, operate.

By creating a holistic asset architecture for an organisation enables understanding which assets are related and needs to be integrated as well as the relations between them. The relations determines which asset (and related documents) governs other assets.

Each organisation will have their own design. However, for some areas there are methods, standards and best-practices for how to organise and work with certain assets, and even combination of assets.

The value of an Asset Architecture

The challenge with development or improvements

One of the most difficult challenges within an organisation is development and improvement coordination between separate departments, areas of responsibility, projects, etc. There are two common approaches for this:

1. Ensure everybody that affects or is affected is involved – resulting in high resource consumption and slow progress
2. Exclude or ignore some or all dependant areas – resulting in disjoint or conflicting solutions causing operational problems once implemented (if implemented at all)

With the lack of a better approach, this consumes a lot of resources and energy for an organisation.

This is done when defining responsibilities, scope and requirements on solutions. When development or an improvement is to be performed, one can review the Asset Architecture to identify dependencies and the documentation defining each asset. This means that when stating the requirements for example a project, the assets that needs to be included or integrated with can be clearly stated.

This results in a solution that will be integrated with where relevant where most required information is available. Only time for clarifying gaps in current documentation or needs for changes needs to be coordinated, which is a wanted outcome.

Principles when designing an Asset Architecture

When designing an Asset Architecture, there are a couple of principles that should be adhered to.

The relation between the assets is equally, if not more important than, the quality of the singular asset. All assets exists within a context and are worthless without the context around them. It is also the context around the asset that determines the overall effectiveness of an asset. A highly effective Project Management discipline can never be effective if the discipline to produce development roadmaps is poor or non-existent. An even better Project Management discipline will not provide better outcome values in this case.

Multiple assets defining the same topic or redundant information is an issue that can cause a lot of confusion. Being consistent with where and how information is documented is important. If information is relevant in another place, use references. If additional information needs to be added, it should be added into the “master” asset instead of being added in the referring asset (as it will be lost for other assets depending on the “master” asset.