MIKE2.0: Open Source Information Development in the Enterprise

A Maturing Standard, Worthy of Adoption

Enterprises are hungry for guidance and assistance in learning how to embrace semantics and semantic technologies in their organization. Because of our services and products and my blog writings, we field many inquiries at Structured Dynamics about best practices and methods for transitioning to a semantic enterprise.

Until the middle of last year, we had been mostly focused on software development projects and our middleware efforts via things like conStruct, structWSF, irON and UMBEL. While we also were helping in early engagement and assessment efforts, it was becoming clear that more formalized (and documented!) methods and techniques were warranted. We needed concrete next steps to offer the organization once they became intrigued and then excited about what it might mean to become a semantic enterprise.

For decades, of course, various management and IT consultancies have focused on assisting enterprises adopt new work methods and information management approaches and technologies. These practices have resulted in a wealth of knowledge and methods, all attuned to enterprise needs and culture. Unfortunately, these methods have also been highly proprietary and hidden behind case studies and engagements often purposely kept from public view.

So, in parallel with formulating and documenting our own approaches — some of which are quite new and unique to the semantic space (with its open world flavor as we practice it) — we also have been active students for what others have done and written about information management assessment and change in the enterprise. Despite the hundreds of management books published each year and the deluge of articles and pundits, there are surprisingly few “meaty” sources of actual methods and templates around which to build concrete assessment and adoption methods.

The challenge here is not to present simply a few ideas or to spin some writings (or a full book!) around them. Rather, we need the templates, checklists, guidances, tools listings, frameworks, methods, test harnesses, codified approaches, scheduling and budgeting constructs, and so forth that takes initial excitement and ideas to prototyping and then deployment. These methodological assets take tens to hundreds of person-years to develop. They must also embody the philosophies and approaches consistent with our views and innovations.

Customers like to see the methods and deliverables that assessment and planning efforts can bring to them. But traditional consultancies have been naturally reluctant to share these intellectual assets with the marketplace — unless for a fee. Like many growing small companies before us, Structured Dynamics was thus embarking on systematically building its own assets up, as engagements and time allowed.

Welcome to MIKE2.0 and A Bit of History

I first heard of MIKE2.0 from Alan Morrison of PriceWaterhouseCoopers’ Center for Technology and Innovation and from Steve Ardire, a senior advisor to SD. My first reaction was pretty negative, both because I couldn’t believe why anyone would name a methodology after me (hehe) and I also have been pretty cool to the proliferation of version numbers for things other than software or standards.

However, through Alan and Steve’s good offices we were then introduced to two of the leaders of MIKE2.0, Sean McClowry of PWC and then Rob Hillard of Deloitte. Along with BearingPoint, the original initiator and contributor to MIKE2.0, these three organizations and their key principals provide much of the organizational horsepower and resource support to MIKE2.0.

Based on the fantastic support of the community and the resources of MIKE2.0 itself (see concluding section on Why We Like the Framework), we began digging deeper into the MIKE2.0 Web site and its methodology and resources. For the reasons summarized in this article, we were amazed with the scope and completeness of the framework, and very comfortable with its approach to developing working deployments consistent with our own philosophy of incremental expansion and learning.

Method for an Integrated Knowledge Environment (MIKE2.0) is an open source delivery framework for enterprise information management. It provides a comprehensive methodology (747 significant articles so far) that can be applied across a number of different projects within the information management space. While initially focused around structured data, the goal of MIKE2.0 is to provide a comprehensive methodology for any type of information development.

Information development is an approach organizations can apply to treat information as a strategic asset through their complete supply chain: from how it is created, accessed, presented and used in decision-making to how it is shared, kept secure, stored and destroyed. Information development is a key concept of the MIKE2.0 methodology and a central tenet of its philosophy:

MIKE2.0 is not a framework for general transactional or operational purposes regarding data or records in the enterprise. (Though it does support functions related to analyzing that information.) Rather, MIKE2.0 is geared to the knowledge management or information management environment, with a clear emphasis on enterprise-wide issues, information integration and collaboration.

The MIKE2.0 methodology was initially created by a team from BearingPoint, a leading management and technology consultancy. The project started as “MIKE2”, an internal approach to aid enterprises to improve their information management. The MIKE2 initiative was started in early 2005 and the methodology was brought through a number of release cycles until it reached a mature state in late 2005. “MIKE2.0” involved taking this approach and making it open source and more collaborative. Much of the content of the MIKE2.0 methodology was made available to the open source community in late December 2006. The actual MIKE2.0 Web site and release occurred in 2007.

Anyone can join MIKE2.0, which adheres to an open source and Creative Commons model. Governance of MIKE2.0 is based on a meritocracy model, similar to the principles followed by the Apache Software Foundation.

There is much additional background on MIKE2.0. Also, for an explanation of the rationale for the framework, see the MIKE2.0 article, A New Model for the Enterprise.

A Surprisingly Robust and Complete Framework

MIKE2.0 provides a complete delivery framework for information management projects in the enterprise. The assets associated with this framework first are based on templates and guidelines that can be applied to any information management area. This is a key source of our interest in the framework.

But, there is also real content behind these templates. There is a slate of “solution offerings” geared to most areas of enterprise information management. There are “solution capabilities” that describe the tools and templates by which these solutions need to be specified, planned and tracked. There are frameworks for relating specific vendor and open source tools to each offering. And, there are general strategic and other guidances for how to communicate the current state of the discipline as well as its possible future states.

The next diagram captures some of these major elements:

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Perhaps the most important aspect of this framework, however, are the ways by which it provides solid guidance for how entirely new solution areas — the semantic enterprise, for example, in Structured Dynamics’ own case — can be expressed and “codified” in ways meaningful to enterprise customers. These frameworks provide a common competency across all areas of enterprise interest in information development and management. For a relatively new and small vendor such as us, this framework provides a credible meeting ground with the market.

A Phased and Incremental Approach to Information Development

The fundamental approach to a MIKE2.0 offering is staged and incremental. This is very much in keeping with Structured Dynamics’ own philosophy, which, more importantly, also is consonant with the phased adoption and expansion of open semantic techologies within the enterprise.

Under the MIKE2.0 framework, the first two phases relate to strategy and assessment. The next three phases (of the five standard ones) produce the first meaningful implementation of the offering. Depending, that may range from a prototype to broader deployment, based on the maturity of the offering. Thereafter, scale-out and expansion occurs via a series of potential increments:

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The incremental aspects of the later three phases are not dissimilar from “spiral” deployments common to some government procurements. The truth remains, however, that actual experience is quite limited in later increments, and whether these methodologies can hold over long periods of time is unknown. Despite this caution, most failures occur in the earliest phases of a project. MIKE2.0 has strong framework support in these early phases.

A Broad Spectrum of Capabilities, Assets and Solutions

MIKE2.0 “solutions” are presented as offerings from single ones to a variety of clusters or groupings. These types reflect the real circumstances of applications and deployments at either the departmental or enterprise level. They may range from systematic to those that address specific business and technology problems. Tools and solutions may be work process, human, or technological, proprietary or open.

An overarching purpose of the MIKE2.0 methodology is to couch these variations into a consistent and holistic framework that allows individual or multiple pieces to be combined and inter-related. This consistency is a key to the core objective of information management interoperability across whatever solution profile the enterprise may choose to adopt.

This objective is best expressed via the Overall Implementation Guide. Thus, while detailed aspects of MIKE2.0’s solution offerings may encompass very specific techniques, design patterns and process steps, in combination these pieces can be combined into meaningful wholes.

This spectrum of solution possibilities is organized according to:

• Core Solution Offerings – best practices on infrastructure and information development
• Composite Solutions – combine across these core offerings to address cross-cutting enterprise challenges

• Business Solution Offerings – applied to common business problems involving data management

• Vendor Solution Offerings – integrated approaches to solving problems from a vendor perspective and are often product-specific

• Open Source Solution Offerings – integrated approaches to solving Data Management problems using solely Open Source technologies

• The SAFE Architecture – an adaptive framework that is flexible and extensible, and can be deployed incrementally

• The Information Governance Solution Offering – the guiding framework for realizing an Information Development approach.

These groupings are shown in the diagram below, with the “core” and composite groupings shown in the middle:

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Nearly Two Score Core and Composite Offerings

These central core and composite groupings, of course, are comprised of more focused and specific solutions. While it is really not the purpose of this piece to describe any of these MIKE2.0 specifics in detail, the next diagram helps illustrate the scope and breadth of the current framework.

Here are the some 30+ individual “core” solution offerings:

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These are also accompanied by 8 or so cross-cutting “composite” solutions that reach across many of the core aspects.

Whether core or component, there is a patterned set of resources, guidances and templates that accompany each solution. The MIKE2.0 Web site and resources are generally organized around these various core or composite solutions.

Why We Like the Framework

MIKE2.0 is a project that walks its talk. Here are some of the reasons why we like the framework and how it is managed, and why we plan to be active participants as it moves forward:

• Open source with a true collaboration and welcoming commitment
• A sympatico philosophy and grounding
• Knowledgeable and friendly leaders and governance structure
• An incremental, adaptive framework, in keeping with our own beliefs and the reality of the marketplace for emerging practices
• A proven core methodology, with many existing templates and tools for leveraging methodology development and extensions
• Much available content (about 800 articles as of this date)
• A smart, active community contributing on a constant basis
• Backup and support from leading management and IT consultants
• Active evangelists, with attention to community communications and care-and-feeding
• The MIKE2.0 environment itself (based on the OmCollab collaboration platform), which is well thought out with many nice community and content aspects
• A budget and roadmap for how to extend the methodology and achieve the vision.

We invite you to learn more about MIKE2.0 and join with us in helping it to continue to grow and mature.

And, oh, as to that aversion to the MIKE2.0 name? Well, with our recent addition of Citizen DAN, it is apparent we are adopting as many boys as we can. Welcome to the family, MIKE2.0!