Operational Views (OV) [Logical Views]

OV-4 Organisational Relationships Chart v1.2

The OV-4 shows organisational structures and interactions. The organisations shown may be civil or military. OV-4 exists in two forms; typical (e.g. a typical brigade command structure) and actual (e.g. an organisation chart for a department or agency).

Background:

A typical OV-4 shows the possible relationships between organisational resources (organisations and posts). The key relationship being composition – i.e. one organisational resource being part of a parent organisation. In addition to this, the architect may show the roles each organisational resource has, and the interactions between those roles – i.e. the roles represent the functional aspects of organisational resources. There are no prescribed resource interactions in MODAF – the architect should select an appropriate interaction type from the MODAF Ontology, or add a new one. Interactions typically illustrate the fundamental roles and management responsibilities, such as supervisory reporting, Command and Control (C2) relationships, collaboration and so on. A typical OV-4 is really just a special type of SV-1 where the resources shown are purely organisational.

An actual OV-4 shows the structure of a real organisation at a particular point in time, and is used to provide context to other parts of the architecture such as AV-1 and the StVs.

Usage:

A typical OV-4 may be used for:

An actual OV-4 may be used to:

Data objects:

The data in an OV-4 can include:



Relationships Between Key Data Objects (Simplified from M3)

Representation:

Detailed OV-4 Product Description:

The Organisational Relationships Chart (OV-4) addresses the organisational aspects of an architecture. A typical OV-4 illustrates the command structure or relationships (as opposed to relationships with respect to a business process flow) among human roles, organisations, or organisation types that are the key players in the business represented by the architecture. An actual OV-4 shows real organisations and posts and the relationships between them.

The more commonly used types of organisational relationship will (in time) be defined in the MODAF Ontology. MODAF only defines two fundamental relationships between Organisational Resources; structure (whole-part) and interaction. The interaction relationship covers most types of organisational relationship. Where there is a need for other types of organisational relationships, these should be recorded and defined in the AV-2 data dictionary as extensions to the MODAF Ontology.

An OV-4 View Product clarifies the various relationships that can exist between organisations and sub-organisations within the Architecture and between internal and external organisations.
Organisational relationships are important to depict in an architecture model, because they can illustrate fundamental human roles (e.g., who or what type of skill is needed to conduct operational activities) as well as management relationships (e.g. command structure or relationship to other key players). Also, organisational relationships are drivers for some of the collaboration requirements that are modelled using needlines between the Operational Nodes to which they are deployed.

Note that individual people are not modelled in MODAF, but specific posts may be detailed in an actual OV-4.

A typical OV-4 product may show types of organisations and the typical structure of those organizations:

OV-4 products may alternatively show actual, specific organisations (e.g. “The UK Ministry of Defence”) at some point in time:

Alternatively, an OV-4 may be a hybrid diagram showing typical and actual organisation structures:


OV-4 Example (generic and actual organisations)

In both the typical and specific cases, it is possible to overlay resource interaction relationships which denote relationships between organisational elements that are not strictly hierarchical (e.g. a customer-supplier relationship).

The two main elements in a typical OV-4 are organisation types and post types, which are both types of Organisational Resource. The MODAF Meta Model (M3) resource hierarchy (simplified) is shown below:

M3 v1.2 Resource Model

In M3, the Resource Interactions extend UML::InformationFlow and Resource Composition is a UML structural property. Modelling tools are free to represent the diagrams in any way they choose provided the basic style shown on this page is followed.

In an SV-1, the organisational resources defined in a typical OV-4 may be part of a capability configuration. Also, actual organisations may form elements of a fielded capability which realises the requirements of a node at the system level (again, this may be depicted on an SV-1).

Operational Activities are conducted by Operational Nodes (i.e. they are logical, and described independently of how they are to be implemented). It would therefore be inappropriate to show Operational Activities being conducted by Roles or Post Types. However, a Role may be related to an Operational Activity to assert that the Role is responsible for the conduct of the activity – i.e. a process owner. This relationship should be used with great care so as to prevent “solutioneering” in the Operational Viewpoint.

Roles may require certain Competences and this should be modelled where applicable.

The organisations that are modelled using OV-4 in the Operational Viewpoint may also appear in other views, for example SV-1 (organisational constituents of a capability configuration) and AcV-1 (actual organisations that own projects).

Page version 1.2.001 dated 14th August 2008

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