Data Model

LeanIX Value Stream Management (VSM) is centered around the discovery and catalog of software artifacts and correlates DORA and flow metrics, standards, and vulnerabilities to the respective business outcomes. The end-to-end visibility enables engineering leadership to eliminate risks, bottlenecks, and inefficiencies while simultaneously improving the flow of software delivery value.

Understand Software Artifacts

The discovery for VSM is centered around Software Artifacts. We have chosen this name for two major reasons:

• Microservices are a great way to build modern software systems, given the right requirements and setup. However, the reality in development organizations is much more dispersed - with legacy software, 3rd party or business-driven low-code software all in need of management. Hence, Software Artifact comprises Microservices and others, utilizing subtypes for easy filtering & navigation
• Software Assets are a classical way to manage purchasing, deployment & maintenance of applications. We see that this term is heavily loaded and not well-accepted around modern developers.

The four dimensions of discovered data

VSM offers a ready-to-use data model which represents the needs of modern Product IT and is centered around Software Artifacts.

📘

Flexible data model - easily extensible without redeployment

While a major benefit of VSM is the ready-made import e.g. from CI/CD or Kubernetes, you can leverage the advantages of the flexible data model.

Context & Ownership

The area of context & ownership answers the questions "what is the business context of a software artifact" and "who is owning it". The following Fact Sheets are part of the default model

Some sample reports around Context & Ownership can be found below.

Development

The development area covers information around the deployed software artifacts.

Runtime

The runtime area covers information "from the infrastructure".

Compliance

The compliance area provides engineering teams information around vulnerabilities or similar findings, and can help to boost governance processes

By leveraging our Integration API and ready-to-use integrations, customers hook VSM directly into their DevOps toolchain to automatically pull software artifact, API, and runtime related metadata into the workspace.

Configure the data model

Admins are able to tailor the data structure in VSM to their needs. Here are three key elements available in self-service:

Language translations
Admins can alter individual fields in default and customized Fact Sheets based on the preferred languages of their users. As well, non-admins can select for themselves which language to operate in LeanIX overall (currently offered for French, Spanish, German, or English). This feature is intended to make the EA Management Tool a more accessible platform for our international base of customers and increase its speed of adoption within global operations.

Create and edit sections/subsections/fields
With LeanIX Configuration, admins now control the timing and implementation of new sections, subsections, and fields in LeanIX Fact Sheet. To aid in doing so, an intuitive UI has been equipped that allows users to see summaries of changes (both pending and already made).

Configuration
Fields in LeanIX Fact Sheets can be altered according to several combinations of elements: “Key” (i.e., the technical name of the data model); “Type” (i.e., how data is stored); and “Rendered as” (i.e., how it will appear).

📘

Information

There are further opportunities to extend the data model, please get in touch to learn more.

To access the Configuration menu, go to the More actions menu in any Fact Sheet of the type you want to configure (see screenshot), and select Configuration.

The Configuration menu lets you change the template of the Fact Sheet type you are configuring.

It consists of the following elements:

On the left hand side you have all the Fact Sheet fields, sections and subsections. This is where you can select Fact Sheet elements you want to edit, or where you can add new fields.

On the right hand side you have access to several tabs for:

• Configuration, where you can define field information such as Key, Type or Rendered as
• Translation, where you can translate Fact Sheet elements not automatically translated by LeanIX
• Options for Fact Sheet fields
• Move, where you can move fields within their subsection or to other subsections

As an Admin you are able to create fields of type string, double, integer and single or multi-select on Fact Sheets and also on Relations. Also, new field values can be added to existing fields and relation fields can be reordered.

Admins can also change the renderer of existing Fact Sheet fields and, using the Options tab you can specify for fields whether they pop up in the facet filters or are available as a view in the reports area.

Additionally, upon the creation of new fields, you are now able to specify whether a field is included in the quick search or the full-text search, or is readonly.

In case you no longer want to display certain fields on a Fact Sheet details page, simply move them to the Unused Fields & Relations section.

Connect with LeanIX Enterprise Architecture Management

In case you want to connect the VSM workspace with your Enterprise Architecture workspace, the following overview displays which data is being exchanged and reflected in the respective workspaces:

Please find the setup guide here.