Base Elements
EDGY is based on four (4) elements called Base Elements:
- People
- Outcome
- Activity
- Object
With these four base elements only, it is possible to describe all (!) enterprises. Using these base elements, it is possible to describe any enterprise and everything that is going on in and around them in an ecosystem, with sentences like this:
- People perform activities, using and creating objects to achieve outcomes.
The outcome defines the ends whereas the activity defines the means to get there [1]. The base elements Activity, Object and Outcome are specialized in facets and intersections.
Facet Elements
Identity
Our enterprise establishes shared stories communicated through content to live up to and achieve given purposes. This identity is pursued by its organisation and evoked by the perception of its brands. [3]
Experience
People interact with the enterprise via channels along their journeys to complete their tasks. Enterprises reach out to people through their brands, and make products to be offered to them. [3]
Architecture
Employees and other people, together with assets, perform processes to enable capabilities. They are developed by its organisation and are required to make and deliver the products and/or services it offers. [3]
Examples of different types of assets (a.k.a. resources) are shown in the figure below.
Intersection Elements
Intersections, Organisation, Brand and Product, are areas where two facets overlap. These intersections are perspectives of their own, but more likely, they are bridging the overlapping facets and related concepts and disciplines.
Relationships
The EDGY defines only three (3) relationship types that can connect elements.
Labels and Tags
Labels can be used for differentiating elements of the same type.
Tags can be used for depicting additional information about the elements, e.g. priorities. Several tags can be added to an element when appropriate.
Metrics are quantitative and qualitative attributes of the elements, which can be depicted with colored labels.
Elements and Core Relations
With the elements and their relations, it is possible to create sentences like “story contextualises purpose”, “organization makes products”, “product serves tasks”, “an organization performs processes”, “organization has capabilities”, “process realises capability” or “process requires assets”.
Elements and relationships per facet
Elements and relationships of intersections
Specialisations of Elements
EDGY introduces specialized variants of the base elements. This makes the EDGY language simple to learn and use, as the same triple of elements can be found in all the facets. It is possible to use the same analogy in all the perspectives:
- People perform activities, using and creating objects to achieve outcomes. [3]
From which sentence we can formulate versions like:
- Customers experience journeys, using channels, to achieve tasks
- Organisations perform processes, using and creating assets to enable capabilities
- Initiatives [2] communicate stories, producing content to achieve purposes.
The same generic observations can be turned into specialized elements, whenever it is appropriate to change the perspective in a design challenge. This simplicity of the EDGY language’s syntax, and its vocabulary of limited concepts and relationships, and its small number of relation types, make the EDGY easy to learn and use, but expressive enough.
EDGY is simple but expressive.
All the base elements have specialised, faceted and colored counterparts in the Facet Model. A similar basic syntax and structure (activity-object-outcome) occurs in every facet. This makes it easy to translate and shift the focus from one facet to another, as the elements are related to each other. Such correspondence elements in all the perspectives make the Facet Model consistent, which eases co-design efforts.
The core of each facet is the outcome, as the whole idea of the enterprise design is to produce well-designed outcomes. The outcome elements, Purpose, Task and Capability, are the most crucial elements, as they represent what is essential in the enterprise.
The behavior in the enterprise is depicted with the elements that represent activities, Story, Process and Journey.
The structural objects of the enterprise are the facet elements, Content, Channel and Asset, and also the Intersection elements Organisation, Brand and Product.
EDGY provides smooth shift and translation from one facet to another, because of the simple syntax and structure of elements activities, objects and outcomes, that occur in each facet.
EDGY in nutshell
EDGY is:
- Simple and easy, so that everyone can quickly become familiar with its structure and meaning.
- Beautiful, colorful, and aesthetically appealing and comfortable for people to work with.
- Flexible enough, to leave space for people to interpret and extend it with their own elements, so they can focus on what makes the most sense in their design challenge.
- Expressive, rich, and comprehensive enough, so that all disciplines to hook into so they can tie their specialised insights into the holistic top-level views that hold them together.
- General-purpose to keep the conversations broad and to encourage more specialised languages to hook into it to provide the required specificity when needed.
- Common, multi-purpose language for all the various disciplines and stakeholder groups to support collaboration, cooperation and co-design.
EDGY is a simple, beautiful, flexible but expressive general-purpose common language. [3]
The EDGY facet model with elements is shown below.
…
Enterprise Design Facet Model and questions.
[1] Ends, outcomes or goals, are what we aim to achieve, and means are the activities we do when we are pursuing our goals. The purpose of an end or goal is not to achieve some desired future state, but rather to resolve some present challenge.
[2] An initiative can be e.g. an enterprise or ecosystem, business unit or -department, program, project or any change activity.
References
[1] Intersection Group pages, https://intersection.group
[2] Enterprise Design with EDGY pages, https://enterprise.design/
[3] EDGY language foundations, book, 2023, (available as pdf), link
[4] EDGY 23 Language Foundations, Online course (4 weeks), Milan Guenther & Wolfgang Goebl, link
[5] Enterprise Design Patterns, Intersection Group book, 2020, (available as pdf), link
[6] EDGY 23 product release, launch on 29th March 2023, webinar recording, Milan Guenther & Wolfgang Goebl, link
EDGY tools
The Enterprise Design language, EDGY, from the Intersection Group, enables people to design well-designed outcomes for better enterprises!
EDGY diagrams can be created with several tools, such as:
- Draw.io (available as Confluence plugin, which enables lots of features for combining diagrams, text and tables)
- Miro
- QualiWare
- BlueDolphin
- Powerpoint
More to come.
EDGY stencils (+ lots of information) can be found on the Intersection Group’s Enterprise Design with EDGY pages:
Enterprise Design with EDGY – for creating well-designed outcomes for better enterprises.
Load EDGY Elements and Relationships.pdf
Load EDGY and Information Modelling pdf
— Eero Hosiaisluoma
