UNICOM Focal Point is a
portfolio management and
decision analysis Decision analysis (DA) is the discipline comprising the philosophy, methodology, and professional practice necessary to address important decisions in a formal manner. Decision analysis includes many procedures, methods, and tools for identifying, ...
tool used by the product organizations of corporations and government agencies
to collect information and feedback from internal and external stakeholders on the value of applications, products, systems, technologies, capabilities, ideas, and other organizational artifacts—prioritize on which ones will provide the most value to the business, and manage the roadmap of how artifacts will be fielded, improved, or removed from the market or organization. UNICOM Focal Point is also used to manage a portfolio of projects, to understand resources used on those projects, and timelines for completion. The product is also used for pure product management—where product managers use it to gather and analyze enhancement requests from customers to decide on what features to put in a product, and develop roadmaps for future product versions.
Overview
UNICOM Focal Point is used for:
*
Scaled agile framework (SAFe) Methods, to govern the
DevOps
DevOps is a set of practices that combines software development (''Dev'') and IT operations (''Ops''). It aims to shorten the systems development life cycle and provide continuous delivery with high software quality. DevOps is complementary to a ...
lifecycle, with support for
Kanban board
A kanban board is one of the tools that can be used to implement kanban to manage work at a personal or organizational level.
Kanban boards visually depict work at various stages of a process using cards to represent work items and columns to rep ...
s, portfolio management, and integration to
Enterprise architecture, change management, and testing tools via
Open Services for Lifecycle Collaboration
Open Services for Lifecycle Collaboration (OSLC) is an open community, originally proposed in 2008, to define a set of specifications that enable integration of software development. It has evolved, and continues to evolve, to areas such as Appli ...
.
*
Application Portfolio Management IT Application Portfolio Management (APM) is a practice that has emerged in mid to large-size information technology (IT) organizations since the mid-1990s. Application Portfolio Management attempts to use the lessons of financial portfolio managem ...
—understanding what applications are deployed in an organization and their value; which to invest in and which to retire. Gartner's most recent Enterprise Architecture Magic Quadrant lists the combination of
System Architect
Unicom System Architect is an enterprise architecture tool that is used by the business and technology departments of corporations and government agencies to model their business operations and the systems, applications, and databases that suppo ...
and Focal Point as Leaders amongst toolsets used for enterprise architecture and application portfolio management.
*
IT portfolio management—understanding what applications and systems are deployed in an organization and their value; which to invest in and which to retire.
*
Project Portfolio Management
Project portfolio management (PPM) is the centralized management of the processes, methods, and technologies used by project managers and project management offices (PMOs) to analyze and collectively manage current or proposed projects based on num ...
—gathering information on projects across the organisation, what are the benefits, costs, risks associated with the projects. The tool enables entry of all data based on roles, and workflow so it can be tailored to specific needs in terms of maturity and priority. It is done at a fairly high level. If very detailed analysis is needed the tool can be integrated to other tools for such purpose. The tool also supports resource management at a high level, as well as requirements management at a high level. Generally characterized by easy modification rather than advanced best practice.
* Product Delivery Management—understanding the resources and schedule of what needs to happen in getting a product to market.
*
Product management
Product management is the business process of planning, developing, launching, and managing a product or service. It includes the entire lifecycle of a product, from ideation to development to go to market. Product managers are responsible for ...
—making decisions on what features to put in a product, based on customer priorities, competitor functionality, and market conditions. Furthermore, understanding the value of applications that an organization is building, marketing, and selling, and deciding on which to invest in and which to retire. An independent survey on Linked In ranked Focal Point as the best Product Management tool.
UNICOM Focal Point is a pure web tool that stores information in an underlying database (user choice of
PostgreSQL
PostgreSQL (, ), also known as Postgres, is a free and open-source relational database management system (RDBMS) emphasizing extensibility and SQL compliance. It was originally named POSTGRES, referring to its origins as a successor to the In ...
,
Oracle Database
Oracle Database (commonly referred to as Oracle DBMS, Oracle Autonomous Database, or simply as Oracle) is a multi-model database management system produced and marketed by Oracle Corporation.
It is a database commonly used for running online t ...
, or
IBM Db2
Db2 is a family of data management products, including database servers, developed by IBM. It initially supported the relational model, but was extended to support object–relational features and non-relational structures like JSON a ...
). Users may input information into the database in multiple ways—via the web interface, through automatic import of spreadsheet files, or through direct
Representational State Transfer integration with other tools. Information is then analyzed with a variety of methods to make prioritization decisions and manage roadmaps of project and product delivery, and scheduling. Focal Point's web-based portal allows end-users from across an organization, and external customers from all over the world, to input information into the database, analyze the information, or view analysis of that information. Focal Point provides a workflow engine so that suggested changes to an organization based on analysis can be signed off.
UNICOM Focal Point is used in combination with other tools for corporate analysis and workflow—such as UNICOM
System Architect
Unicom System Architect is an enterprise architecture tool that is used by the business and technology departments of corporations and government agencies to model their business operations and the systems, applications, and databases that suppo ...
for enterprise architecture, and
Rational Team Concert
Rational Machines is an enterprise founded by Paul Levy and Mike Devlin in 1981 to provide tools to expand the use of modern software engineering practices, particularly explicit modular architecture and iterative development. It changed its ...
for DevOps. Integrations to these and a variety of other tools are enabled by UNICOM Focal Point's REST read/write interface and its support for Open Services Lifecycle Collaboration (
OSLC
Open Services for Lifecycle Collaboration (OSLC) is an open community, originally proposed in 2008, to define a set of specifications that enable integration of software development. It has evolved, and continues to evolve, to areas such as Appli ...
) with other OSLC-enabled tools.
History
Joachim Karlsson, Ph.D founded Focal Point AB; the tool originated from a doctoral dissertation by Joachim Karlsson at Linköping University, “A Systematic Approach for Prioritizing Software Requirements”. The first version of Focal Point was released in 1997.
Focal Point was acquired by
Telelogic
Telelogic AB was a software business headquartered in Malmö, Sweden. Telelogic was founded in 1983 as a research and development arm of Televerket, the Swedish department of telecom (now part of TeliaSonera). It was later acquired by IBM Rati ...
on April 13, 2005.
IBM Rational acquired Telelogic in April 2008., Focal Point was acquired by
UNICOM Global
UNICOM Global is an American multinational technology corporation headquartered in Mission Hills, California. The company was founded by Corry Hong in Los Angeles, California in 1981 to develop AUTOMON/CICS and related products for the CICS main ...
on 1 January 2015.
Features
Focal Point includes support for:
*
Scaled agile framework (SAFe) Methods
**
Kanban board
A kanban board is one of the tools that can be used to implement kanban to manage work at a personal or organizational level.
Kanban boards visually depict work at various stages of a process using cards to represent work items and columns to rep ...
s
** Capture and prioritization of Corporate Ideas
** Integration with EA, DevOps, Change Management, Testing and other tooling via
Open Services for Lifecycle Collaboration
Open Services for Lifecycle Collaboration (OSLC) is an open community, originally proposed in 2008, to define a set of specifications that enable integration of software development. It has evolved, and continues to evolve, to areas such as Appli ...
* Harvesting Information
**Web-based portal for form-based input from internal employees and/or customers
**
Excel
ExCeL London (an abbreviation for Exhibition Centre London) is an exhibition centre, international convention centre and former hospital in the Custom House area of Newham, East London. It is situated on a site on the northern quay of the ...
import/export
**
Microsoft Word
Microsoft Word is a word processing software developed by Microsoft. It was first released on October 25, 1983, under the name ''Multi-Tool Word'' for Xenix systems. Subsequent versions were later written for several other platforms includin ...
import
**
Email
Electronic mail (email or e-mail) is a method of exchanging messages ("mail") between people using electronic devices. Email was thus conceived as the electronic ( digital) version of, or counterpart to, mail, at a time when "mail" meant ...
import
* Analysis Techniques
**
Pairwise comparison
Pairwise comparison generally is any process of comparing entities in pairs to judge which of each entity is preferred, or has a greater amount of some quantitative property, or whether or not the two entities are identical. The method of pairwis ...
—Focal Point automatically selects the best pair of elements to compare based on internal algorithms; the end user can rank how much they prefer one choice over the other.
**Investment Analysis
**
Financial Planning
In general usage, a financial plan is a comprehensive evaluation of an individual's current pay and future financial state by using current known variables to predict future income, asset values and withdrawal plans. This often includes a bu ...
Using Time Grid Attribute
* Dashboard Charts
** Roadmaps and
Gantt chart
A Gantt chart is a type of bar chart that illustrates a project schedule, named after its popularizer, Henry Gantt (1861–1919), who designed such a chart around the years 1910–1915. Modern Gantt charts also show the dependency relationship ...
s—frequently used in project management as illustration of a project schedule that is used to plan, coordinate, and track specific tasks in a project against time. Also used for plotting other organizational resources against a timeline—applications (starting with their field date to their retirement date), technology, etc.
***
Gantt Chart
A Gantt chart is a type of bar chart that illustrates a project schedule, named after its popularizer, Henry Gantt (1861–1919), who designed such a chart around the years 1910–1915. Modern Gantt charts also show the dependency relationship ...
Histogram
A histogram is an approximate representation of the distribution of numerical data. The term was first introduced by Karl Pearson. To construct a histogram, the first step is to " bin" (or "bucket") the range of values—that is, divide the ent ...
—additional insight to an issue can be formed by laying a histogram of resources, costs, etc. underneath and along a timeline of a roadmap tracking a project, application, and so forth
*** Roadmap Dependency Lines
**
Bubble chart
A bubble chart is a type of chart that displays three dimensions of data. Each entity with its triplet (''v''1, ''v''2, ''v''3) of associated data is plotted as a disk that expresses two of the ''vi'' values through the disk's ''xy'' location and ...
(also known as XY chart)
*** Stacked XY charts
**
Bar chart
A bar chart or bar graph is a chart or graph that presents categorical data with rectangular bars with heights or lengths proportional to the values that they represent. The bars can be plotted vertically or horizontally. A vertical bar chart is ...
—A bar chart displays the priorities for a selected view and criterion
*** Stacked bar chart
**** Ranking schemes—In stacked bar charts, the total score for each element is displayed. There are two options to calculate the total score: a) Positive - Negative, wherein the score is calculated as the sum of the priorities of the Maximize criteria minus the sum of the priorities of the Minimize criteria, and b) Positive / Negative, wherein the score is calculated as the sum of the priorities of the Maximize criteria divided by the sum of the priorities of the Minimize criteria.
**
Pie chart
A pie chart (or a circle chart) is a circular Statistical graphics, statistical graphic, which is divided into slices to illustrate numerical proportion. In a pie chart, the arc length of each slice (and consequently its central angle and are ...
**
Radar chart
A radar chart is a graphical method of displaying multivariate data in the form of a two-dimensional chart of three or more quantitative variables represented on axes starting from the same point. The relative position and angle of the axes is ...
**
Waterfall chart
A waterfall chart is a form of data visualization that helps in understanding the cumulative effect of sequentially introduced positive or negative values. These intermediate values can either be time based or category based. The waterfall chart ...
References
{{Reflist
External links
UNICOM Focal Point product pageVideos on UNICOM Focal PointApplication Portfolio Management with UNICOM Focal Point
See also
*
Project portfolio management
Project portfolio management (PPM) is the centralized management of the processes, methods, and technologies used by project managers and project management offices (PMOs) to analyze and collectively manage current or proposed projects based on num ...
*
Requirement prioritization Requirement prioritization is used in the Software product management for determining which candidate requirements of a software product should be included in a certain release. Requirements are also prioritized to minimize risk during development ...
Decision analysis
Divested IBM products