Business ModelSite SurveyPersonasEpicsProduct/Solution ArchitectureAIoT Usage ViewpointAIoT Data/Functional ViewpointAIoT Implementation ViewpointAToT Product ViewpointAIoT Business Viewpoint

Business Model

The Business Viewpoint of the AIoT Product Architecture is a refinement of the different artifacts created in the Business Model. Given that AIoT solutions heavily depend on physical products / assets deployed in the field, it is highly recommended to perform research in real-world deployment scenarios, e.g. in the form of site-visits where current / similar product versions are used.

Site Survey

In many traditional Internet or enterprise IT projects, it does not matter where the software is used, especially if the main point of access is a browser. With AIoT, this differs greatly, since the physical products / assets can potentially behave differently, depending on the type of environment they are deployed in. Also, usage pattern might vastly differ, depending on the environment. Consequently, it is highly recommended for the team responsible for the product design to spend time on-site and investigate different usage scenarios in different environments.

While most AIoT solutions will be deployed at a dedicated site, this might not be true for AIoT-enabled products. Take, for example, a smart kitchen appliance, which will be sold to private households. In this particular case it can make sense to actually build a real kitchen as a test lab, to test usage of the product in a realistic environment.

Personas

Personas are archetypical users of the product or solution. Often, personas represent fictitious people which are based on your knowledge of real users.

The Business Viewpoint should define a comprehensive set of personas which help with modeling the product features in way that takes the perspective of different product users into consideration. By personifying personas, the product team will ideally even develop an emotional bond to key personas, since they will accompany them through an intense development process. A persona does not necessarily need a sophisticated fictitious background story, but at least it should have a real-world first name and individual icon, as shown in the example below.

AIoT Personas

Epics

The agile approach to managing work items is to break them down in a hierarchical way. Depending on the agile method chosen, these hierarchies will includes Themes, Epics, Features, Stories, and so on. The AIoT Framework is by default assuming that Epics and Stories are used to structure work. Depending on the complexity of the project and the agile method chosen, this might have to be adapted.

Nevertheless, it is important that the business model and the agile work schedule get closely aligned. This is why the AIoT Framework proposes that the business model team defines a high-level set up work packages as Epics, which can then be broken down into smaller backlog entries (e.g. user stories) by the agile teams.

Business Model