What is a Fact Card?

Fact Cards are the central element within Colloquial. There are several types of Fact Cards that our meta-model consists of. We will explain how they are defined, how fact cards are structured, and how they relate to each other.

Fact Card Structure

Fact Cards are used to document and save information regarding architectural objects, like Business Capabilities, Applications, or Technologies. With a Fact Card, you can keep all relevant information on a single page and, at the same time, maintain the dependencies within your IT landscape.

Fact Card Types

Every architectural object (Application, Business Capability, Data Object, etc.) is stored in an individual template according to its Fact Card type. You can access Fact Cards types on the upper left side of the Inventory.

Overview of Colloquial Fact Cards with examples:

There are 12 different Fact Cards types in the Meta Model. The following overview provides the definitions we use for the standard setup of a workspace. If they do not match the definitions of your organization, it is possible to configure the workspace to your needs.

Application: Applications are software systems or programs that process or analyze business data to support business tasks, processes, or aspects of an organization's business model. Application Fact Card is one of the core Fact Card types of Colloquial as it's interconnected with many different Fact Cards.
Technologies: Represent the technology (software and hardware) or services an organization’s applications depend on, and they can provide information on both development and operations. IT Components are powerful for getting crucial insights into obsolescence risk management, operating costs, and managing other risks.
Initiatives: Initiatives represent efforts (from ideas to full-fledged programs) that impact the organization’s architecture, require resources, and contribute to achieving specific goals or objectives. These Fact Cards helps you manage or build budgets, reflect a project status, and show the impact of a project on your Application Portfolio and their affected Organizations.
Assets: Assets are valuable resources owned by your organization, which are expected to provide ongoing benefits. They may include physical assets like real estate, machinery, equipment, or intangible assets like intellectual property.
Capabilities: structured documents that outline the essential capabilities or functional aspects of a system, software component, or architecture framework.
Stakeholder: In our daily operations, we engage with various individuals and groups. Whether they're colleagues, clients, suppliers or stakeholders, these are the key players who have a role in what we do and how we do it.
Features: Encompass a broad range of elements that define the structure, behavior, and performance characteristics of services in an organization.
Information: Every business relies on key pieces of information to operate smoothly and deliver products or services. This could be any essential type of data or document that is created, processed or stored.
Processes: Processes have repeatable activities and tasks that we perform to get a job done. They are how we achieve our business capabilities.
Products: Serve as concise documents that provide essential information about a particular product or component within a larger system.
Purposes: succinct and structured document that provides essential information about the strategic objectives, goals, and intended outcomes of a specific architectural component.
Services: provides comprehensive information about specific services offered.

Best Practice

Since a Technologies group category can be seen as a rather stable structure, it will look pretty similar for different companies. If you want to start classifying your Technologies using a Technology group category, you should have a look at our Best Practice Guides.