How to start seeing your solution as a system (...and getting started in EMMa)

The EMMa3D tooling is designed to help you create immersive, 3D models of complex technology services and solutions, so that these complex 'systems' are more understandable and intuitive for your prospects.

When you first get started with EMMa, and you are staring at an empty Map Maker UI, it can be a little daunting:

• How do you get started?
• How do you start turning the ideas in your head into a sensible, descriptive and value-adding model?

We've come up with a check list of 10 questions to help you get started. Simply ask yourself each of the questions in order and drop your answers into EMMa as you go. Before you know it you'll have the basis of a great EMMa model that provides a 'systemic' perspective on your situation:

Each question builds upon the answer to the previous question so sticking to the order of the questions is important. In outline, the questions are as follows:

Q1. PURPOSE: What is the purpose of the model?

Q2. ACTORS: Who or what is acting in this system?

Q3. ENTITIES: What are the different groups (Entities) that the actors cluster into across the system?

Q4. LEVELS: What are the vertical hierarchies (Levels) evident across the system?

Q5. FLOWS: How does activity (Flow) play out across the system?

Q6. PLATFORMS: Does the macro structure of the model support the story I want to tell?

Q7. ZONES & SECTORS: What are the horizontal hierarchies (Zones) and distinct groups evident across the system?

Q8. TIMELINE: How do the actors and the system change over time?

Q9. METRICS: What are the important variables (Metrics) in the system, and how do they change over time?

Q10. EXCEPTIONS: What needs to be flagged as different, have an image, or somehow have attention drawn to it?

This article aims to provide meta-level assistance to help you get started with building models in EMMa. It also aims to provide high-level guidance that can help you begin to think systemically about your situation, and how you might most effectively represent that situation 'systemically' in an EMMa model. The article is not intended to provide a very detailed, key stroke 'how-to' level of detail, as that is already contained in the EMMa3D User Guide . As such, throughout the article, in order to maintain the high-level focus, I will periodically link to the user guide, so it is clear where the reader can go to, if they need to dive into the 'how-to' detail.

In the rest of this article below, I unpack each question in detail, with a short background explanation of what insight the question is trying to unlock, some examples of the sorts of insights we've seen brought to life as users have answered the particular question, and a short series of action prompts to help you turn the question into action in EMMa.

Q1. PURPOSE: What is the purpose of the model?

• Background: Having a clear idea of the purpose of the model when you start out is important since it enables you to judge the effectiveness of the finished model. As you build the model it helps to bear the overall purpose in mind, since that purpose can help you decide what level of detail and content is needed in the model.
• Action 1.1: Log in to EMMa3D > Add New Project > Give your Model Project a 'Name', describe its 'Purpose' in 1 or 2 sentences, and assign it a 'Start Date':

Q2. ACTORS: Who or what is acting in this system?

• Background: Actors are central to an EMMa model, they are the elements in your system that cause activity to happen, they are the nodes in your network. If you want to be able to represent something/anything in your model, you're probably going to have to list it as one of your actors. There are lots of different Actor Types to to choose from, with your choice determining which 3D avatar is used to represent your actor in the EMMa model:

• Examples: Typical actors might be: Employees, clients, pieces of technology, institutional forums and meetings, governing bodies, specific pieces of data or files.
• Action 2.1: Go to 'Actors' > In the 'Name' column of the actor table, enter all the things you can think of that might be individual actors within your system. It doesn't matter at this stage if your list is definitive and complete or not - Just think of this stage as a brainstorming of all the elements you can think of within your system:

• Action 2.2: Open the Map Reader and look at the first draft of your model:

Q3. ENTITIES: What are the different groups (Entities) that the actors cluster into across the system?

• Background: In an EMMa model an entity is a part of the model where actors can be clustered and stacked together vertically - Every actor has to be associated with an entity. By default all of your actors will have been placed into the 'Default' entity - This is just to make it easy to get started. What Q3 is asking you to do now is think about how your list of actors sub-divide into logical groupings of actors. In the image below, each of the yellow areas represents a different 'Entity':

• Examples: If you had a series of actors all of which were associated with a particular company or line of business, then logically these actors would all sit within a common entity stack named after the company or line of business.
• Action 3.1: Stay in the Actor Table, and use the 'Add' function to populate the 'Entity' column with the entities you want to see in your model, and assign each actor to its logical entity:

• Action 3.2: Go to 'Project Dashboard' > 'Project Structure' > 'Entities' > 'Manage Entity Positions', and drag and drop the entities into the position you want to see them in the model:

• Action 3.3: In the Map Reader window, hit the refresh button to update the model with the new entity information.

Q4. LEVELS: What are the vertical hierarchies (Levels) evident across the system?

• Background: Once you've clustered your actors into different entities, you can think about how you want to sub-divide the overall model and the entities into different vertical levels. You can have as many levels as you like within an EMMa model, and a level will only appear within a particular entity stack if there are some actors within that entity that are also assigned to that level. In the image below, every yellow area represents a different level:

• Examples: User Experience Level, Application Level, Operating System Level, Infrastructure Level, Data Layer, Management Level, Strategy Level, ExCo Level.
• Action 4.1: In the 'Actor Table' use the 'Add' function to populate the 'Level' column with the levels you want to see in your model, and assign each actor to its Level.

• Action 4.2: In the Map Reader window, hit the refresh button to update the model with the new level information.

Q5. FLOWS: How does activity (Flow) play out across the system?

• Background: We now have a set of initial actors and they have been assigned to a place within the model. What Q5 prompts you to think about is how these actors interact with each other, and invites you to start constructing the paths and flow journeys that describe dynamic activity across your system. The video below demonstrates how activity can be shown within an EMMa model as a series of moving, glowing orbs that track your flows across your model:

• Examples: System Overview Flow, Log In Flow, Making a Payment Flow.
• Action 5.1: Go to 'Project Dashboard' > 'Flows' and use the 'Flow Name' column to list all the flows you can think of that function throughout your system and which you'd like to capture. Hit 'Save' on the Flows table.

• Action 5.2: From the list of the your flows, choose one that you'd like to document in more detail, hit the 'View Swim Lane' link.

• Action 5.3: Use the Swim Lane Creator function to construct your flow - For more detail on how to do this check out this part of the user guide: https://www.emma3d.com/user-guide/#Creating_your_first_flow

• Action 5.4: Once you've created a flow in the Swim Lane Creator, hit 'Save', and then go back into the Map Reader window and hit refresh. Click 'Flows', and you'll now be able to see your flow listed, click on the flow name and you'll be able to watch a first person fly through of the flow:

Q6. ZONES: What are the horizontal hierarchies (Zones) evident across the system?

• Background: On each of the levels in your model, it is possible to split the actors up so that they appear in different zones within the level. Q6 is your opportunity to split them up accordingly, and to assign a horizontal hierarchical distinction between actors. They will appear on each of the levels in your model that require them, and you can add as many zones as you like. In the image below, there are two zones shown, an inner zone entitled 'Back Office' and an outer zone entitled 'Front Office':

• Examples: The horizontal hierarchy can be used to make distinctions between actors that are at the periphery of an entity versus actors that are in the centre, or perhaps between outward facing actors and inward facing actors. Eg distinctions like: Front office versus back office, client facing teams versus internal teams, channels versus middle-ware versus core processing applications.
• Action 6.1: In the 'Actor’ Table use the 'Add' function to populate the ‘Zone’ column with the zones you want to see in your model and assign each actor to a zone. Multiple actors can be assigned to the same zone.

• Action 6.2: In the ‘Project Structure’ section on the ‘Project Dashboard’ you can arrange the zones so that they appear in the correct order. The highest ranked zone will appear in the middle of the level, and the other zones wrap around it as they get lower in the hierarchy.
• Link to User Guide (Zones)

• Action 6.3: In the Map Reader window, hit the refresh button to update the model with the new zone information.

Q7. SECTORS & PLATFORMS: What are the distinct groups (Sectors and Platforms) that actors fit into within and across the entities in the system?

• Background: Within each of your zones, you can further arrange your actors by placing them into distinct sector groupings. Sectors are a great way to reflect small groupings of actors within your system or company. Think about whether any of your actors work in groups to fulfjuil tasks – perhaps they can be grouped into a sector? Actors in the same sector will be positioned next to each within each unique Entity/Level/Zone location. Along with this, every actor within a particular sector will automatically share the same plinth colour as all the other actors within that sector, irrespective of where they are positioned within the model. In the image below you can see an entity ('United Kingdom'), with one level ('Personnel Level') and 2 Zones ('Back Office' and 'Front Office'). Within this unique entity-level-zone area of the model you can see 9 different actors divided into 2 sectors ('Operations' - Dark Green and 'Technology' - Light Green). The actors are clustered together within their sectors, whilst maintaining their position within the right zone:

• Examples: Operations, Marketing, Technology etc.
• Action 7.1: In the 'Actor Table' use the 'Add' function to populate the ‘Sector’ column with the sectors you want to see in your model and assign each actor to its sector.
• Link to User Guide (Sectors)

• Action: In the Map Reader window, hit the refresh button to update the model with the new sector information.

Q8. TIMELINE: How do the actors and the system change over time?

• Background: One of the key features of EMMa3D is the ability to see how a situation or system changes overtime. Q8 asks you to think about whether your system is static or changing over time, were all your actors in the system from the start, or did some emerge later than others? By making use of the timeline feature, you will be able to show actors coming in and out of your system, as well as showing a holistic view of how your system is changing over time. This can be particularly useful to show higher level structural changes to your system i.e: M&A activity, or systemic changes as a result of transformation.
• Examples: Employees leaving, new applications installed, new client, new company acquired.
• Action 8.1: Your ‘Start Date’ listed in the ‘Project Dashboard’ is when your timeline will start from. You can adjust this as you please.

• Action 8.2: In the 'Actor Table' you can change the ‘start time’ and ‘end time’ for each actor, so that they appear and disappear as you like. Once you have input a ‘start time’ and an ‘end time’ for each actor, press save and refresh the Map Reader.

• Action 8.3: In the Map Reader, move the time slider to the left and drag it to the right to see the actors appearing and disappearing according to your changes. You can also do this for ‘Paths’ and ‘Metrics’ in their respective tables.?

Q9. METRICS: What are the important variables in the system?

• Background: This question asks you to consider key metrics that you might want to display in EMMa. Think about whether you have any important statistics in your system that you want to track. In EMMa, metrics are associated with specific actors and how they increase and decrease over time is tracked. The image below shows 3 metrics linked to an actor, with one of the metrics being examined in the actor meta-data table:

• Examples: Revenue, profit, ROI, purchase quantity, stock levels, interest rates.
• Action 9.1: Have a look at the ‘Metrics’ table in your project dashboard > In the 'Name' column of the table, enter all the metrics you would like to add, and press save.
• Link to User Guide (Metrics)

Q10. STATUSES, IMAGES & OTHER: What needs to be flagged as different, have a logo, or have attention drawn to it?

• Background: Think about the key features in your model. It is worth spending some time highlighting important parts of your system as this will make your model look visually more appealing. If there are certain actors that are more important than others, you can increase their plinth height so that they sit higher than the rest. Similarly, you can assign colours to actors to make them stand out. If you have entities or actors that have a logo, you can add that into the model too. All of this helps to bring your model to life and make it more realistic. ?
• Action 10.1: You can edit the height of actors’ plinths by going into the ‘Actor’ table and editing the ‘Plinth Height’.
• Action 10.2: You can change the colours of actors by going into the ‘Actors’ table and selecting their colours in the ‘Current Status’ column.

• Action 10.3: To upload images to EMMa start in the ‘Project Dashboard’ > ‘Images’ > ‘Add New Image’ > Upload your image and press save > ‘Project Dashboard’ > You can now add the image into any of the actors, entities or levels. Go to the corresponding table and insert the image in the ‘Image’ column. This can be viewed in the Map Reader once saved.
• Link to User Guide (Images)

By the time you've worked through all of the 10 questions, you'll have begun to experience almost all of the EMMa3D functionality, and you will be well on the way to becoming an accomplished user.

If at any time you get stuck or need more assistance, feel free to reach out to the EMMa team. You can reach us in a number of ways:

• LinkedIn EMMa3D Users Group
• Contact Us page on EMMa3D.com
• You could join the weekly EMMa3D User Surgery