Impact Analysis

The Impact Analysis page shows what the impact will be if you move forward with your changes. This will be different, depending on what state each element is in.

• If it is currently ‘Implemented‘, what’s the impact of creating a branch?
• If it’s currently branched, what’s the impact of making it ‘planned‘ ?
• If planned, what about ‘Implemented‘?
• For the ‘branchedToRetire‘ state, what’s the impact of going to ‘plannedToRetire‘
• For PlannedToRetire, what’s the impact of retiring.

Some of the impacts are more serious than others. Other impacts would leave the model in a invalid state, and these are shaded black, and means that these elements can’t be moved forward.

Access

The Impact Analysis view can be accessed from anywhere in the model, at any time. This is because it’s the most useful feature of Portfolio Manager – answering the question “what’s my impact on everyone else?“.

For a project

EA Project Browser > select project package or project element > Specialize > Portfolio Manager > Project impact analysis

From a diagram

Select an item to check > Specialize > Portfolio Manager > Impact analysis

When branching some elements

Impact Analysis will appear if any of the elements being branched have any impact (any score > 0)

From the ‘Promote’ page

Select “Impact Analysis”

From the ‘Implement’ page

Select “Impact Analysis”

Note: Viewing the impact of a complete portfolio is not currently supported – it would take too long to calculate.

Actions

• In the Impact Analysis results window, right-click in the left pane to:
  • Find in browser (as below)
  • Remove from the list. Do this for elements which have a big impact, and which you don’t really want to change
  • Replace with newest planned. If you are branching from the baseline, implemented version of a
• Double-click an element on the left to find it in the EA Project Browser
• Double-click an element in the right-hand side to find the project – if one is shown – in the EA Project Browser.

Understanding the Impact Analysis view

For each element you have selected, the Impact Analysis view will show you:

• Name of the element. A tooltip shows the element type – hover over the element icon or text
• Current state : Implemented, Branched, Proposed (new), branched-to-retire or planned-to-retire
• Impact score: total impact on all other projects in this model of moving this element to its next state. See Impact Scores
• Project(s): the project which may be affected by making the change you are about to make