Gap Analysis

The technique known as gap analysis is widely used in the TOGA Architecture Development Method (ADM) to validate an architecture that is being developed. The basic premise is to highlight a shortfall between the Baseline Architecture and the Target Architecture; that is, items that have been deliberately omitted, accidentally left out, or not yet defined.

Introduction

A key step in validating an architecture is to consider what may have been forgotten. The architecture must support all of the essential information processing needs of the organisation.
The most critical source of gaps that should be considered is stakeholder concerns that have not been addressed in prior architectural work.

Potential sources of gaps include:

• Business domain gaps:
  • People gaps (e.g., cross-training requirements)
  • Process gaps (e.g., process inefficiencies)
  • Tools gaps (e.g., duplicate or missing tool functionality)
  • Information gaps
  • Measurement gaps
  • Financial gaps
  • Facilities gaps (buildings, office space, etc.)
• Data domain gaps:
  • Data not of sufficient currency
  • Data not located where it is needed
  • Not the data that is needed
  • Data not available when needed
  • Data not created
  • Data not consumed
  • Data relationship gaps

Purpose

• to document the difference between the baseline and the target architectures
• It identifies components (building blocks) of the architecture that are added, deleted, and/or changed