The Praxeme method

A method to help you transform your enterprise

Praxeme is an enterprise methodology. It can be applied to any organized and voluntary system: organization, information system or technical system. It covers all aspects of these systems: from the culture and values of the enterprise to its infrastructure, via knowledge, the organization and the processes. This interdisciplinary approach answers the need to link specialties together to think the enterprise as a whole and aid in its transformation.

Enterprises, government agencies and other organizations evolve in an ever-changing environment; they deal with uncertainty on a daily basis. Continually alert, they have to adapt, modernize and transform themselves.

Faced with the complexity of the enterprise and the uncertainty of its environment, how can we think of succeeding without a minimum of rigor and without some serious thought?

Praxeme provides an analytical framework of the enterprise, in all its dimensions. Its procedures and methods enable it to capture all the elements that make up the reality of the enterprise, as well as the significant elements in its environment. Acting on the enterprise presupposes that we understand and apprehend it in all its complexity. To this end, Praxeme assembles the analysis and representation techniques that are of benefit to the strategy, design and transformation.

Scope of the method

Praxeme aims to cover all the enterprise aspects, from values to infrastructure, from strategy to deployment (see the reference framework). Those who promote Praxeme think, indeed, that the main need of an enterprise is to organize the synergy between the disciplines and specialties that are not used to working together.

Applications of the method

Praxeme has been able to demonstrate its use in very varied contexts:

For more information on the applications: see the wiki.

Praxeme covers both levels:

  • the method, a set of practical answers to the question “how do we…?”;
  • the methodology, discourse on the method.

The method presents itself in the shape of procedure sheets, designed to be used during clearly individualized tasks.

The methodology is presented through guides which establish the fundamentals of the method and justify the measures. The methodological guides are aimed at people – method or quality engineers, enterprise architects, trainers, transformation managers… – who need to understand the overall logic and implications of the approach Praxeme provides.

The structure of the method

The Pro3 (pro cube) schema shows the chapters of the methodology:

  • Product: What are we talking about? What is the object that we are building or transforming (the enterprise, a federation of enterprises, a socio-technical system, an application…)?
  • Process: How can we organize ourselves? How can we work together?
  • Procedures and methods: How can we work individually? How can we work well?

Understanding the internal logic of the Product is, in our opinion, a prerequisite to answering the “How” question. The analysis of the overall aim sits atop this structure and brings us continually back to the question of justification, the question which extends the methodology to the quality domain.

The Pro3 schema (pro cube): the chapters of the method

For more information on the structure of the method: see the Modus (method) section on the wiki.

Initiative for an open method

Most enterprises and organizations are faced with the same difficulties as regards design and control: whether it concerns how they are run or how they are transformed, their processes or their information systems, the acknowledged complexity everywhere dominates and drives to despair.

Rather than responding to these difficulties in a haphazard way, with necessarily limited means, several actors have joined forces in order to develop an open method. Praxeme is the result of this pooling of investments. It is an enterprise methodology that covers all aspects of the enterprise, from strategy to deployment.

Highlights

  • After the initial work carried out for SAGEM and SMABTP, the white paper, in 2004, defined the initiative and formulated some of the principles of the method.
  • In 2006, the Praxeme Institute association was founded.
  • Today, strengthened by the support from the French government and several other actors, the association is developing version 2 of the method.

Vision

A brief chronology

  • 2003: first contribution, contribution from SAGEM Defense (first version of the methodological guides, applied to the overhaul of drone system control stations)
  • 2004: initiative launched, publication of the White Paper, contribution of SMABTP (Praxeme for SOA)
  • 2005: initial communication
  • 2006: founding of the Praxeme Institute
  • 2007: first “Exceptional days”
  • 2009: Praxeme recommended as a method for designing information systems in the General Interoperability Framework (RGI: Référentiel général d’interopérabilité)
  • 2010: publication of the Enterprise Transformation Manifesto, signature of a cooperation agreement with CESAMES
  • 2011: contribution of the “Performance Treemethod, donated to the open corpus
  • 2012: exceptional training course “Business Architecture & Transformation
  • 2013: Praxeme adopted by the Interministerial Directorate for Information and Communications Systems (DISIC), launch of version 2

For more details: see the presentation about the initiative on the wiki.