Hack:
Visualize This!

Create an open source tool that allows people to quickly create graphics that reflect entities and model the relationships among the entities using data, taxonomy frameworks, viewpoints, and layers to organize and present the information in meaningful ways.

As an auditor and project manager, I watch people discuss what they think is the same thing, but they are not all on the same page. The need a visual "Rosetta Stone" to see the elephant in the room.

As a person of limited drawing talent, I know that creating these visualizations is a real challenge. Most tools are not designed to mix hard data and conceptual frameworks, much less easily prototype solutions, show alternatives and time-sequenced changes, and mix styles and viewpoints to tell stories.

There are tools like Many Eyes and Tableau public that have parts of the solution. Sites like flowingdata.com and good magazine show the power of the tools. Components like Flare and prefuse (http://flare.prefuse.org/) offer great power to programmers. Languages like Processing can create living solutions.

But little of this power is usable by those who understand management and make decisions. Its all just out of reach unless you have the time and energy to invest in creating the visualization.

TOGAF has a framework for the enterprise architecture - the instantiation and implementation of strategy. The tool could create open source business models and allow for operational metrics to flow through the models, making understanding and acting on the overwhelming amount of data simpler and easier. Frameworks like COSO, Cobit, ValIT, ISO (all of 'em) and whatnot could be plug-in components to the business models.

We could drive the entire world towards simpler, more consistent best practices by making it easier to manage simply by making it easier to understand and put operational data in the appropriate context.