Enterprise Architecture Framework

Agile Frameworks for your Architectures

Enterprise Architecture Frameworks are classification schemes of architectures (governance architecture, business architecture, information architecture, technical architecture, human capital architecture, security architecture, system architecture, solution architecture, infrastructure architecture, etc.) and their important artifacts.

An Enterprise Architecture Framework can be used as a background to report one or more types of artifacts, such as the concepts that make up the architectures.

Framework for Management Views.

With this EA framework, you can make clear which architectures in your organization are recognized and managed. And even more, you can clarify the most important parts of each architecture that you recognize and manage.

The visualization shows any organization's most common and defined architecture domains.

The Dragon1 open EA method defines a reference model for EA frameworks. In this context, an architecture framework is the coherent set of architectures for an organization or collection of organizations.

And promote that you create your own version of this visualization and make it part of your architecture dossier.

Be sure to define owners and architects per architecture and agree on a definition for an architecture type for your organization. Do this also for all the parts of an architecture. And make sure you've scaled up to all the architects in the organization to adhere to this agile framework.

Different versions of EA Frameworks

It is common to create two of three versions of this EAF diagram: the AS-IS version, the TO-BE version, and the Envision version. Or current state, future state, and envision state.

In the current state, for instance, you may not actively be busy creating a business architecture, while in the future state, you are. You can clarify this using different diagram versions of the enterprise frameworks.

From Architecture Diagram to Management Report View

The first visualization shows a management report view of an enterprise framework diagram. It is not a dull, meaningless visualization of an architecture model, but a decision-supporting report view of the architecture framework: red colors mean taking action now because the current situation is blocking the realization of goals!

You can, for example, build views by clicking away layers or filtering out specific information.

This example shows how you can and should, as an Enterprise Architect, report to your stakeholders the status of work in progress on EA.

The second and third visualizations (ideal and realistic) show a conceptual view of the enterprise architecture framework. It answers the question: What are the most essential concepts of our architectures within the framework?

Framework domains.

In the Framework, more than one domain is missing.

Why Create Enterprise Architecture Frameworks Examples?

You immediately see why you need an EA Tool as an Enterprise Architect. Enterprise frameworks have so many possible views that you do not want to create and update every report view by hand when a manager asks for a new view for a new situation, aspect, or period.

Now, you want your manager to present clickable enterprise frameworks and have your manager generate the views based on the repository's information by setting parameters like time.

Read more about How to create Frameworks Examples.

Architecting Solutions