New enterprise-architecture category

More than about time I added a specific enterprise-architecture category to this blog, so I’ve finally gone ahead and done so.

Main reason is that after a mammoth session this weekend, I’ve finally found a way to integrate Zachman‘s framework and the TOGAF ADM methodology, in a form which

  • is completely consistent throughout the ADM’s Phase B (‘Business Architecture’), C1/C2 (‘Systems Architecture’) and D (the hopelessly-inadequate ‘Technology Architecture’)
  • is consistent across all aspects of the business – i.e. it breaks out of TOGAF’s absurd ‘business-architecture is anything not-IT’
  • enables Zachman to be used with the full range of asset-types – i.e. physical ‘things’, information-entities, business-relationships and ‘aspirational’ entities such as morale, values etc (rather than only information-entities, as in the Zachman original)
  • enables Zachman to be used with the full range of business-rule and requirement types, including hard-wired rules, contextual algorithms, expert-systems, guideline-driven complex-systems and principle-driven chaotic-systems
  • integrates Zachman’s ‘Who’ column with use-case development, by changing the label from ‘People’ to the generic ‘Actor’ or ‘Agent’
  • enables a non-IT-centric, whole-of-organisation form of service-oriented architecture

In other words, a hell of an improvement over the severe limitations of both existing frameworks, especially for the kind of non-IT-centric environments I deal with.

More to follow when I have a chance to get it all down in more readable form.

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