Enterprise Architecture Framework

Agile Frameworks for your Architectures

An Enterprise Architecture Framework is a classification scheme of architectures (governance, business, information, data, technical, human capital, cybersecurity, system, solution, infrastructure, etc.) and their important artifacts.

An Enterprise Architecture Framework can serve as a foundation for reporting one or more types of artifacts, such as the concepts that comprise the architectures.

EA Frameworks for Management Views.

What do the Color Codes mean?

The color codes in the diagram mean the following:

Green means: We have documented sufficient items for this category. (Often over 90% is used for green.)
Orange/Amber means: We have documented insufficient items for this category. (Often below 30% is used for orange.)
Red means: We have documented hardly any items for this category. (Often below 10% is used for red.)
Blue means: We do not document items in this category.
Black means: We do not know how many items should be documented for this category. Ergo: we are not in control here.

EA Frameworks: Problems and Use Case

Enterprise Architecture Frameworks are diagrams and dashboards of essential value. Dragon1 software enables you to generate visualizations from various frameworks using Excel sheets, templates, and a JSON API, while focusing on high-quality data to produce informed decision reports.

Above, an interactive example of an Enterprise Architecture Framework is generated in the Dragon1 Viewer.

Benefits of creating diagrams of Enterprise Architecture Frameworks are:

Quick and clear communication of the roadmap for documenting EA
Control over who is responsible for doing what
Able to prioritize what to document when

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

With this EA framework, you can make clear which architectures in your organization are recognized and managed. You can also clarify the most important aspects of each architecture you recognize and manage.

The visualization shows any organization's most common and defined domains. It also encourages you to create your own version of this visualization and incorporate it into 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 the same for all parts of your framework's 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 or 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 be actively creating a business architecture, while in the future state, you are. You can clarify this using different diagram versions of the enterprise architecture frameworks.

From 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 but a decision-supporting report view of the architecture framework. Red indicates that action is needed now because the current situation is blocking goal achievement.

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 EA activities.

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 within the framework?

Framework domains.

enterprise architecture framework diagram realistic

In the Framework, more than one domain is missing.

Why Create Enterprise Architecture Frameworks Examples?

You immediately see why you need an EA Tool. EA frameworks have numerous possible views, making it impractical to manually create and update each view whenever a manager requests a new view for a specific situation, aspect, or period.

You want to share an easy way with your manager to show how enterprise architecture frameworks are created, with views based on repository information and parameters such as time. This makes complex structures easier to understand and keeps everyone on the same page.