Enterprise architecture modeling with ArchiMate, EA, and iSpace

Author: Zu Tao （Pitaya System Engineering）

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2020-12-18

1.What is ArchiMate

Enterprise architecture involves multiple levels such as strategy, business, data, application, technology, etc., and each level has a lot of content, which requires a clear conceptual distinction and the use of different symbols for different concepts in order to: clear description, clear understanding, and direction of action.

ActiMate is the standard language for enterprise architecture modeling, supporting modeling at all levels of enterprise architecture：

1. Corporate Strategy
2. Business Architecture
3. Data Architecture
4. Application Architecture
5.Technical Architecture
6. Implementation & Migration

The following is a multi-level diagram of an enterprise architecture built using ArchiMate：

2. What does ArchiMate have

ArchiMate supports 6 levels and 4 aspects of enterprise architecture. The 6 levels and 4 aspects are mapped to each other, as shown below：

ArchiMate models the 6 levels of enterprise architecture：

1. Strategic Layer: Specify the strategic goals and growth roadmap of the enterprise architecture.

2. Business Layer: The driving force of enterprise architecture.

3. Application layer: the organization and integration of information systems that support business.

4. Technology layer: The network, software, and hardware technologies on which the application is built.

5. Physical layer: The physical devices and networks that support the application.

6. Implementation & Migration: Project process control for the implementation of enterprise architecture.

ArchiMate models 4 aspects of enterprise architecture：

1. Motivation: What enterprise architecture involves, what to improve, and why.

2. Active structure: The subject that initiates various actions.

3. Behavior: The activities that provide the various competencies and the processes that make up them and the services that they realize.

4. Passive structure: the various objects that are processed.

The following is 6 of the Enterprise Architecture Model Level Description:

Observer	Angle and content of concern	Perspectives of concern
1. policymaker	Who is the main external service object of the organization, what is the core value of the enterprise, and what is the future development goal and roadmap of the enterprise.	Strategic model
2. Business people	What are the businesses, what processes are in those businesses, how are the business people organized, what relationships exist between business objects, and what are the business activities supported by those application services.	Business architecture model
3. Data Controller	What data exists, what data objects do these data belong to, what attributes constitute these data objects, what relationships exist between data objects, and how are they distributed in storage.	Data architecture model
4. App developers	What application components are implemented in the application services that support the business, which system functions are combined into these application components, and what are the interfaces and relationships between these application components. What are the process of these application components for the request.	Application architecture model
5. Technology developers	What are the nodes in IT technology, what operating systems, data, middleware and other basic environments exist on the nodes, what technical components are deployed on these environments, and what kind of process provides services to applications.	Technology architecture model
6. Project Managers	What content needs to be built in the whole architecture, what levels are these contents divided into, what phases are divided into time, what content is implemented in each stage, what resources and capabilities are required, how is the time arranged, and how is the quality guaranteed.	Implement a process model

Here are some examples of the 6-level model of enterprise architecture:

There is a mapping between these layers, as shown in an example of a cross-layer view:

3. Model-based approach to enterprise architecture

Enterprise architecture is a cross-business, data, application, technology four levels, involving a number of business areas within the enterprise IT overall architecture design, is the cornerstone of the future development of enterprise informatization, this process is destined to be a long time, involving many personnel, involving many complex projects, so the need for rigorous and clear engineering methods. To do this, we take an enterprise architecture engineering approach:

First of all, you should investigate the current situation of the enterprise and understand it clearly:

The status quo of the business
The current state of the system
The current state of the data
State of the art

Then adopt a roadmap for the development process of establishing an enterprise architecture: refer to TOGAF's ADM.

Enterprise architecture development is divided into the following phases:

√ Preparation phase
√ Architectural vision
√ Business Architecture
√ Information Systems Architecture (including Application Architecture and Technical Architecture)
√ Technical Architecture
√ Opportunity identification and solution planning
√ Develop a migration plan
√ Implement structural governance
√ Change management of the architecture

Requirements management is performed throughout the process, including impact analysis and management of architectural changes caused by requirements.

Adopting ArchiMate for Enterprise Architecture Modeling in the Enterprise Architecture Development Process:

√ Motivation and strategy
√ Business architecture
√ Data Architecture
√ Application architecture
√ Technical architecture
√ Implementation and migration

In the above architecture process, clear quality standards should be established, and quality review should be carried out after the corresponding architecture design is completed.

The establishment of enterprise architecture is a huge project, not only one or two architects, but should have an architecture team, and also need the timely participation of relevant business experts and technical experts, which requires the establishment of an architecture paradigm that can play an exemplary role for everyone to use as a reference for work.

In the implementation of the architecture, in order to ensure clear thinking and clear content, two aspects must be clarified:

Enterprise Architecture Implementation Process, this refers to the TOGAF ADM，
The content of the enterprise architecture, which is modeled using ArchiMate.

Moreover, it is necessary to clarify the mapping relationship between the architecture development process and the architecture content, so that the content can be gradually established as the process progresses. The mapping between ADM, which is the architecture development process, and ArchiMate, which describes the architecture, is as follows：

The modeling views corresponding to the various phases of enterprise architecture development are as follows:

Stage	ArchiMate modeling
Preparatory stage	Prepare methods, specifications, and tools related to architecture modeling
Architecture Prospect Phase	Strategy & Motivation Modeling
Business architecture phase	Business architecture modeling
Information system architecture stage	Application Architecture Modeling Data Architecture Modeling
Technology architecture phase	echnology architecture modeling
Opportunity & Solution Phase	Opportunity identification and solution development based on the architecture model
Migration planning phase	Implementation & Migration Modeling
Implement the governance phase	Business, application, data, and technology governance based on the architecture model
Architecture change management phase	Change management of the schema's model
Requirements management	Manage changes in requirements and analyze the affected architectural content

Above is a recommended enterprise architecture roadmap based on an architectural methodology perspective. The specific implementation process needs to be moderately simplified so that the content of the implementers is clear and the route is clear. The following figure shows an overall roadmap for us to implement the top-level IT design for an enterprise：

During this project, the implementation roadmap for enterprise architecture was simplified to:

Temporal perspective: investigation of the current situation, future target architecture positioning, and the formulation of feasible solutions from the current situation to the future.
Content perspective: The development and implementation of value objectives, business, applications, and technologies at each stage of the timeline.

4.Enterprise Architecture Tool Scheme

Because of the multi-level and complex content of enterprise architecture, the content of architecture modeling will be very huge for this complex architecture combing, which requires the support of powerful enterprise architecture modeling tools. The following are the enterprise architecture tool solutions provided by Dragon Fruit:

The functions of each tool are as follows：

Tool	Function
Modeling tool EA	ArchiMate, an enterprise architecture modeling specification, can model: business architecture, data architecture, application architecture, and technology architecture; It also supports SysML for system modeling, UML for software modeling, and model-based simulation, team collaboration, and project management.
MBSE platform: iSpace	Support model-based engineering management of the enterprise architecture itself： Process management: process modeling, work guidelines. Personnel Management: Role Modeling, Role Responsibility Assignment, Capability Modeling. Workpiece management: workpiece modeling, workpiece template, workpiece association. Requirements management: demand catalog, demand tracking, demand evaluation. Quality management: quality standards, quality evaluation, quality statistical reports. Engineering warehouse: engineering data and artifact storage, team collaboration, and authority management.
Requirements management tool: WebEA	Browse the model in the web mode, you can review, publish, use feedback and change management of the model, you can browse the model diagram and element list, and you can associate and edit various model elements to achieve requirements tracking, change management and quality management.
DocGenerator	Documents can be automatically generated based on the model, users can customize the document template by themselves, and the generated documents can be tracked and managed with the model.
Quality Review QA	You can establish a quality model, define a quality evaluation index model for different models, and then conduct a quality review of the model and submit questions. Quality reports can be generated for quality analysis.
Simulator	Workflows can be simulated and calculated based on user-defined parameters that can be used to analyze process correctness, completeness, and operational performance.

5. Enterprise Architecture Modeling Tool EA

The primary tool for enterprise architecture is the modeling tool, and the mainstream modeling tool EA now provides complete enterprise architecture modeling support in this regard:

TOGAF's Process Framework
ArchiMate's six-level modeling guidelines
ArchiMate's viewpoint model framework
Enterprise architecture reference examples

Here's an example of EA's Enterprise Architecture Modeling interface：

The EA supports the full enterprise architecture modeling specification ArchiMate, which is described in the ArchiMate Modeling Toolbar in EA：

EA also provides ArchiMate's modeling framework, which includes a 27-point model framework on which users can quickly model the corresponding architecture. The following is: Screenshot of the model framework：

Once the architecture is designed, the dynamic aspects need to be simulated in order to determine the feasibility and efficiency of the architecture's execution. To this end, EA provides a simulation tool BPSim for business processes, which can simulate the execution of business processes based on the process modeling specification BPMN, and calculate the parameters and performance of the process. In order for designers to evaluate the effectiveness of the process, here is a screenshot of BPSim's simulation interface:

In the architecture design process, it should be established that there is a tracking relationship between the components of the architecture at all levels, so as to facilitate the verification and change management of the architecture. The tracking matrix is an effective form of describing the tracking relationship, because of the large number of components, it is best to have tools to quickly establish and automatically generate the tracking relationship matrix of various components. The following is a relationship matrix automatically generated by the modeling tool EA.

The following is the relationship matrix of an architecture project: Business Components - Data Objects

Relationship Matrix (Business Components - Data Objects)

The following is the relationship matrix: Business Component - Application Component

Relationship Matrix (Business Component - Application Component)

EA not only supports enterprise architecture modeling, but also supports database design and development, software requirements and design modeling, so it can easily support the implementation from enterprise architecture to database implementation and software development. EA also supports model libraries, which can support team modeling collaboration for large-scale architectures, including: team subcontracting modeling, model review, model simulation, model publishing, and application management. Here's an EA Enterprise Architecture collaboration diagram:

Model sharing schematic diagram of the Enterprise Architecture Modeling Tool EA

With the model library, it is easy to support the working scenarios of the architecture:

The business side formulates business work guidelines based on the architecture
Architect Design Frame
Developers develop application components based on architecture
Users learn how-to-do based on the model and provide feedback

The model library can be a core resource for the team, enabling rapid model-based collaboration.

6. Enterprise architecture platform iSpace

Because of the long process of enterprise architecture design, the many roles of designers, and the number of artifacts, it is recommended to use the MBSE platform iSpace for all-round management of enterprise architecture projects. Include:

Enterprise architecture process modeling
Enterprise architecture role responsibility assignment
Enterprise architecture artifact tracking and management.

The following is an enterprise architecture design process modeled with iSpace

A guide to the enterprise architecture process using iSpace

The following are the enterprise architecture roles modeled with iSpace

Use iSpace to build an enterprise architecture role competency model

The following are the enterprise architecture artifacts modeled with iSpace

Use iSpace to build an enterprise architecture artifact view

These artifacts correspond to the architecture model of the EA, which can realize the overall model management, and can also quickly browse the tracking relationship between each model, such as the trace tree and trace table:

Use iSpace to build trace trees and trace tables

If you want to learn more about Enterprise Architecture, ArchiMate, TOGAF, EA, and iSpace, you can refer to the following courses or tools

The following is:

E-book： Archimate 3.0 Learning Card (Chinese version)
Lecture Recording：Competency Modeling, Training, and Assessment of Enterprise Architects
Capability Model：Enterprise Architect
Course：Enterprise Architect Certification Course (Business, Applications, Technology)
Course：Enterprise Architecture Modeling (Archimate)
Tools：Enterprise Architecture Modeling ToolsEA Enterprise Architecture Engineering Platform-iSpace

About the Author:

Zu Tao, the founder of Dragon Fruit Software Engineering, founded Dragon Fruit Software Engineering in 2001 and IBM Rational User Group in 2004. In 1998, he participated in the national key research project "Component-based Software Reuse for Specific Domains" as a backbone, and was fortunate to learn and use UML for domain modeling and refining reusable components and architectures. In the subsequent R&D projects, the model has been used for analysis and design, and has accumulated some experience and experience. Focused on MBSE for 20 years, familiar UML, Sys ML, ArchiMate, BPMN, UPDM, DataModel and other modeling languages and specifications, in the past experience, the biggest feeling is that the field of software engineering and systems engineering, which brings together many elite talents, has been a messy and confused state for decades. Develop a sustainable methodology for yourself, such as MBSE From Methodology to Practice Guide Model-Based 3D R&D Management Model-Based Requirements Management Model-Driven Architecture Design "Model-Based Quality Management" "Model-based Personnel Capability Management" "iProcess Process Improvement Method", currently as a product manager and architect, is currently working on the research and development of MBSE (Model-Based Systems Engineering) platform, hoping to establish model-based engineering solutions, and will continue to write some articles in the future, hoping to give some reference to peers.

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