The “ArchiMate Cookbook: Patterns & Examples” serves as a practical guide to leveraging ArchiMate for modeling organizational concepts and solutions through reusable patterns and examples. This comprehensive guide emphasizes a subset of ArchiMate elements and diagram types that are sufficient for most modeling purposes, providing a structured approach to enterprise architecture.

Purpose and Scope

The cookbook aims to provide ArchiMate patterns and examples for modeling concepts and solutions related to organizational development. It emphasizes that almost all business-relevant behavioral and structural elements of an organization can be modeled with ArchiMate. The guide focuses on a subset of ArchiMate elements and a small set of diagram types that are sufficient for most modeling purposes, covering approximately 80% of common scenarios.

ArchiMate Framework

The ArchiMate Framework organizes elements into layers, providing a structured approach to modeling enterprise architectures. The cookbook uses this framework to categorize elements and diagrams, ensuring consistency and clarity in modeling efforts.

Layers of the ArchiMate Framework

• Business Layer: Focuses on business processes, services, and roles that support the organization’s goals.

  • Example: Modeling the customer support process, including roles like “Customer Support Agent” and services like “Issue Resolution.”

• Application Layer: Represents application services and components that support business processes.

  • Example: Mapping the “Customer Relationship Management (CRM)” application and its interactions with other applications.

• Technology Layer: Describes the technology infrastructure that supports applications.

  • Example: Illustrating the server infrastructure that hosts the CRM application, including network components and storage solutions.

Diagram Types

The guide introduces several useful diagram types, each serving a specific purpose in modeling enterprise architectures:

Motivation View

• Purpose: Depicts why a change is meaningful, illustrating an organization’s strategy or defining a business case.
• Example: A Motivation View diagram shows the drivers for implementing a new CRM system, such as improving customer satisfaction and increasing sales efficiency.
• Benefit: Stakeholders can generally read the Motivation View without extensive ArchiMate knowledge, making it a versatile diagram for communicating strategic goals.

Risk Analysis View

• Purpose: Maps risk and security concepts to ArchiMate, identifying potential risks and mitigation strategies.
• Example: Analyzing the risks associated with migrating to a new cloud-based infrastructure, including data security and compliance concerns.

Strategy & Capability View

• Purpose: Connects strategy and strategic goals to the Business Model and Capability Model for efficient operational development.
• Examples:
  • Capability Map View: Uses ArchiMate Capability elements to map organizational capabilities required to achieve strategic goals.
  • Strategy & Capability Planning View: Illustrates a “Strategy to Capability” Value Stream, showing how strategic initiatives translate into operational capabilities.

Implementation Roadmap View

• Purpose: Groups changes into implementation phases, providing a clear roadmap for executing architectural changes.
• Example: A roadmap for transitioning to a new enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, detailing the phases of implementation and the expected outcomes.

Layered View

• Purpose: Combines elements from the Business, Application, and Technology Layers to analyze a development target as a layered stack.
• Example: A Layered View diagram that shows the integration of a new e-commerce platform, including business processes, supporting applications, and technology infrastructure.

Conceptual Data Model View

• Purpose: Models business concepts and their relations, using the ArchiMate Business Object element and relationship types like Association, Composition, Aggregation, and Specialization.
• Example: A Conceptual Data Model View that illustrates the relationships between customer data, order data, and product data in an e-commerce system.

Use Case View

• Purpose: Can apply layered views to diverse modeling needs, showing how different layers interact to support a specific use case.
• Example: A Use Case View that details the interactions between customers, the e-commerce platform, and backend systems during the order fulfillment process.

Key ArchiMate Elements

The cookbook covers a subset of ArchiMate elements that address most modeling requirements, categorized into active structure, behavior, and passive structure, along with composite elements like Grouping, Location, and Product.

Strategy Elements

• Course of Action: An approach or plan for configuring capabilities and resources to achieve a goal, categorized as strategies and tactics.

  • Example: A Course of Action for improving customer retention through personalized marketing campaigns.

• Capability: An ability of an active structure element to achieve a specific outcome.

  • Example: The capability to process customer orders efficiently and accurately.

ArchiMate Relationships

ArchiMate relationship types model structural, dependency, dynamic, and other relations between elements. Key relationships include:

• Serving (Dependency): Indicates that one element serves another, such as an application serving a business process.
• Realization: Shows how a logical element is realized by a physical element, such as a business process realized by an application component.
• Association: A general relationship between elements, indicating a relevant connection.

Metamodel

The guide references both the core and full metamodels, providing a comprehensive framework for modeling enterprise architectures.

Essential Diagram Types

The most essential diagram types that tackle most (80%) of the modeling requirements include:

• Motivation View: Analysis view of concepts including drivers, goals, and outcomes.
• Layered View: Overview of a concept, providing context across different layers.
• Conceptual Data Model View: Conceptual model of business objects and their relations at a high level.

Additional Diagram Types

• Business Model Canvas (BMC): Visualizes the business model, including key partners, activities, resources, value propositions, customer relationships, channels, customer segments, cost structure, and revenue streams.
• Service Blueprint: A layered template for analyzing elements related to a service path, including intra-organizational business services and processes, applications, and infrastructure.
• SIPOC: A high-level view of a process with its key elements, including Suppliers, Inputs, Process, Outputs, and Customers.

Customer Views

• Customer Journey: Defines the customer path through certain business services, illustrating touchpoints and interactions.
• Service Blueprint: Provides a detailed analysis of a service path, including front-stage and back-stage actions.

Maps

• Strategic Goals Map: Maps strategic goals for an organization or unit/domain, providing a visual representation of strategic objectives.

Modeling Tips & Tricks

• Enhanced Relationships: Add extra information to relationship types, such as line width and color, to convey additional meaning.
• Abstraction: Use abstraction to represent a “class” of objects/elements, simplifying complex models.

ArchiMate 1-2-3

ArchiMate 1-2-3 is a simple approach to utilizing modeling within architecture work, focusing on a small set of ArchiMate elements. The naming stands for “one holistic wholeness, two aspects (behavior and structure), three layers (business, application, technology).”

EA Content Frameworks

The cookbook mentions three variations of how EA content can be organized:

• Layer-Oriented Framework: Organizes content by layers, such as Business, Application, and Technology.
• Aspect-Oriented Framework: Organizes content by aspects, such as active structure, behavior, and passive structure.
• Views & Maps Framework: Organizes content by views and maps, providing a comprehensive overview of the architecture.

Service-Driven Approach (SDA)

The Service-Driven Approach (SDA) supports holistic enterprise development by focusing on services as primary units of value creation, design, development, and operations.

Benefits of the ArchiMate Cookbook

• Practical Guidance: Offers practical guidance through patterns and examples, making it easier to apply ArchiMate in real-world scenarios.
• Efficient Modeling: Focuses on a subset of elements and diagrams for common modeling needs, streamlining the modeling process.
• Multipurpose Diagrams: Shows how diagrams like the Motivation View can be applied to diverse purposes, enhancing versatility.
• Adaptability: Demonstrates how layered views can be adapted to various modeling needs, providing a flexible approach to enterprise architecture.

By leveraging the patterns and examples provided in the ArchiMate Cookbook, organizations can achieve a comprehensive and cohesive approach to enterprise architecture, driving business value and supporting strategic goals.