ArchiMate

ArchiMate overview

ArchiMate is an open and independent modeling language for enterprise architecture. It is a standard maintained by The Open Group, which also maintains the related TOGAF framework.

ArchiMate provides a common graphical notation for describing, analyzing, and visualizing the relationships among the domains that make up an enterprise: business processes, organizational structures, information flows, IT systems, and technical infrastructure. Just as an architectural drawing describes the construction and use of a building, ArchiMate gives enterprise architects a shared language for describing the construction and operation of an enterprise. This helps stakeholders design, assess, and communicate the consequences of decisions and changes across business domains.

Structure

The language is organized into layers that correspond to different aspects of an enterprise, each defining a set of elements and the relationships between them.

  • Strategy. Captures strategic direction through elements such as outcome, resource, capability, and course of action.
  • Business. Describes business processes, business objects, roles, and the services they provide.
  • Application. Describes applications, their components, the services they offer, and the data they use.
  • Technology. Describes the IT infrastructure – devices, system software, networks, and the technology services they provide. The Physical extension adds equipment, facilities, and distribution networks.
  • Implementation and migration. Captures the programs, projects, work packages, deliverables, and plateaus used to plan and govern change.

A Motivation aspect runs across these layers, modeling the stakeholders, drivers, goals, requirements, and principles that motivate the architecture.

Relationship to TOGAF

ArchiMate and TOGAF are complementary and are maintained by the same organization. TOGAF supplies the method: its Architecture Development Method (ADM) defines a process lifecycle for creating and managing enterprise architectures. ArchiMate supplies the notation: a graphical language for representing the artifacts produced at each phase of the ADM. The Open Group’s Project Harmony has published guidance on using the two standards together, including viewpoints that map ArchiMate views onto ADM phases.

Relationship to other modeling languages

ArchiMate targets enterprise architecture and stays deliberately coarse-grained, modeling the enterprise as a whole rather than the internals of a single system. Other languages occupy adjacent ground.

  • UML models the detailed design of software systems and is finer-grained than ArchiMate. The two are complementary: ArchiMate for the enterprise-wide picture, UML for detailed software design.
  • C4 model visualizes software architecture at zoomable levels of abstraction, focused on a single system and its boundaries. ArchiMate spans strategy, business, and technology across the whole enterprise.
  • BPMN is a graphical notation for business processes. It can detail processes that ArchiMate’s business layer describes at a higher level.

Tool support

ArchiMate is supported by a growing number of visual modeling tools, including Modelio and Visual Paradigm. The Archi tool is a popular free and open-source option. The Open Group defines a model exchange file format for portability of models between tools and for automation workflows.

See also

References