Architecture framework
An architecture framework is a set of conventions, principles, and practices for describing architectures, established within a specific domain of application or community of stakeholders, per ISO/IEC/IEEE 42010. It doesn’t prescribe an architecture itself. It standardizes how architectures in its domain are described, so that descriptions produced by different teams, at different times, remain comparable and mutually intelligible.
ISO/IEC/IEEE 42010 – itself descended from IEEE 1471 – is the standard that formalizes the term, defining the abstract framework that any concrete architecture framework must satisfy.
TOGAF and arc42 are two widely used examples aimed at enterprise and software architectures respectively. Others are scoped more narrowly. The Generalised Enterprise Reference Architecture and Methodologies (GERAM) targets enterprise integration, and the Reference Model of Open Distributed Processing (RM-ODP) targets distributed systems.