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Readers should note that updates – in the form of Corrigenda – may apply to any publication. This information is published at www.opengroup.org/corrigenda.
This Document
This document is the ArchiMate 2.1 Specification, an Open Group Standard.
Issue 2.1 is a maintenance update to ArchiMate 2.0, addressing comments raised since the introduction of ArchiMate 2.0 in 2012. It retains the major features and structure of ArchiMate 2.0, thereby preserving existing investment in ArchiMate 2.0. ArchiMate 2.0 includes a number of corrections, clarifications, and improvements compared to ArchiMate 1.0, as well as two optional language extensions: the Motivation extension and the Implementation and Migration extension.
Intended Audience
The intended audience of this Technical Standard is threefold:
• Enterprise architecture practitioners, such as architects (application, information, process, infrastructure, products/services, and, obviously, enterprise architects), senior and operational management, project leaders, and anyone committed to work within the reference framework defined by the enterprise architecture. It is assumed that the reader has a certain skill level and is effectively committed to enterprise architecture. Such a person is most likely the architect – that is, someone who has affinity with modeling techniques, knows his way around the organization, and is familiar with information technology.
• Those who intend to implement the ArchiMate language in a software tool. They will find a complete and detailed description of the language in this document.
• The academic community, on which we rely for amending and improving the language based on state-of-the-art research results in the architecture field.
Structure
The structure of this Technical Standard is as follows:
• Chapter 1, Introduction, provides a brief introduction to the purpose of this standard.
• Chapter 2, Language Structure, presents some general ideas, principles, and assumptions underlying the development of the ArchiMate metamodel and introduces the ArchiMate Framework.
• Chapter 3, Business Layer, covers the definition and usage of the business layer concept, together with examples.
• Chapter 4, Application Layer, covers the definition and usage of the application layer concept, together with examples.
• Chapter 5, Technology Layer, covers the definition and usage of the technical infrastructure layer concept, together with examples.
• Chapter 6, Cross-Layer Dependencies, and Chapter 7, Relationships, cover the definition of relationship concepts in a similar way.
• Chapter 8, Architecture Viewpoints, presents and clarifies a set of architecture viewpoints, developed in ArchiMate based on practical experience. All ArchiMate viewpoints are described in detail. For each viewpoint the comprised concepts and relationships, the guidelines for the viewpoint use, and the goal and target group and of the viewpoint are specified. Furthermore, each viewpoint description contains example models.
• Chapter 9, Language Extension Mechanisms, handles extending and/or specializing the ArchiMate language for specialized or domain-specific purposes.
• Chapter 10, Motivation Extension, describes an optional language extension with concepts, relationships, and viewpoints for expressing the motivation for an architecture (e.g., stakeholders, concerns, goals, principles, and requirements).
• Chapter 11, Implementation and Migration Extension, describes an optional language extension with concepts, relationships, and viewpoints for expressing the implementation and migration aspects of an architecture (e.g., project, programs, plateaus, and gaps).
• Chapter 12, Future Directions (Informative), is an informative chapter that identifies extensions and directions for developments in the next versions of the language.
• Appendix A, Summary of Language Notation (Informative), is an informative appendix.
• Appendix B, Relationship Tables, is a normative appendix detailing the required relationships between elements of the language.
ArchiMate®, DirecNet®, Jericho Forum®, Making Standards Work®, OpenPegasus®, The Open Group®, TOGAF®, and UNIX® are registered trademarks and Boundaryless Information Flow™, Dependability Through Assuredness™, FACE™, Open Platform 3.0™, and The Open Group Certification Mark™ are trademarks of The Open Group.
Java® is a registered trademark of Oracle and/or its affiliates.
MDA®, Model Driven Architecture®, OMG®, and UML® are registered trademarks and BPMN™, Business Process Modeling Notation™, MOF™, and Unified Modeling Language™ are trademarks of the Object Management Group.
All other brands, company, and product names are used for identification purposes only and may be trademarks that are the sole property of their respective owners.
The Open Group gratefully acknowledges The Open Group ArchiMate Forum for developing this Open Group Standard.
The Open Group gratefully acknowledges the contribution of the following people in the development of this and earlier versions of this Open Group Standard:
• Maria-Eugenia Iacob, University of Twente
• Henk Jonkers, BiZZdesign BV
• Marc M. Lankhorst, formerly Novay, now BiZZdesign BV
• Erik (H.A.) Proper, Public Research Centre Henri Tudor & Radboud University Nijmegen
• Dick A.C. Quartel, BiZZdesign BV
The Open Group and ArchiMate project team would like to thank in particular the following individuals for their support and review of this and earlier versions of this Open Group Standard:
• Iver Band
• Mary Beijleveld
• Alexander Bielowski
• Adrian Campbell
• John Coleshaw
• Jörgen Dahlberg
• Garry Doherty
• Wilco Engelsman
• Roland Ettema
• Henry M. Franken
• Sonia González
• Kirk Hansen
• Jos van Hillegersberg
• Andrew Josey
• Louw Labuschagne
• Veer Muchandi
• Michelle Nieuwoudt
• Bill Poole
• Henk Volbeda
• Egon Willemsz
• Raina Wissing
The results presented in this Open Group Standard have largely been produced during the ArchiMate project, and The Open Group gratefully acknowledges the contribution of the many people – former members of the project team – who have contributed to them.
The ArchiMate project comprised the following organizations:
• ABN AMRO
• Centrum voor Wiskunde en Informatica
• Dutch Tax and Customs Administration
• Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science
• Novay
• Ordina
• Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen
• Stichting Pensioenfonds ABP
The following documents are referenced in this Open Group Standard:
[1] ISO/IEC 42010:2007, Systems and Software Engineering – Recommended Practice for Architectural Description of Software-Intensive Systems, Edition 1.
[2] Enterprise Architecture at Work: Modeling, Communication, and Analysis, M.M. Lankhorst et al, Springer, 2005.
[3] Architecture Principles: The Cornerstones of Enterprise Architecture, D. Greefhorst, E. Proper, Springer, 2011.
[4] TOGAF, Version 9.1, The Open Group, 2011.
[5] A Framework for Information Systems Architecture, J.A. Zachman, IBM Systems Journal, Volume 26, No. 3, pp. 276–292, 1987.
[6] ITU Recommendation X.901 | ISO/IEC 10746-1:1998, Information Technology – Open Distributed Processing – Reference Model – Part 1: Overview, International Telecommunication Union, 1996.
[7] Unified Modeling Language: Infrastructure, Version 2.0 (formal/05-05-05), Object Management Group, March 2006.
[8] Extending and Formalizing the Framework for Information Systems Architecture, J.F. Sowa, J.A. Zachman,, IBM Systems Journal, Volume 31, No. 3, pp. 590‑616, 1992.
[9] Enterprise Ontology: Theory and Methodology, J.L.G. Dietz, Springer, 2006.
[10] Unified Modeling Language: Superstructure, Version 2.0 (formal/05-07-04), Object Management Group, August 2005.
[11] A Business Process Design Language, H. Eertink, W. Janssen, P. Oude Luttighuis, W. Teeuw, C. Vissers, in Proceedings of the First World Congress on Formal Methods, Toulouse, France, September 1999.
[12] Enterprise Business Architecture: The Formal Link between Strategy and Results, R. Whittle, C.B. Myrick, CRC Press, 2004.
[13] Composition of Relations in Enterprise Architecture, R.v. Buuren, H. Jonkers, M.E. Iacob, P. Strating, in Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Graph Transformation, pp. 39–53, Edited by H. Ehrig et al, Rome, Italy, 2004.
[14] Viewpoints: A Framework for Integrating Multiple Perspectives in System Development, A. Finkelstein, J. Kramer, B. Nuseibeh, L. Finkelstein, M. Goedicke, in International Journal on Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering, Volume 2, No. 1, pp. 31–58, 1992.
[15] Viewpoints for Requirements Definition, G. Kotonya, I. Sommerville, IEE/BCS Software Engineering Journal, Volume 7, No. 6, pp. 375–387, November 1992.
[16] Paradigm Shift – The New Promise of Information Technology, D. Tapscott, A. Caston, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1993.
[17] The 4+1 View Model of Architecture, P.B. Kruchten, IEEE Software, Volume 12, No. 6, pp. 42–50, 1995.
[18] Model-Driven Architecture: Applying MDA to Enterprise Computing, D. Frankel, Wiley, 2003.
[19] Performance and Cost Analysis of Service-Oriented Enterprise Architectures, H. Jonkers, M. E. Iacob, in Global Implications of Modern Enterprise Information Systems: Technologies and Applications, Edited by A. Gunasekaran, IGI Global, 2009.
[20] Business Process Modeling Notation Specification (dtc/06-02-01), Object Management Group, February 2006.
[21] The Chaos Report, The Standish Group, 1994.
[22] No Silver Bullet: Essence and Accidents of Software Engineering, F.P. Brooks, IEEE Computer, 20(4):10–19, 1987.
[23] Managing Successful Programs, Office of Government Commerce (OGC), Stationery Office Books, 2007.
[24] Managing Successful Projects with PRINCE2 – 2009 Edition, Office of Government Commerce (OGC), Stationery Office Books, 2009.
[25] A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBoK Guide), Fourth Edition, Project Management Institute, 2009.
Downloads of the ArchiMate documentation, are available under license from the ArchiMate information web site. The license is free to any organization wishing to use ArchiMate entirely for internal purposes (for example, to develop an information system architecture for use within that organization). A book is also available (in hardcopy and pdf) from The Open Group Bookstore as document C13L.