Effectively Modeling Your Architecture

Abstract

Enterprise architecture management is to a large extent about managing complexity; this holds for both the business and the IT architecture level. As a discipline, it has tended to focus on creating simplicity, such as embodied by principles, guidelines, and simplified models of what is or what is to be. This chapter is about the why and how of setting up a broader and deeper role of modeling in enterprise architecture management. In particular, it presents ways (specifically languages) to model the business architecture in its current state at a reasonable level of detail. It also discusses the role of modeling in future state planning.