Book Image

Practical Model-Driven Enterprise Architecture

By : Mudar Bahri, Joe Williams
Book Image

Practical Model-Driven Enterprise Architecture

By: Mudar Bahri, Joe Williams

Overview of this book

Most organizations face challenges in defining and achieving evolved enterprise architecture practices, which can be a very lengthy process even if implemented correctly. Developers, for example, can build better solutions only if they receive the necessary design information from architects, and decision-makers can make appropriate changes within the organization only if they know the implications of doing so. The book starts by addressing the problems faced by enterprise architecture practitioners and provides solutions based on an agile approach to enterprise architecture, using ArchiMate® 3.1 as an industry standard and Sparx EA as the modeling tool. You'll learn with the help of a fictional organization that has three business units, each expecting something different from you as the enterprise architect. You'll build the practice, satisfy the different requirements of each business unit, and share the knowledge with others so they can follow your steps. Toward the end, you'll learn how to put the diagrams and the content that you have developed into documents, presentations, and web pages that can be published and shared with any stakeholder. By the end of this book, you'll be able to build a functional enterprise architecture practice that supports every part of your organization. You'll also have developed the necessary skills to populate your enterprise architecture repository with references and artifacts.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)
1
Section 1: Enterprise Architecture with Sparx Enterprise Architect
4
Section 2: Building the Enterprise Architecture Repository
12
Section 3: Managing the Repository

Introducing strategy elements

The strategy layer uses elements for modeling strategy artifacts, just like all the other layers. Strategy elements are also of two types, structural and behavioral, just like the elements in other layers. In this section, we will explore the four elements of the strategy layer, which are as follows:

  • Capabilities
  • Value streams
  • Courses of action
  • Resources

As we learn about these elements, we will elaborate on each one, with examples to help you understand how to use them to develop strategy models in your work environment. We will start with capabilities.

Defining capabilities

"A capability represents an ability that an active structure element, such as an organization, person, or system, possesses" (https://pubs.opengroup.org/architecture/archimate3-doc/chap07.html#_Toc10045359).

The topic of business capabilities is one of the most controversial topics in Enterprise Architecture (EA). I always say that if...