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

Adding elements to the diagram

Element is a generic word for anything you place on a diagram. New elements are provided in toolboxes, and for each type of diagram, Sparx makes one toolbox the default toolbox for that diagram. When creating our diagram, we chose that we wanted to create an ArchiMate® 3.1 Application diagram; therefore, Sparx has set ArchiMate® 3.1 Application as the default toolbox for us. This can be changed, as we will see later, but first, we need to add the main element to the diagram, which is the application component.

Starting with the application component

It is always a great idea to have an imaginary picture of the diagram in your head or a sketch on a piece of paper before starting to model it. In this diagram, we need to convey what the new application is about, what it provides, who will be using it, and what other applications need to integrate with it. Therefore, I am imagining an application component in the middle of the diagram, surrounded...