Language?
The ArchiMate 3.0 Specification, published in June 2016, is the latest evolution of the standard and a major update to the previous version, 2.1. It continues to improve collaboration across multiple functions including strategists and business executives, enterprise and business architects, portfolio and project managers, information and applications architects, technology stakeholders and solutions architects.
The new version of the language has been created to respond to several requirements:
- Increasing demand for relating business strategy with business and IT operations
- Technology innovations that mix IT and the physical world
- Usage in new domains; e.g., manufacturing, logistics
- Improved consistency and comprehensibility
- Improved alignment between Open Group standards, notably with the TOGAF Framework (as shown below).
What is ArchiMate?
The ArchiMate Specification, an Open Group Standard, is an open and independent modelling language for Enterprise Architecture that is supported by different tool vendors and consulting firms. The ArchiMate language enables Enterprise Architects to describe, analyse and visualise relationships among architecture domains in an unambiguous way, using easy to understand visuals representations. It provides a common language for describing how various parts of the enterprise are constructed and how they operate, including business processes, organizational structures, information flows, IT systems, and technical and physical infrastructures. In a time when many enterprises are undergoing rapid change, ArchiMate models help stakeholders design, assess and communicate those changes within and between architecture domains, as well as examine the potential consequences and impact of decisions throughout an organization.
The ArchiMate Specification is unique in that it provides a graphical language for representing enterprise architectures over time, including strategy, transformation and migration planning, as well as the motivation and rationale for the architecture. The standard has been designed to be as compact as possible, yet still usable for most enterprise architecture modelling needs.
What’s new in ArchiMate 3.0?
New features included in Version 3.0 include elements for modelling the enterprise at a strategic level, such as capability, resource, and outcome. It also includes support to model the physical world of materials and equipment. Furthermore, the consistency and structure of the language have been improved, definitions have been aligned with other standards, and its usability has been enhanced in various other ways.
This version of the specification also includes refinements such as:
- Improvements and new elements to represent how architectures evolve over time through implementation and migration
- Improved grouping capabilities for connecting different elements to see how they’re related
- Cross-layer dependencies, alignments and relationships (to correlate business applications and technology, for example)
- Mechanisms for customizing the language for specialized or domain-specific purposes and address specific real case situations.
The ArchiMate framework has been extended to include strategy and physical elements, as shown below.
