Glossary

(Architecture) Evaluation

Judgment of the value, worth, significance, importance, or quality of one or more architectures.

ISO/IEC 42030 (Draft 2016)

Architecting

Process of conceiving, defining, expressing, documenting, communicating, assessing proper implementation of, maintaining and improving an architecture of an entity throughout its life cycle.

Adapted from ISO/IEC/IEEE 42010:2011

Architecting Principle

Declarative statement that prescribes a property of something. They reflect a level of consensus across the enterprise, and embody the spirit and thinking of the enterprise architecture.

Adopted from TOGAF 9.1

Architecture

Fundamental concepts or properties of an entity of interest in its environment embodied in its elements, relationships, and in the principles of its design and evolution.

Adapted from ISO/IEC/IEEE 42010:2011

Architecture Description

Work product used to express an architecture.

ISO/IEC/IEEE 42010:2011

Architecture Governance

Strategic activities allowing mastering architecture according to the enterprise directions and objectives.

ISO/IEC 42020 (draft)

Architecture Framework

Foundational structure, or set of structures, which can be used for developing a broad range of different architectures. It should describe a method for designing a target state of the enterprise in terms of a set of building blocks, and for showing how the building blocks fit together. It should contain a set of tools and provide a common vocabulary. It should also include a list of recommended standards and compliant products that can be used to implement the building blocks.

TOGAF V9.1

Architecture Principle

Declarative statement that prescribes a property of something. They reflect a level of consensus across the enterprise, and embody the spirit and thinking of the enterprise architecture.

Adopted from TOGAF 9.1

Architecture Repository

Architecture Repository holds information concerning the enterprise architecture and associated artefacts.

TOGAF V9.1

Architecture Style

Definition of a family of systems in terms of a pattern of structural organization. Characterization of a family of systems that are related by sharing structural and semantic properties.

ISO/IEC/IEEE 24765

Architecture Vision

The Architecture Vision is created early on in the project lifecycle and provides a high-level, aspirational view of the end architecture product. The purpose of the vision is to agree at the outset what the desired outcome should be for the architecture, so that architects can then focus on the critical areas to validate feasibility. Providing an Architecture Vision also supports stakeholder communication by providing an executive summary version of the full Architecture Definition.

TOGAF 9.1

Architecture View

Work product expressing the architecture from the perspective of specific concerns. Architecting outcome expressing the architecture from a given architecture viewpoint.

Adapted from ISO/IEC 42010:2011

Architecture Viewpoint

Work product establishing the conventions for the construction, interpretation and use of architecture views to frame specific concerns.

Adapted from ISO/IEC/IEEE 42010:2011

Artefact

An artefact is an architectural work product that describes an aspect of the architecture. Artefacts are generally classified as catalogues (lists of things), matrices (showing relationships between things), and diagrams (pictures of things). Examples include a requirements catalogues, business interaction matrix, and a use-case diagram. An architectural deliverable may contain many artefacts and artefacts will form the content of the Architecture Repository.

TOGAF 9.1

Baseline

1. Agreement or result designated and fixed at a given time, from which changes require justification and approval.
2. A specification that has been formally reviewed and agreed upon, that thereafter serves as the basis for further development or change and that can be changed only through formal change control procedures or a type of procedure such as configuration management.

ISO 24765/TOGAF V9.1

Building Block

1. An element of an entity that will be used to implement the required entity.
2. Building blocks can be defined at various levels of detail, depending on what stage of architecture development has been reached. For instance, at an early stage, a building block can simply consist of a name or an outline description. Later on, a building block may be decomposed into multiple supporting building blocks and may be accompanied by a full specification. Building blocks can relate to ‘‘architectures’’ or ‘‘solutions’’.

TOGAF V9.1

Capability

A capability is the ability to achieve a desired effect under specified standards and conditions. A capability is realized through combinations of ways and means. The ability of one or more resources to deliver a specified type of effect or a specified course of action.

The term “capability” has a number of different interpretations (especially in the military community). In NAF, the term is reserved for the specification of an ability to achieve an outcome. In that sense, it is dispositional – i.e. resources may possess a Capability even if they have never manifested that capability. The MODEM definition of Capability expresses this dispositional aspect from a set-theoretic point of view; “A Dispositional Property that is the set of all things that are capable of achieving a particular outcome.”

Adapted from CJCSM 3170.01B

Catalogue

A structured list of architectural outputs of a similar kind, used for reference. For example, a technology standards catalogue or an application portfolio.

TOGAF V9.1

Concept

An idea or mental image which corresponds to some distinct entity or class of entities, or to its essential features, or determines the application of a term (especially a predicate), and thus plays a part in the use of reason or language.

Oxford Dictionary

Concern

Interest or impact in an entity relevant to one or more of its *stakeholders*

When the word concern is used without any qualifier it refers to the general case. When a qualifier is prepended to the word concern, this indicates that the concern applies to the particular kind of thing, such as in the following examples: stakeholder concern, architecture concern, system concern.

ISO/IEC/IEEE 4202à (draft)

Configuration Management

A discipline applying technical and administrative direction and surveillance to:

• Identify and document the functional and physical characteristics of a configuration item
• Control changes to those characteristics
• Record and report changes to processing and implementation status. Also, the management of the configuration of enterprise architecture practice (intellectual property) assets and baselines and the control of change over of those assets.

TOGAF V9.1

Deliverable

An work product that is contractually specified and in turn formally reviewed, agreed, and signed off by the stakeholders.

Adapted from TOGAF V9.1

Driver

(Architecting / Engineering) An external or internal condition that motivates the organization to define its goals. An example of an external driver is a change in regulation or compliance rules which, for example, require changes to the way an organization operates; i.e., Sarbanes-Oxley in the US.

TOGAF V9.1

Enterprise

Project or undertaking, especially a bold or complex one.

One or more organizations will participate in an enterprise. Each of these organizations brings various resources forward for use in the enterprise and they participate to the extent that they benefit from their involvement. The purpose of the enterprise is to address some challenges that these participating organizations cannot readily address on their own. (See definition of *organization* below.

Oxford English Dictionary, downloaded 28th July 2016

Enterprise Architecture

The formal description of the structure and function of the components of an enterprise, their interrelationships, and the principles and guidelines governing their design and evolution over time.

MODAF V1.1

Gap

A statement of difference between two references.

NATO IST-130

Goal

A high-level statement of intent or direction for an organization. Typically used to measure success of an organization.

TOGAF 9.1

Lifecycle

Set of distinguishable phases or stages that an entity goes through from its conceptualization until it ceases to exist.

The architecture life cycle starts with the identification of a need for the architecture and ends with its decommissioning/discarding. The life cycle applies either to the architecture or to the architecture entity.

ISO/IEC 42020 (draft)

Model

A representation of a subject of interest. A model provides a smaller scale, simplified, and/or abstract representation of the subject matter. A model is constructed as a ‘‘means to an end’’. In the context of enterprise architecture, the subject matter is a whole or part of the enterprise and the end is the ability to construct ‘‘views’’ that address the concerns of particular stakeholders; i.e., their ‘‘viewpoints’’ in relation to the subject matter.

TOGAF V9.1

Objective

An increase for an organization used to demonstrate progress towards a goal; for example, ‘‘Increase Capacity Utilization by 30% to support the planned increase in market share’’.

Adapted for TOGAF

Organization

Group of people and facilities with an arrangement of responsibilities, authorities and relationships.

ISO/IEC 42020 (draft)

Pattern

A technique for putting building blocks into context; for example, to describe a re-usable solution to a problem. Building blocks are what you use: patterns can tell you how you use them, when, why, and what trade-offs you have to make in doing so.

TOGAF V9.1

Programme

A group of related projects managed in a coordinated way to obtain benefits and control not available from managing them individually. Programs may include elements of related work outside of the scope of the discrete projects in the program.

ISO 24765

Project

Endeavour with defined start and finish dates undertaken to create a product or service in accordance with specified resources and requirements.

ISO 24765

Repository

Place where work products and the associated information items are or can be stored for preservation and retrieval.

ISO/IEC 42020 (draft)

Requirement

A condition or capability needed by a user to solve a problem or achieve an objective. 2. a condition or capability that must be met or possessed by a system, system component, product, or service to satisfy an agreement, standard, specification, or other formally imposed documents 3. a documented representation of a condition or capability as in (1) or (2) 4. a condition or capability that must be met or possessed by a system, product, service, result, or component to satisfy a contract, standard, specification, or other formally imposed document. Requirements include the quantified and documented needs, wants, and expectations of the sponsor, customer, and other stakeholders.

ISO 24765

Role

The usual or expected function of an actor, or the part somebody or something plays in a particular action or event. An Actor may have a number of roles. The part an individual plays in an organization and the contribution they make through the application of their skills, knowledge, experience, and abilities.

TOGAF V9.1

Solution

Result from the development, to meet the Customer, end user and the company business needs, and taking into account all applicable constraints, consisting of the System-of-Interest and its enabling systems.

IST-130

Stakeholder

Individual or organization having an interest in an entity or a course of action.

Adapted from ISO 15288

Standard

1. Set of mandatory requirements established by consensus and maintained by a recognized body to prescribe a disciplined uniform approach or specify a product, that is, mandatory conventions and practices.
2. A document that provides, for common and repeated use, rules, guidelines or characteristics for activities or their results, aimed at the achievement of the optimum degree of order in a given context.

ISO 24765

Strategy

An organization's overall plan of development, describing the effective use of resources in support of the organization in its future activities.

ISO/IEC/IEEE 24765:2010

System

A system is an integrated set of elements, subsystems, or assemblies that accomplish a defined objective. These elements include products (hardware, software, firmware), processes, people, information, techniques, facilities, services, and other support elements. Combination of interacting elements organized to achieve one or more stated purposes.

Individual System: A complete system includes all of the associated equipment, facilities, material, computer programs, firmware, technical documentation, services, and personnel required for operations and support to the degree necessary for self-sufficient use in its intended environment. A man-made configuration with one or more of the following: hardware, software, data, humans, processes (e.g. processes for providing service to users), procedures (e.g. operator instructions), facilities, materials and naturally occurring entities”.

INCOSE SE Handbook, v3.2, 2010, ISO/IEC 15288/ISO 24765

System of Interest

(Architecting) Refers to the system whose architecture is under consideration in the preparation of an architecture description.

IST-130

Traceability

A discernible association among two or more logical entities such as requirements, system elements, verifications, or tasks.

SEI Glossary CMMI

Trade off Analyses

Analyses for decision-making actions that select from various requirements and alternative solutions on the basis of net benefit to the stakeholders.

Adopted from ISO 24765