Crossing the EA Chasm: Re-visioning ArchiMate 3.0 Elements as Adjectives [WIP]

COPYRIGHT © 2016-2017 by Michael Herman, Toronto Canada. All rights reserved.

[NOTE: This is a work-in-progress (WIP) placeholder for an article I plan to write …likely sooner rather than later …but there’s no specific schedule.]

Basic Concepts: Nouns and Adjectives

Referring to Figure 1 below, imagine that there are only a small number of concrete concepts in the ArchiMate language:

• Model,
• Concept

…and the remaining concepts are simply derivations of the one of these two Nouns: Model or Concept.

Figure 1. Top-Level Hierarchy of ArchiMate Concepts (The Open Group)

Model and Concept become new Nouns in the next to-be-updated version of the ModelMate Information Architecture for ArchiMate.

The remaining concepts in Figure 1 and Figure 2 become Adjectives (i.e. abstract or virtual concepts) that modify or specialize the behavior of the target concept. The purpose of an Adjective (and more often a collection of Adjectives) is to support specialization of a Noun.

For example, in Figure 2 below, the box entitled “Capability” is a Concept which inherits the following Adjectives (specializations):

• Element_ModelMate30_Parallelspace
• BehaviorElement_ModelMate30_Parallelspace

Figure 2. Hierarchy of Behavior and Structure Elements (The Open Group)

For a more elaborate example (see Figure 3 below), Business Role, Business Actor, and Business Collaboration are Nouns which inherit the following Adjectives:

• Element_ModelMate30_Parallelspace
• BusinessElement_ModelMate30_Parallelspace
• InternalActiveStructureElement_ModelMate30_Parallelspace

Figure 3. Business Internal Active Structure Elements (The Open Group)

Windows Server Windows Service Example

TODO