Model for a reader, not for a repository

Most enterprise architecture models fail in the same way. They are complete, they are internally consistent, they are kept up to date by one conscientious person, and nobody outside the architecture team has ever opened one.

What a viewpoint is for

ArchiMate® introduced a distinctive idea: the architectural viewpoint, which lets an architect describe one stakeholder's interests and concerns without burying them in everyone else's. It is a way of saying that the model and the diagram are different things. The model holds everything. A view shows one reader what that reader needs.

This sounds obvious written down. It is not what most teams do. Most teams draw one diagram, put everything on it, and then explain it in meetings for the next two years.

A test worth applying

Before you publish a view, name the stakeholder and write down the decision you want them to be able to make after looking at it. If you cannot name the decision, the view is decoration. If the named stakeholder would need you standing next to them to read it, it is not finished.

Working alongside other notations

ArchiMate® was designed to sit alongside other modelling languages rather than replace them: UML for systems, BPMN for business processes. That is a strength rather than a compromise. Use the notation that the audience for that artefact already reads.

Where the discipline comes from

Nobody arrives at this naturally. It comes from modelling a real estate, showing it to real stakeholders, and watching which views get used and which get politely ignored. That is most of what our practitioner course is: exercises, then argument about the exercises.