| Term | Definition | Pillar |
|---|---|---|
| Architecture Artifact | A tangible product of an architectural process, such as a model, model element or document. This can include meeting minutes, diagrams, justifications, whiteboard sessions or any other deliverable providing the traceability of decisions. | Quality Attributes |
| Application Development | The functions of opportunity definition, preliminary analysis, software development, testing, deployment, and overall managing of the development environment and process. | IT Environment |
| Architecture Description | Provides detailed architecture communication and includes diagramming notation, architecture views and viewpoints, and is organized into an architecture description language (ADL). | Design |
| Architecture Engagement Model | The artifacts, methods, management and people used to fulfill the architecture principals and goals of an organization or project. | BTS |
| Architecture Interaction Points | The people, organizational units or roles in an organization which form the primary stakeholders of the architect team and with whom they are creating value for the organization in alignment with the architect lifecycle. | Human Dynamics |
| Architecture Method, Lifecycle, and/or Process | The tasks utilized by the architecture team to deliver on the goals of the architecture engagement model. | BTS |
| Asset Management | The development and deployment of a solution designed to manage the intellectual property of solutions and architectural components within the IT environment. Assets can include document formats, video, audio, configuration information, and any other way that knowledge is stored and transferred. | IT Environment |
| Business Architecture Methods and Tools | Strategic and tactical use of business architecture methods and tools, including but not limited to business process engineering, business process management, business process modelling, workflow, and similar technology in relation to business capabilities and design. Best practices for integrating business processes that span multiple internal organizations. | Business Technology Strategy |
| Business Case | Captures the reasoning for initiating a project, approach(es) to addressing the need, what value they bring, a recommendation and other considerations or concerns. | Business Technology Strategy |
| Business Fundamentals | Broad and generic business structures and functions, including Finance, Sales, Marketing, Operations, and Product Management. | Business Technology Strategy |
| Business Valuation | Identifying how and when to invest in particular technology directions and how to manage the overall portfolio of technology investments, including common techniques for evaluating and proving the financial benefit of architecture. | Business Technology Strategy |
| CBA | Cost Benefit Analysis, calculated as benefits-cost using normalized figures. | Business Technology Strategy |
| Change Management | Management of any change to the IT environment, including release management, build, configuration management, device management and proper documentation on change request. | IT Environment |
| Collaboration and Negotiations | Leveraging knowledge of the psychology of human collaboration, networking, strategies and methods to facilitate working together and reaching agreement. | Human Dynamics |
| Constituent Value | Value which doesn’t provide immediate return or quantifiable, rather softer or indirect value. | Business Technology Strategy |
| Constraint Requirements | Are the ones that act to constrain the solution. No matter how the problem is solved the constraint requirements must be adhered to. These requirements may be the hardest to uncover. | Quality Attributes |
| Customer Relationships | Customer relationships demonstrate the understanding of the psychological dynamics of customer management. This includes: Discussing business imperatives, Industry engagement, Contractual agreements, Transparency and accountability and Competence in managing high-risk scenarios | Human Dynamics |
| Decision Support | Understanding and application of decision support and “smart” systems, including basic concepts and components in decision and business intelligence systems and demonstration of effective architectures using these components. | Business Technology Strategy |
| Term | Definition | Pillar |
|---|---|---|
| Decomposition | The process of resolving a functional relationship into its constituent parts in such a way that the original function can be recomposed. This modularity allows the architect to create a compressed representation of the global function and allows for reuse. | Design |
| Design | Includes whole systems design, design methodologies and processes, requirements modelling, decomposition and reuse, patterns and styles, design analysis and testing, architectural description, views & viewpoints, and traceability throughout the life cycle. | Design |
| Design Analysis and Testing | Architecture analysis techniques and related tools allow an IT architect to evaluate a design relative to alternatives, describe the structure and state of a design, and analyze the design’s dynamic behaviour in response to external events. They can then test a design as an artefact for completeness, correctness, efficiency, and a number of other criteria. | Design |
| Design Methods and Practices | a collection of methods, procedures, standards, tools, and recommended practices used for creating architecture. | Design |
| Design Style | Styles are broader than patterns and more generalized than patterns. For instance, layered architecture is a pattern that follows a call and return style of interaction. Model-Driven Development (MDD) and Representational State Transfer (REST) are examples of styles. | Design |
| Development Quality Attribute | Demonstrated management/mitigation of issues relative to manageability, maintainability, supportability, extensibility. | Quality Attributes |
| Functional Requirement | Describe the functionality that the system is to execute; for example, formatting some text or modulating a signal. They are sometimes known as capabilities | Quality Attributes |
| Generic Architecture | Describes a proposed solution to address the requirements along with traceability of key decisions and justifications in a product/technology agnostic manner. Also referred to as a logical architecture. | Quality Attributes |
| Governance | The decision-making environment for IT within an organization that provides clearly defined roles and responsibilities relative to oversight of projects, processes, and products. | IT Environment |
| Human Dynamics | Human dynamics is the set of interpersonal skills that allow you to work with stakeholders from various backgrounds and with various interests effectively. You may or may not have any authority or may be a virtual team member and seen as an interloper or roadblock to stakeholders goals. | Human Dynamics |
| Infrastructure Servers and Networks | An IT infrastructure consists of facilities, network, storage, servers, middleware, and the application software relied upon by the organization’s applications, along with the tools, processes, and procedures to build, deploy, install, manage, backup, and restore capability in any of these. In other words, an infrastructure is the foundation upon which application services are delivered, and the operations that keep them running. | IT Environment |
| Term | Definition | Pillar |
|---|---|---|
| Investment Prioritization and Planning | The management of asset and project portfolio lifecycles, including planning and managing, and understanding of the very different investment approaches required for each. | Business Technology Strategy |
| IT Environment | The functional and procedural aspects of a technology organization and includes the structures and processes fundamental to an architect’s role in an organization. | IT Environment |
| Knowledge Management | The management of the way in which business information is built, stored, managed, and made easily accessible, including current issues around the organizational challenge of maintaining long-term organizational memory. | Business Technology Strategy |
| Leadership and Management | Leadership and management is defined as the ability to manage the unique challenges of leading and managing in a technical environment by leveraging basic management theory, techniques, and tools, and applying within the context of the lifecycle of IT products and services. | Human Dynamics |
| Managing and Monitoring Quality Attributes | Process of problem analysis, capacity planning, service level agreement (SLA) creation and management, and issue response techniques. | Quality Attributes |
| Managing Culture | Leveraging basic culture recognition and management techniques to identify an organization’s culture and facilitate being the cultural change agent. | Human Dynamics |
| NABC | Business case template capturing Need, Approach, Benefit and Considerations/Concerns. | Business Technology Strategy |
| Non Functional Requirement | Are the ones that act to constrain the solution. Nonfunctional requirements are known as quality attribute requirements. | Quality Attributes |
| NPV | Net Present Value, the total present value of a time series of cash flows. Measures the excess or shortfall of cash flows, in present value terms, after financing charges are met. | Business Technology Strategy |
| Operation related quality attributes | The demonstrated management/mitigation of issues that relate to performance, reliability, availability, and scalability. | Quality Attributes |
| Operations | the management, implementation, execution, and maintenance to provide day to day support to the IT environment. | IT Environment |
| Packaging and Deployment | Process and management of IT products following the completion of development and prior to “normal” day-to-day operating conditions. | Quality Attributes |
| Peer Interaction | Leveraging the understanding of the psychology of interpersonal human interactions and applying them in the context of IT products and services design and delivery. | Human Dynamics |
| Term | Definition | Pillar |
|---|---|---|
| Platforms and Frameworks | An understanding of how platforms and frameworks relate to each other, and able to evaluate frameworks against each other in specific and different contexts. | IT Environment |
| Presentation Skills | Presentation skills is defined as the ability to manage presentations made to key stakeholders, clearly identifying technology strategy decisions and opportunities, and tying those to the concerns of the stakeholders in that audience. | Human Dynamics |
| Product Specific Architecture | Proposed products/technology along with traceability of key decisions and justifications that will deliver on the components of the Generic Architecture. Such decisions take into account the skills of the staff to deliver, maintain and support the solution. | Quality Attributes |
| Quality attribute | A non-functional characteristic of a component or a system. It represents a cross-cutting architectural concern for a system or system of systems. | Quality Attributes |
| Requirements and Constraints Analysis | The tools and techniques for understanding business requirements with multiple strategic impacts, including how such requirements and constraints are formed internally and externally. | Business Technology Strategy |
| Requirements Modeling | the set of tasks that allow creation of requirements that meet the qualities above and are actionable, measurable, testable, and link technology decisions to business benefit. | Design |
| Reuse | The process of using capabilities for more than one solution. Rather than recreate a duplicate capability, the architect can identify components that can fulfill the requirements with little or no modification. | Design |
| ROI | Return on investment, calculated as (benefit-cost)/cost | Business Technology Strategy |
| Security Attribute | Security, privacy, authenticity, access privileges, information protection and disaster recovery, asset management techniques, threat modelling and recovery, and related issues. Demonstrated competence in basic implementation techniques. | Quality Attributes |
| Strategy Rationalization and Development | The partnership between the business architecture and the technical architecture relative to the creation of a business model that defines the principles, standards, structure, and dynamics of the integrated business and technical strategic direction. | Business Technology Strategy |
| SWOT | Strength, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. The SWOT process embraces identifying weaknesses and threats in addition to strengths and opportunities an open format to better understand if organizational strategy is going to be more efficiency or innovation focused. Architects can use SWOT pairings to determine a balance between a strategy focused for a better Defense (threats based) or Offense (opportunities based). Strengths and Weaknesses typically internal and under organizational control. | Business Technology Strategy |
| Technical Project Management | Understanding of the factors involved in estimating solutions and their cost, as well as cost tracking methods and tactics for IT projects or programs. | IT Environment |
| Testing Methods, Tools and Techniques | Identification of testing methods and tools that are optimized for value, providing the appropriate levels of quality without over-burdening project deliverables. | IT Environment |
| Traceability | The process of documenting the life of a business concern and providing bi-directional traceability to the capability or capabilities associated with that concern. | Design |
| Usage related quality attributes | The demonstrated understanding of usability and human factor fundamentals, with the ability to describe related internationalization strategies and current issues, as well as demonstrated competence in implementation techniques. | Quality Attributes |
| View | A representation of one or more structural aspects of an architecture that illustrates how the architecture addresses one or more concerns held by one or more of its stakeholders. | Design |
| ViewPoint | A collection of patterns, templates, and conventions for constructing one type of view. It defines the stakeholders whose concerns are reflected in the viewpoint and the guidelines, principles, and template models for constructing its views. | Design |
| Whole System Design | The “whole system” of interconnected elements that participate in, impact, and influence the design process, including the nature and rich tradition of design theory and practice, relevancy of understanding design as a discipline. | Design |
| Writing Skills | Writing skills are techniques, methods, and examples for book writing, informal composition, memos and e-mail, note taking and technical documentation. | Human Dynamics |
