Key takeaways
- Content Framework, metamodel, and artifacts are defined in the Preliminary Phase.
- The choice depends on the base framework and the chosen tool.
- The Content Framework follows the ADM phases and limits the risk of gaps.
- The metamodel defines entity types and relationships, not a notation.
- The Core Enterprise Metamodel is a Foundation base to adapt.
Three Preliminary Phase decisions
When it sets up its EA Capability, the enterprise defines three linked things: a classification grid to structure Architecture Descriptions (the Content Framework), a formal understanding of the entity types to capture and how they relate (the Enterprise Metamodel), and the list of artifacts it will actually produce.
This choice is not neutral: it depends on the architecture framework used as a base and on the software tool chosen to support the practice. A modeling tool often brings its own structure, which is worth knowing before committing.
- Content Framework: how to classify work products
- Enterprise Metamodel: which entity types and which relationships
- Artifacts: which lists, matrices, and pictures to produce
What the Content Framework is for
The Content Framework categorizes the building blocks and artifacts that reflect the decisions taken to build the deliverables. The Architecture Repository is organized to hold what it identifies. Other content frameworks exist; what matters is adopting one and then adapting it.
The TOGAF Content Framework has five intentions and is organized, at its highest level, along the ADM phases into six families of models.
- Detailed model of work products; consistent ADM outputs
- Full checklist of possible outputs; fewer gaps in deliverables
- Standard concepts, terms, and deliverables the enterprise can mandate
- Families: Principles, Vision, Motivation and Requirements; Business; Information Systems; Technology; Realization/Transformation; Change Management
The Enterprise Metamodel: types, not instances
The metamodel describes the entity types likely to appear in the models and the relationships between them. If "Role" is a type, "Teller" or "Firefighter" are instances of it in business models.
It gives architects a starter set of things to investigate, acts as a completeness test to judge a proposed modeling language, and helps ensure consistency, completeness, and traceability. Yet TOGAF constrains neither the choice of artifacts nor the notation: ArchiMate, BPMN, UML, or entity-relationship diagrams are all acceptable.
The TOGAF Library offers a Foundation-level Core Enterprise Metamodel. It is a starting point that the enterprise refines into its own metamodel, part of its specific architecture framework.
TERMS TO KNOW
The terms, in context.
- Content Framework
- Classification grid for the building blocks and artifacts that make up architecture deliverables.
- Enterprise Metamodel
- Formal model of the enterprise's entity types and their relationships, to be captured in the Architecture Description.
- Core Enterprise Metamodel
- Foundation-level metamodel provided in the TOGAF Library, a starting base for the enterprise.
- Architecture Realization/Transformation
- Content Framework family grouping transition roadmaps and the commitments that steer implementation.
- Architecture Change Management (content)
- Content Framework family capturing events that affect the architecture and generate requests for action.