Preface

The Open Group

The Open Group is a global consortium that enables the achievement of business objectives through technology standards. With more than 900 member organizations, we have a diverse membership that spans all sectors of the technology community – customers, systems and solutions suppliers, tool vendors, integrators and consultants, as well as academics and researchers.

The mission of The Open Group is to drive the creation of Boundaryless Information Flow™ achieved by:

  • Working with customers to capture, understand, and address current and emerging requirements, establish policies, and share best practices

  • Working with suppliers, consortia, and standards bodies to develop consensus and facilitate interoperability, to evolve and integrate specifications and open source technologies

  • Offering a comprehensive set of services to enhance the operational efficiency of consortia

  • Developing and operating the industry’s premier certification service and encouraging procurement of certified products

Further information on The Open Group is available at www.opengroup.org.

The Open Group publishes a wide range of technical documentation, most of which is focused on development of standards and guides, but which also includes white papers, technical studies, certification and testing documentation, and business titles. Full details and a catalog are available at www.opengroup.org/library.

This Document

This document is The Open Group Guide, Agile Architecture Modeling Using the ArchiMate Language. It has been developed and approved by The Open Group.

This document is structured as follows:

  • Introduction describes the objective of this document and a brief overview

  • The Value of Models in Agile Ways of Working discusses a number of important ways in which architecture models can add value in an Agile context, ranging from capturing business intent and decision-making on priorities to tracking technical and architectural debt

  • Architecture Models in an Agile Context addresses the use of architecture models expressed in the ArchiMate language by individual Agile teams and discusses the use of different ArchiMate concepts to model various notions in Agile, from epics and features to concrete building blocks

  • Supporting Collaborating Agile Teams discusses how architecture models help collaborating Agile teams to coordinate their work, and also discusses how communication can be supported both laterally, between teams, and vertically, between direction-setting to realization

  • Creating and Evolving Agile Models discusses the Agile process of creating and evolving these models, the level of detail to use, and how to create a Minimal Viable Architecture Model (MVAM)

  • Finally, Conclusions draws conclusions and provides general recommendations