Motivation Elements

This definition is based on the definition in the TOGAF framework [4]. A stakeholder has one or more interests in, or concerns about, the organization and its Enterprise Architecture. In order to direct efforts to these interests and concerns, stakeholders change, set, and emphasize goals. Stakeholders may also influence each other. Examples of stakeholders are the Chief Executive Officer (CEO), the board of directors, shareholders, customers, business and application architects, but also legislative authorities. The name of a stakeholder should preferably be a noun.

Drivers that are associated with a stakeholder are often called “concerns” of that stakeholder. Stakeholder concerns are defined in the TOGAF framework [4] as “an interest in a system relevant to one or more of its stakeholders. Concerns may pertain to any aspect of the system’s functioning, development, or operation, including considerations such as performance, reliability, security, distribution, and evolvability and may determine the acceptability of the system.” Examples of internal drivers are customer satisfaction and profitability. Drivers of change may also be external to the enterprise (e.g., economic changes or changing legislation) and need not have a stakeholder associated with them. The name of a driver should preferably be a noun.

An assessment may reveal strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, or threats for some area of interest. These need to be addressed by adjusting existing goals or setting new ones, which may trigger changes to the Enterprise Architecture.

Strengths and weaknesses are internal to the organization. Opportunities and threats are external to the organization. Weaknesses and threats can be considered as problems that need to be addressed by goals that “negate” the weaknesses and threats. Strengths and opportunities may be translated directly into goals. For example, the weakness “Customers complain about the helpdesk” can be addressed by defining the goal “Improve helpdesk”. Or the opportunity “Customers favor insurances that can be managed online” can be addressed by the goal “Introduce online portfolio management”. The name of an assessment should preferably be a noun or a (very) short sentence.

In principle, a goal can represent anything a stakeholder may desire, such as a state of affairs, or a produced value. Examples of goals are: to increase profit, to reduce waiting times at the helpdesk, or to introduce online portfolio management. Goals are typically used to measure success of an organization.

Goals are generally expressed using qualitative words; e.g., “increase”, “improve”, or “easier”. Goals can also be decomposed; e.g., “increase profit” can be decomposed into the goals “reduce cost” and “increase sales”. However, it is also very common to associate concrete outcomes with goals, which can be used to describe both the quantitative and time-related results that are essential to describe the desired state, and when it should be achieved.

Outcomes are high-level, business-oriented results produced by capabilities of an organization, and by inference by the core elements of its architecture that realize these capabilities. Outcomes are tangible, possibly quantitative, and time-related, and can be associated with assessments. An outcome may have a different value for different stakeholders.

The notion of outcome is important in business outcome-driven approaches to Enterprise Architecture and in capability-based planning. Outcomes are closely related to requirements, goals, and other intentions. The distinction between goals and outcomes is important. Simply put, a goal is what you want, and an outcome is what you get. Outcomes are the end results, and goals or requirements are often related to outcomes that should be realized. Capabilities can be designed to achieve such outcomes.

However, not all outcomes relate to goals. When modeling a future state, an outcome models some result or effect that is expected to have been achieved or occur at that future point in time. Unlike goals, outcomes can also be used to model potentially unwanted effects; for example, in order to design appropriate mitigating measures.

Outcome names should unambiguously identify end results that have been achieved or are expected to be achieved at a definite point in the future. Examples include “First-place customer satisfaction ranking achieved” and “Key supplier partnerships in place”. Outcome names can also be more specific; e.g., “10% year-over-year quarterly profits increase in 2018”.

The term “system” is used in its general meaning; i.e., as a group of (functionally) related elements, where each element may be considered as a system again. Therefore, a system may refer to any active structural element, behavior element, or passive structural element of some organization, such as a business actor, application component, business process, application service, business object, or data object.

Principles are strongly related to goals and requirements. Similar to requirements, principles define intended properties of systems. However, in contrast to requirements, principles are broader in scope and more abstract than requirements. A principle defines a general property that applies to any system in a certain context, whereas a requirement defines a property that applies to a specific system as described by an architecture. For example, the principle “Information management processes comply with all relevant laws, policies, and regulations” is realized by the requirements that are imposed by the actual laws, policies, and regulations that apply to the specific system under design.

In the end, a business goal must be realized by a plan or concrete change goal, which may or may not require a new system or changes to an existing system.

Requirements model the properties of these elements that are needed to achieve the “ends” that are modeled by the goals. In this respect, requirements represent the “means” to realize goals.

During the design process, goals may be decomposed until the resulting sub-goals are sufficiently detailed to enable their realization by properties that can be exhibited by systems. At this point, goals can be realized by requirements that demand these properties from the systems.

For example, two alternative requirements may be identified to realize the goal “Improve portfolio management”:

The former requirement can be realized by a human actor and the latter by a software application. These requirements can be decomposed further to define the requirements on the human actor and the software application in more detail.

In contrast to a requirement, a constraint does not prescribe some intended functionality of the system to be realized but imposes a restriction on the way it operates or may be realized. This may be a restriction on the implementation of the system (e.g., specific technology that is to be used), a restriction on the implementation process (e.g., time or budget constraints), or a restriction on the functioning of the system (e.g., legal constraints).

A meaning represents the interpretation of a concept of the architecture. In particular, this is used to describe the meaning of passive structure elements (for example, a document, message). It is a description that expresses the intent of that element; i.e., how it informs the external user.

It is possible that different users view the informative functionality of an element differently. For example, what may be a “registration confirmation” for a client could be a “client mutation” for a CRM department (assuming for the sake of argument that it is modeled as an external user). Also, various different representations may carry essentially the same meaning. For example, various different documents (a web document, a filled-in paper form, a “client contact” report from the call center) may essentially carry the same meaning.

A meaning can be associated with any concept. To denote that a meaning is specific to a particular stakeholder, this stakeholder can also be associated to the meaning. The name of a meaning should preferably be a noun or noun phrase.

Value represents the usefulness, advantage, benefit, desirability, or gain for a customer, stakeholder, or end user by, for example, selling a product, using a service, or completing some activity. Value is often expressed in terms of money, but it has long since been recognized that non-monetary value is also essential to business; for example, practical/functional value (including the right to use a service), and the value of information or knowledge. Though value can hold internally for some system or organizational unit, it is most typically applied to external appreciation of goods, services, information, knowledge, or money, normally as part of some sort of customer-provider relationship.

A value can be associated with any concept. To model the stakeholder for whom this value applies, this stakeholder can also be associated with that value. Although the name of a value can be expressed in many different ways (including amounts, objects), where the “functional” value of an architecture element is concerned, it is recommended to try and express it as an action or state that can be performed or reached as a result of the corresponding element being available.