Solution Guide - Enterprise Architecture Design
Thank you for your interest in our ADOIT solutions! We are excited to help you transform your Enterprise Architecture initiatives into actionable results.
Before You Start
This guide assumes that you’ve already completed the ADOIT Quick Start Guide. If your ADOIT environment is already set up, you can start directly with the Enterprise Architecture Design Solution Guide.
Design How Strategy Gets Executed
Enterprise Architecture Design is about shaping how an organization actually works so strategy gets executed. In practice, this means designing (Target) Operating Models that describe how capabilities are brought to life through people, processes, applications, and governance.
Operating models are the architecture of execution. They define how decisions are made, how work flows, and how value is created day to day. The challenge is making the operating model explicit and turning it into something that can be discussed, designed, and evolved deliberately instead of remaining implicit and fragmented across documents and tools.
This is exactly where ADOIT comes in. With ADOIT, operating models become visible and tangible. You can model today’s setup, design target operating models, and connect them directly to strategy, capabilities, and execution-relevant elements. Instead of debating abstract concepts, you work with concrete architectural structures.
Why Enterprise Architecture Design in ADOIT
Architecture Design helps you move from abstract strategy to concrete, executable structures by making operating models visible and actionable.
Clear improvement opportunities
By breaking capabilities down into their internal structure, you can clearly see where things don’t work as intended. This helps you identify weak spots and derive well-founded strategic requirements that form a solid foundation for effective strategic planning.
Visible dependencies and impact
Modeling capabilities in ArchiMate makes dependencies and mutual influences between processes, applications, data, and roles explicit. You can see how changes propagate, understand their impact, and use this insight to strengthen business cases and plan changes with greater confidence.
Reuse and better execution decisions
By reusing architectural elements across capabilities, you make shared resources transparent and avoid redundancy. This supports better prioritization, more informed decisions, and coordinated execution across the organization.
How it Works in ADOIT
Choose the lean metamodel profile as a starting point
As already recommended in the ADOIT Quick Start Guide choose the ‘ADOIT for Lean Architecture Fans’ metamodel profile. It is a proven and pragmatic starting point that keeps things simple while still allowing meaningful analysis.
It simplifies the complexity of ArchiMate while ensuring you have all the objects and relations needed to fully use our offered solutions and sample models.
From there you can expand step by step once you know which elements and relationships are actually needed for your Enterprise Architecture Design practice.
Visualize how your business creates value
This section is also covered in the Capability-Based Planning Solution Guide Capability-Based Planning Solution Guide.
Visualize how your organization creates value – from customer request to delivery. Give everyone a shared view of your core capabilities and where they contribute most.
In this step we create the capability map. It consists of a model of type ‘Architecture Diagram’ and objects of type ‘Capabilities’. For nice look and feel you can pimp it with graphics as we did.
Steps:
Open the Objects Explorer. Choose / create a folder where you want to store your Capabilities.
Open the Model Explorer. Choose / create a folder where you want to store your Capability Map model and create a ‘Architecture Diagram’ via the ‘New’ tab in the toolbar. Give your new Capability Map model a name.
Open your Capability Map model and start placing Value Streams and Capabilities on the modeling canvas.
Plan for about 50–100 Capabilities in total (that’s typical for many organizations).
Run short workshops with your colleagues to collect and refine your Capabilities together.
Use generic Capability Maps as inspiration if you like - but the best results come from building a map that fits your organization.
If you want a quick walkthrough, check out our online training.
For ArchiMate experts…
Spot opportunities at a glance
This section is also covered in the Capability-Based Planning Solution Guide Capability-Based Planning Solution Guide.
Evaluate each capability’s performance, business fit, and strategic relevance. Use heatmaps to quickly identify strengths, weaknesses, and high-priority areas.
Communicate the results clearly. The best way to do this is by using your Capability Map. The more often you use it, the more familiar it becomes to your peers.
Over time, the Capability Map turns into a shared language. Your colleagues will start to trust it, use it, and rely on it as the joint planning basis for roadmap and investment decisions.
Steps:
Open Scenario Workspaces.
Create a Capability Investment Planning workspace.
Invite colleagues to join.
Add Capabilities from your repository, assess Strategic Importance and Capability Maturity, and set the Investment Strategy.
Show the results in your Capability Map using color coding with the attribute ‘Strategic importance’.
Understand what powers your business
Drill down into any capability to see the processes, systems, and people behind it. Reveal what drives or hinders performance and focus on what really moves the needle.
Start small. Begin by creating operating models for two to three Capabilities. Use this first iteration to learn what really matters and to define a common structure for all operating model diagrams, for example consistent swimlanes and a consistent set of element types.
Be mindful of the level of detail. Avoid overloading the models with too much detail and focus on what is relevant for understanding and decision-making. Keep in mind that these models need to stay up to date over time.
From the start, think about ownership. Each operating model should be easy to hand over to a Capability Owner, Domain Architect, or a similar role who can maintain and evolve it going forward.
Steps:
Create one operating model per Capability.
Start by creating one Architecture model for each Capability. In the Model Explorer, use a single folder called ‘Operating Models’ for your first iteration. Keeping everything in one place helps you move fast and keeps things simple. You can refine the folder structure later, for example to support rights management or reflect your organizational setup.
Prepare where architectural elements are stored
Operating models typically include business processes, roles, data objects, applications, and sometimes technology elements. Use the object folder structure predefined in the Quick Start Guide as a starting point. This gives you a clean and consistent setup without overthinking it upfront.
Create the Architecture Design model
Create a new model of type ‘Architecture Diagram’. This model represents the operating model for a single Capability.
Link the model to its Capability
Open the notebook of the Capability and assign the Architecture Diagram you just created. This ensures a clear and explicit connection between the Capability and its operating model.
Structure the model with swimlanes
Add swimlanes to structure your model. A proven starting point is the classic BADT structure: Business, Application, Data, Technology. This keeps the model readable and helps stakeholders orient themselves quickly.
Add and reuse architectural elements
Use objects that you have already created in other EA initiatives or solutions (such as Application Portfolio Management). It is essential to avoid creating duplicates within your repository at all costs. Add processes, data objects, application components, and other relevant elements to describe how the Capability works. Focus on consistency and reuse. Many elements used in one Capability will also be relevant for others.
Tips and Tricks for graphical modelling:
- Objects created directly in diagrams are automatically stored in the Object Explorer under personal > [your name]. Make sure to move them to the appropriate folder in your structure. Avoid leaving objects in the personal folder.
- Objects can be reused across multiple diagrams. Deleting an object from a diagram only removes it from that diagram. The object itself remains in the Object Explorer.
- Use SHIFT + DELETE if you want to remove an object completely from the repository, not just from a diagram.
- Before creating a new object, check whether it already exists. If duplicates occur, you can use Merge objects. Be aware that outgoing relationships are merged, while incoming relationships are kept only for the remaining object.
If you already use ADOIT for application portfolio management or capability-based planning, reuse existing elements instead of creating new ones. This strengthens consistency across your architecture and increases the value of all related analyses.
ArchiMate Elements and Relations for this Solution
If you use the ‘ADOIT for Lean Architecture Fans’ metamodel profile as recommended earlier in this guide, the following elements and relationships will be used for this solution:
