Enterprise Architecture Modeling with the Unified Modeling Language

Abstract

Organizations make extensive use of information systems to support planning, decision making, controlling and to leverage competitive advantage. Organizations are also complex entities that integrate contrasting concepts such as strategy, people, processes, technology and information. These concepts must be aligned towards the same purpose to ensure that the organization is able to evolve while maximizing the usage of its resources. However, misalignment issues often occur despite large investments on management, organizational and technological infrastructures. Misalignment also hinders change since it makes difficult understanding the organization and seamlessly communicating its concepts. This chapter describes the key concepts for modeling an organization’s enterprise architecture using the Unified Modeling Language. Enterprise architecture consists on defining and understanding the different elements that shape the organization and how these elements are inter-related with the purpose of understanding and facilitating organizational evolution and change. To achieve this goal, the chapter proposes an enterprise architecture model that separates core organizational concerns as different architectural views, allowing both the modeler and the model user to focus in isolation on Organizational, Business, Information, Application and Technological aspects.