Select Your Modeling Techniques and Methodologies

In addition to selecting the framework, the enterprise architect is also advised to select the modeling technique or methodology. A technique is a collection of methods that help to generate a specific type of model repeatedly and consistently with a quality that is built into the technique. A methodology is a system of models, processes, standards, and know-how that purports to help solve a business problem or produce a software solution. The techniques of enterprise architecture modeling are arguably progressive adaptations of the techniques used by software and systems engineers over the last several decades. There is considerable debate whether techniques useful for analyzing the requirements and design trade-offs of a single solution are capable of scaling up to provide the same capability for planning and analyzing high-level requirements for a family of systems or what we have called a portfolio of systems. There is still a preponderance of diagramming tools in the industry, but a few new tools are working with data, dashboards, charts, and graphs as well as in automatic (data-driven) generation of documents, scripts, and design artifacts. The heart of such tools is their repository of data from which they compose and generate diagrams, matrices, tree views, and published documents alike.