The Viewband concept: Introducing life-cycle modeling in enterprise architectural frameworks

Enterprise architecture (EA) frameworks have been successfully used to support enterprise engineering activities by providing graphical and machine-processable constructs to represent enterprise systems. However, existing EA frameworks lack modeling approaches to represent the increasing complexity and coupling of modern enterprises, as these frameworks do not distinguish architectural blocks supporting the different enterprise lifecycle processes, such as operation, maintenance and governance. In this paper, we propose the Viewband concept, which can be used to explicitly introduce lifecycle modeling, thus overcoming the limitations of existing EA frameworks. We also present an overlay methodology to implement the Viewband concept by use of standard modeling structures in existing EA frameworks, thus gaining compliance with currently available technologies and documentation standards. We show the application of the Viewband concept, and the related implementation methodology, through a simplified example enterprise model in UPDM (Unified Profile for DoDAF and MODAF).