Activity: Document an Existing Architecture
The purpose of this activity is to document an existing environment using simple system or technical level architectural views.
Work Breakdown Structure
Purpose

Definition of the various system and technology level architectural views supports the analysis of the processes, system structures and other aspects, permitting optimizations to be discovered along with a better understanding of the business and the supporting systems and technologies. It also provides for the linkage of system or technical level structures and decisions directly back to the business drivers. These models of the existing environment are also used to support the modification of the environment or for more substantial evolution to a target architecture through gap analysis and migration planning.

Description

Depending upon the objectives of this effort, this workflow has the following goals:

  • Define a simple System Level Models for the architecture or system
  • Define a simple Technology Level Models for the architecture or system
  • Optionally create or update:
    • The Business Glossary and System Glossary 
    • The Supplementary Specifications
Illustrations
Roadmap
Examples
Staffing

These activities are best carried out by a small team staffed by cross-functional team members. Issues that are typically architecturally significant include data, process, locales and roles. The team should also include members with domain and specifically the existing environment and who can identify key abstractions, ideally logical level modelers. The team should also have experience with model organization and layering. From the provided inputs, the team will need to be able to synthesize the models.

Usage
Usage Guidance

Many existing enterprise environments have now been modeled in an enterprise architecture disciplined fashion. In order to understand the existing environment sufficiently to make changes to it, or to permit a proper gap analysis to be done (in support of migration planning), it need to be documented architecturally. This activity defines the architecture models for an existing environment.

More Information
Guidelines
Concepts
Supporting Materials
Workflow

Activity diagram: Document an Existing Architecture Define Scope & Context Scan ADs Capture Common Vocabulary Review Existing Architectures Define Simple Models Review the Simple Architecture Define an Architecture Decision

Activity detail diagram: Document an Existing Architecture Enterprise Architect Scan ADs Define Scope & Context Review Existing Architectures Capture Common Vocabulary Define an Architecture Decision Define Simple Models Review the Simple Architecture Enterprise Architect Architectural Decision Repository Scan ADs Architectural Decisions Summary Scan ADs Project Requirement Architecture Principles Define Scope & Context Context and Objectives Define Scope & Context Architectural Decisions Summary Context and Objectives Model Repository Review Existing Architectures Architectural Summary Review Existing Architectures Architecture Glossary Capture Common Vocabulary Architecture Glossary Capture Common Vocabulary Architectural Decision Repository Define an Architecture Decision Architectural Decision Define an Architecture Decision Architectural Decisions Summary Architectural Summary Context and Objectives Define Simple Models Simple Logical Perspective Simple Technical Perspective Define Simple Models Context and Objectives Simple Logical Perspective Project Requirement Simple Technical Perspective Review the Simple Architecture Architecture Review Record Review the Simple Architecture
Work Breakdown
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