Fake and Real Tools for Enterprise Architecture – The Zachman Framework and Business Capability Model

By Svyatoslav Kotusev

In this new paper, EA researcher Svyatoslav Kotusev gives us a no-holds-barred view of the state of EA tools, with a comparison of two well known tools; the Zachman Framework and the Business Capability Model.

Abstract: The discipline of enterprise architecture (EA) is teeming with numerous tools intended to help architects do their work, e.g. various frameworks, modeling languages and other techniques. Some of these tools are famous, positioned as central to the EA discipline, promoted as global standards and widely taught in various courses, but in reality they are essentially useless for all practical purposes (fake tools). At the same time, other tools actually work in practice and are broadly adopted in industry, but they are scarcely discussed in mainstream EA publications and lacking systematic descriptions (real tools). Moreover, these fake and real toolsets for enterprise architecture barely overlap with each other. In order to illustrate the current paradoxical situation in the EA discipline, this article discusses in detail one celebrated fake tool (the Zachman Framework) and one prominent real tool (the Business Capability Model), analyzes the sharp contrast between them and explains the implications of this duplicity for the EA profession.