#Landscape architectural diagrams full#

This is also why many enterprise architects put a high priority on assessing and updating As-Is Architectures easier and faster.

However, as architectures are often quite large and complex, an assessment of an As-Is Architecture is often in parts outdated before it is fully assessed. It is a very important concept to identify the starting point for improvements such as an architecture roadmap. Views are what you see, which can be represented as an architecture blueprint of a particular layer.Īn “As-Is Architecture” or “Current Architecture” refers to the current architecture of a company, i.e. Remember the following: Viewpoints are a generic point of view. Like different architectures between departments or companies, the valley at the foot of the mountain looks different depending on the mountain that you climbed or even the time you did it! However, even if the viewpoint is the same, the view will be a different one if you take a look at a different architecture.

The viewpoint describes a generic point of view from which you take a look at your architecture – for instance from an application landscape point of view. It is the same in enterprise architecture. In both occasions, the “top of the mountain” is the viewpoint and the “valley” is your view. This time, there is one big river, a large city, and an airport next to it. From there, you can again see the valley. The next day, you climb another mountain and again, you stand on top of it. From there, you can see the valley with its three small rivers, two small villages, and a forest. This morning, you climbed a mountain and now you stand on top of it. The concept of views and viewpoints is introduced by TOGAF, but it is quite easy to understand. The stakeholder audience and the use cases decide on the view. As a blueprint always needs to simplify and abstract the real world, it is very important to understand what should be shown and what can be left out. Architecture blueprints are prepared for different use cases and for different stakeholders. While the architecture landscape is the real landscape itself, the blueprint is the representation of it on a PowerPoint slide, as picture or in a tool. Those layers are not optimal, as enterprise architects often want to point out data and applications on separate layers (in TOGAF, both are part of the Information Systems Architecture) to emphasize that both are quite important nowadays and are addressed by different architectural use cases.Īn Architecture Blueprint in IT describes a high-level view of an architecture landscape.

Best practices for architecture layers include using the following:

#Landscape architectural diagrams full#

Putting all the different views of the layers onto each other would provide the full architecture landscape.ĭepending on the framework and the company´s enterprise architects, there can be different architecture layers. As there are different types of assets and showing all of them in one picture would result in an extremely complex one, a view of an architecture landscape is typically filtered for a particular type or so-called architecture layer.

Let´s define them, their components, and what different types there are.Īn Architecture Landscape in IT describes the assets that an organization needs to provide IT. While strategists and consultants love these terms, they are sometimes not used correctly. If you are new to Enterprise Architecture, you might wonder what is meant with the term “Architecture Landscape” or “Architecture Blueprint”.