Archimate

Assignment ArchiMate

The assignment relationship expresses the allocation of responsibility, performance of behavior, or execution.
The assignment relationship links active structure elements with units of behavior that are performed by them, business actors with business roles that are fulfilled by them, and nodes with technology objects. It can, for example, relate an internal active structure element with an internal behavior element, an interface with a service, or a node with a technology object.


The usual interpretation of an assignment relationship is that the whole or part of the source element is assigned the whole of the target element. This means that if, for example, two active structure elements are assigned to the same behavior element, either of them can perform the complete behavior. If both active structure elements are needed to perform the behavior, the grouping element or a junction can be used, and if the combination of these elements has a more substantive and independent character, a collaboration would be the right way to express this.

 

Properties

The Assignment tab

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Assessment ArchiMate

In ArchiMate, an Assessment is a Motivation element.

An assessment represents the result of an analysis of the state of affairs of the enterprise with respect to some driver.

An assessment may reveal strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, or threats for some area of interest. These need to be addressed by adjusting existing goals or setting new ones, which may trigger changes to the Enterprise Architecture.

Strengths and weaknesses are internal to the organization. Opportunities and threats are external to the organization. Weaknesses and threats can be considered as problems that need to be addressed by goals that “negate” the weaknesses and threats. Strengths and opportunities may be translated directly into goals. For example, the weakness “Customers complain about the helpdesk” can be addressed by defining the goal “Improve helpdesk”. Or, the opportunity “Customers favor insurances that can be managed online” can be addressed by the goal “Introduce online portfolio management”. The name of an assessment should preferably be a noun or a (very) short sentence.

Properties:

Property Metamodel name Description
Short description ShortDescription
Implements Implements Links to: All templates.
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Artifact ArchiMate

The Artifact is in ArchiMate defined as a passive structure element and has been adopted from UML.

An artifact represents a piece of data that is used or produced in a software development process, or by deployment and operation of an IT system.

An artifact represents a tangible element in the IT world. Artifact is a specialization of technology object. It is typically used to model (software) products such as source files, executables, scripts, database tables, messages, documents, specifications, and model files. An instance (copy) of an artifact can be deployed on a node. An artifact could be used to represent a physical data component that realizes a data object.

An application component or system software may be realized by one or more artifacts. A data object may be realized by one or more artifacts. A node may be assigned to an artifact to model that the artifact is deployed on the node. Thus, the two typical ways to use the artifact element are as an execution component or as a data file. In fact, these could be defined as specializations of the artifact element.

The name of an artifact should preferably be the name of the file it represents; e.g., “order.jar”. An artifact may consist of sub-artifacts.

Properties:

Property Metamodel name Description
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Implements Implements Links to: All templates.
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Application Service : ArchiMate

An application service represents an explicitly defined exposed application behavior.

An application service exposes the functionality of components to their environment. This functionality is accessed through one or more application interfaces. An application service is realized by one or more application functions that are performed by the component. It may require, use, and produce data objects.

An application service should be meaningful from the point of view of the environment; it should provide a unit of behavior that is, in itself, useful to its users. It has a purpose, which states this utility to the environment. This means, for example, that if this environment includes business processes, application services should have business relevance.

A purpose may be associated with an application service. An application service may serve business processes, business functions, business interactions, or application functions. An application function may realize an application service. An application interface may be assigned to an application service. An application service may access data objects. The name of an application service should preferably be a verb ending with “ing”; e.g., “transaction processing”. Also, a name explicitly containing the word “service” may be used.

Properties:

Property Metamodel name Description
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Implements Implements Links to: All templates.
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Application Process : ArchiMate

An application process represents a sequence of application behaviors that achieves a specific outcome.

An application process describes the internal behavior performed by an application component that is required to realize a set of services. For a (human or automated) consumer the services are relevant and the required behavior is merely a black box, hence the designation “internal”.

An application process may realize application services. Other application services may serve (be used by) an application process. An application process may access data objects. An application component may be assigned to an application process (which means that this component performs the process). The name of an application process should clearly identify a series of application behaviors; e.g., “Claims adjudication process”, or “General ledger update job”.

Properties:

Property Metamodel name Description
Short description ShortDescription
Implements Implements Links to: All templates.
BreaksDownTo BreaksDownTo Links to: All templates.