Zachman Framework

The Zachman Framework is an enterprise ontology and is a fundamental structure for Enterprise Architecture which provides a formal and structured way of viewing and defining an enterprise. The ontology is a two dimensional classification schema that reflects the intersection between two historical classifications. The first are primitive interrogatives: What, How, When, Who, Where, and Why. The second is derived from the philosophical concept of reification, the transformation of an abstract idea into an instantiation. The Zachman Framework reification transformations are: Identification, Definition, Representation, Specification, Configuration and Instantiation.

The Zachman Framework is not a methodology in that it does not imply any specific method or process for collecting, managing, or using the information that it describes.; rather, it is an ontology whereby a schema for organizing architectural artifacts (in other words, design documents, specifications, and models) is used to take into account both who the artifact targets (for example, business owner and builder) and what particular issue (for example, data and functionality) is being addressed.

The framework is named after its creator John Zachman, who first developed the concept in the 1980s at IBM. It has been updated several times since.

The title "Zachman Framework" refers to The Zachman Framework for Enterprise Architecture with version 3.0 being the most current. The Zachman Framework has evolved in its thirty-year history to include:

In other sources the Zachman Framework is introduced as a framework, originated by and named after John Zachman, represented in numerous ways, see image. This framework is explained as, for example:

Beside the frameworks developed by John Zachman, numerous extensions and/or applications have been developed, which are also sometimes called Zachman Frameworks, however they generally tend to be graphical overlays of the actual framework itself.

The Zachman Framework summarizes a collection of perspectives involved in enterprise architecture. These perspectives are represented in a two-dimensional matrix that defines along the rows the type of stakeholders and with the columns the aspects of the architecture. The framework does not define a methodology for an architecture. Rather, the matrix is a template that must be filled in by the goals/rules, processes, material, roles, locations, and events specifically required by the organization. Further modeling by mapping between columns in the framework identifies gaps in the documented state of the organization.

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