The United States Office of Management and Budget (OMB) created the Federal Enterprise Architecture Framework (FEAF) as a mechanism to identify duplication of assets, within and outside of each US Government agency, so that departments can be cost effective in reuse or procurement of new technology investments.
FEAF 2 establishes a common language Consolidated Reference Model (CRM) to help identify assets across agencies, and a Collaborative Planning Method (CPM) to standardize the process agencies and departments must do to establish the need for a new investment.
FEAF is also popular amongst commercial corporations, who utilize the exhaustive reference models as a starting point in their enterprise architecture efforts.
The System Architect FEAF 2 add-in enables organizations to utilize the latest CRM, align architecture to the reference models, and generate automated reports to help with the CPM process, while harnessing other powerful features of the repository-based enterprise architecture solution.
Reference model management
Automatically load the latest CRM, including the Business Reference Model (BRM), Application Reference Model (ARM), Data Reference Model (DRM), Infrastructure Reference Model (IRM), Performance Reference Model (PRM), and Security Reference Model (SRM). Auto-visualize the reference model hierarchies. Manage the reference models in a multi-user repository based on an industry-standard database.
Supporting the collaborative planning methodology
Describe and align assets to the CRM through definitions or via a set of FEAF 2 matrices. Use TOGAF asset types, DoDAF 2 asset types, or asset types established by your own metamodel. Create a CPM line of sight - understand owners, sponsors, and stakeholders; needs and gaps, candidate need gap providers, and output measures. Align investments to the agency strategies using the Business Motivation Model (BMM).
OMB reporting and analysis
Out-of-box reports are provided to publish asset categorizations and CPM line of sight views. Build integrated plans and transition plans, and auto-generate roadmaps of capabilities, services, applications, technologies, or any enterprise artifact.
Utilize a repository-based, data-centric approach
The enterprise architecture repository becomes a single source of the truth, harvesting information from disparate sources of record, with a data centric approach so that all diagram views and matrices represent your organizational information.
Build and compare current state and future state architectures
Baseline your enterprise architecture and create multiple side-by-side future-state architectures using a feature called workspaces, which are layers of the architecture. You can compare and merge workspaces, and at some point baseline a desired future-state architecture to become a new current state, and create new future-state architectures. Workspaces enable different departments to work on the architecture independently, and then merge their work into the corporate EA.
Perform application portfolio analysis
Utilize out-of-box analytics to visualize portfolio analysis or write your own analytics on the fly in seconds using a wizard front end to the built-in SQL reporting system. Map decision analysis results into System Architect from UNICOM Focal Point using the integration between the tools, or map in APM measures from other industry-leading project and portfolio management tools.
Integrate to solution design, requirements and change management
System Architect is one of the few enterprise architecture tools to embrace and implement Open Service for Lifecycle Collaboration (OSLC) standards. You can create traceability links between the architecture and related aspects of enterprise information such as requirements, change requests, action items, or solution designs in other architecture tools. A simple right-mouse click enables you to see information in other 'friend' tools across the network and create links to relevant artifacts in them, then see and navigate those links at any time. OSLC creates a federated picture of organizational information and helps make enterprise architecture more valuable, helping you take it out of its ivory tower. Use this traceability to govern solution design, and align to the DevOps processes of release management, testing, and deployment.
Web based
Use the System Architect Publisher add-on to build and gather reports to auto-generate sophisticated websites of the enterprise architecture so that you can communicate business processes and their context to everyone in the organization, producing greater efficiencies. Use System Architect XT for live read/write web access to the repository.
System Architect Publisher generates a sophisticated website of the architecture allowing an unlimited number of people to view the architecture
FEAF add-in details
Find out about the FEAF add-in and the additional features it provides.