The framework for enterprise architecture: background description and utility

Abstract

The Framework for Enterprise Architecture (or Zachman Framework) as it applies to Enterprises is simply a logical structure for classifying and organizing the descriptive representations of an Enterprise that are significant to the management of the Enterprise as well as to the development of the Enterprise’s systems, manual systems as well as automated systems. It was derived from analogous structures that are found in the older disciplines of Architecture/Construction and Engineering/Manufacturing that classify and organize the design artifacts created over the process of designing and producing complex physical products (e.g. buildings or airplanes, etc.)