Model
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ArchiMate describes an enterprise across strategy, business, applications and technology. A model holds the graph of concepts and relationships; diagrams are built on top of it.
Create the model
- Open the project menu and choose New model.
- Enter a Name -
Retail Insurance, for example. - Pick ArchiMate in Model type and click Create.
Folders
Expand the model. It is not empty: ArchiMate puts every concept into the folder of its layer, and the folders are there from the start.
| Folder | What goes there |
|---|---|
| Strategy | Capabilities, resources, value streams, courses of action |
| Business | Actors, roles, processes, services, products, business objects |
| Application | Application components, their services and data objects |
| Technology & Physical | Nodes, devices, system software, networks, artifacts, equipment |
| Motivation | Stakeholders, drivers, goals, outcomes, requirements, constraints |
| Implementation & Migration | Work packages, deliverables, plateaus, gaps |
| Other | Location, Grouping and Junction, which belong to no single layer |
| Relations | Every relationship in the model |
| Views | Every diagram |
You never choose a folder: create an Application Component anywhere and it lands in Application, draw a relationship and it lands in Relations. Inside any of them you may add your own subfolders with New folder.
Below the folders sits Specializations, where the model declares its own
subtypes - Microservice as a kind of Application Component, for instance.
The model form
Select the model. The details panel on the right shows two fields, Name and Purpose, and the group Properties for your own key-value pairs. Purpose is the description of the model as a whole; Archi shows it in the same place.
No representation opens: an ArchiMate model is a graph first, and diagrams are made explicitly. That is the next page, Create a diagram.