Zachmanフレームワーク

歴史

In the 1980s John Zachman had been involved at IBM in the development of Business System Planning (BSP), a method for analyzing, defining and designing an information architecture of organizations. In 1982 Zachman had already concluded that these analyses could reach far beyond automating systems design and managing data into the realms of strategic business planning and management science in general. It may be employed in the (in that time considered more esoteric) areas of enterprise architecture, data-driven systems design, data classification criteria, and more.

情報システム仕組フレームワーク

In the 1987 article "A Framework for Information Systems Architecture" Zachman noted that the term "architecture" was used loosely by information systems professionals, and meant different things to planners, designers, programmers, communication specialists, and others. In searching for an objective, independent basis upon which to develop a framework for information systems architecture, Zachman looked at the field of classical architecture, and a variety of complex engineering projects in industry. He saw a similar approach and concluded that architectures exist on many levels and involves at least three perspectives: raw material or data, function of processes, and location or networks.
The Information Systems Architecture is designed to be a classification schema for organizing architecture models. It provides a synoptic view of the models needed for enterprise architecture. Information Systems Architecture does not define in detail what the models should contain, it does not enforce the modeling language used for each model, and it does not propose a method for creating these models.

エンタープライズアーキテクチャフレームワーク

In the 1997 paper "Concepts of the Framework for Enterprise Architecture" Zachman explained that the framework should be referred to as a "Framework for Enterprise Architecture", and should have from the beginning. In the early 1980s however, according to Zachman, there was "little interest in the idea of Enterprise Reengineering or Enterprise Modeling and the use of formalisms and models was generally limited to some aspects of application development within the Information Systems community". 
In 2008 Zachman Enterprise introduced the Zachman Framework: The Official Concise Definition as a new Zachman Framework standard.

概念

The basic idea behind the Zachman Framework is that the same complex thing or item can be described for different purposes in different ways using different types of descriptions (e.g., textual, graphical). The Zachman Framework provides the thirty-six necessary categories for completely describing anything; especially complex things like manufactured goods (e.g., appliances), constructed structures (e.g., buildings), and enterprises (e.g., the organization and all of its goals, people, and technologies). The framework provides six increasingly detailed views or levels of abstraction from six different perspectives.
It allows different people to look at the same thing from different perspectives. This creates a holistic view of the environment, an important capability illustrated in the figure.

詳細さのレベルにおける柔軟性

One of the strengths of the Zachman Framework is that it explicitly shows a comprehensive set of views that can be addressed by enterprise architecture. Some feel that following this model completely can lead to too much emphasis on documentation, as artifacts would be needed for every one of the thirty cells in the framework.
John Zachman clearly states in his documentation, presentations, and seminars that, as framework, there is flexibility in what depth and breadth of detail is required for each cell of the matrix based upon the importance to a given organization. An automaker, whose business goals may necessitate an inventory and process-driven focus, could find it beneficial to focus their documentation efforts on What and How columns. Whereas a travel agent company, whose business is more concerned with people and event-timing, could find it beneficial to focus their documentation efforts on Who and When columns. However, there is no escaping the Why column's importance as it provides the business drivers for all the other columns.

アプリケーションと影響

Since the 1990s the Zachman Framework has been widely used as a means of providing structure for Information Engineering-style enterprise modeling. The Zachman Framework can be applied both in commercial companies and in government agencies. Within a government organization the framework can be applied to an entire agency at an abstract level, or it can be applied to various departments, offices, programs, subunits and even to basic operational entities.

Zachmanフレームワークに基づく標準

Zachman Framework is also used as a framework to describe standards, for example standards for healthcare and healthcare information system. Each cell of the framework contains such a series of standards for healthcare and healthcare information system.