There is much confusion in the Enterprise Architecture space over some of the most fundamental words in the English language:
what, how, where, who, when, why. I’m afraid to say there’s some very loopy thinking out there.
Zachman anticipated all this and brilliantly provided six generic models for the 6 question words. Here they are roughly as follows (and possibly needing to be adjusted slightly in his new 3.0):
What: thing-relationship-thing
How: input-process-output
Where: site-link-site
Who: role-workproduct-role
When: event-cycle-event (moment-state-moment)
Why: ends-means-ends
For me, it’s hard to argue that these are not what each question is about from an architectural point of view.
The only thing missing is how you relate instances of the 12 elements to comprehensively configure an enterprise at any given point in time. (Zachman calls these “integration relationships”. They’ve always been there, but only on the schematic in 3.0.)
IMO, the best, most dynamic (agile) way to support the ‘integration relationships’ is business rules. What could possibly be better?