Survey of Architecture Frameworks

Rich Hilliard is one of the people behind the ISO 42010 architectural standard (the international revision of IEEE 1471). He runs a website for the standard, which has a lot of material about architecture frameworks, standardisation and taxonomies.

One of the most useful pages is a Survey of Architecture Frameworks. Rich and his colleagues have collected information on a wide range of architectural frameworks from industry and academia. Ours is there, of course (!) along with well-known frameworks such as TOGAF and Phillippe Kruchten’s original 4+1, but there are many others as well. The frameworks are described and categorised, and there are links to source websites where available.

If you find that our viewpoint taxonomy doesn’t give you all the coverage you need, or would just like to find out how other authors and organisations approach the subject, this is a great place to start.

Alternatively, if you know of any frameworks which aren’t mentioned (I am about to email Rich about CapGemini’s IAF framework for example) you can email Rich through the website.