Cross Domain Relationships

Overview

Cross domain relationships in Orthogramic provide the connective tissue between business architecture domains. They define how different types of architectural elements influence, depend on, or support each other, allowing for meaningful insights, traceability, and alignment across the organisation.

These relationships are surfaced throughout the platform and are used for:

• Enabling strategic alignment checks

• Supporting recommendation logic

• Facilitating visualisation of dependency chains in mindmaps

• Highlighting misalignment or duplication across domains

The relationships are derived directly from the Orthogramic Metamodel and support automatic inference of organisational structure, responsibility, and impact.

Relationship types

Each cross domain relationship is defined by:

• Source domain (e.g. Strategy)

• Target domain (e.g. Capabilities)

• Relationship type (e.g. funds, enables, supported)

• Directionality (uni- or bi-directional)

Directionality

For modelling clarity, relationships should originate from active domains and target passive ones.
For guidance on relationship directionality, see: Relationship directionality

Example

This example that represents cross-domain relationships, organised logically from strategy to execution and support domains.

Open

This diagram models how business architecture elements are linked across domains rather than across business units.

Description

• Strategy → Capability: Strategic objective shapes capability investment.

• Capability → Value Stream → Initiative → Service → Product: Core delivery chain.

• Initiative → Performance: Execution linked to measurable outcomes.

• Policy and Information: Support governance and data dependency relationships.

• Stakeholder: Shows ownership and accountability.

Relationship type list

Icon	Relationship Type	Description

Icon	Relationship Type	Description
Open	funds	Finance provides financial resources to another domain entity to enable its development, operation, or enhancement.
Open	quantifies	Finance expresses the activities, outputs, or outcomes of another domain entity in measurable financial terms.
Open	reports_on	Finance produces formal reports capturing the financial performance, costs, or returns associated with another domain entity.
Open	forecasts	Finance projects future financial needs, costs, or revenues associated with another domain entity.
Open	supported	One domain entity receives necessary resources, services, or capabilities from another domain entity to deliver its intended outputs or outcomes.
Open	constrains	One domain entity imposes limitations, standards, or compliance requirements on another domain entity’s design, operation, or evolution.
Open	enables	One domain entity is essential for the successful implementation, operationalisation, or fulfilment of another domain entity.
Open	mitigates	One domain entity actively reduces the risks or vulnerabilities associated with another domain entity.
Open	monitors	One domain entity oversees, measures, or evaluates the performance or effectiveness of another domain entity.
Open	governing	One domain entity defines policies, standards, or decision rights that control the operation of another domain entity.
Open	drives_demand	One domain entity generates, influences, or amplifies the demand for another domain entity’s outputs, services, or capabilities.
Open	responds_to	One domain entity is triggered, adapted, or activated in response to changes in another domain entity or external event.
Open	consuming	One domain entity uses, relies upon, or draws from the resources, outputs, or services of another domain entity.
Open	aligns_with	One domain entity is intentionally coordinated or harmonised with another domain entity in purpose, direction, or design without establishing a direct dependency.
Open	oversee	For systematic traceability of oversight responsibilities.
Open	accountable_to	For a clear line of responsibility between entities

Use in document analysis

When documents are parsed, relationships between domains are inferred based on sentence structure, contextual clues, and declared associations (e.g. “This initiative improves customer engagement by enhancing CRM capabilities”).

These inferred relationships are validated and used to:

• Detect missing or weakly defined connections

• Assess quality and completeness of a document

• Propose recommendations to improve alignment

Use in mindmaps

Cross domain relationships are rendered in mindmaps to:

• Show how elements from different domains relate visually

• Allow users to follow logical chains from Strategy through to Initiatives and Performance

• Enable dynamic exploration of organisational alignment

Related pages

• Inter-unit domain relationship