While BIZBOK offers a structured and comprehensive approach to business architecture, the Orthogramic Metamodel builds upon and modernises this foundation with a more dynamic, interconnected, and schema-based model. Several key distinctions position the Orthogramic Metamodel as a forward-looking alternative:
Real-time integration and adaptability
BIZBOK typically treats business architecture as a documentation discipline, with periodic updates and static artefacts. The Orthogramic Metamodel enables a continuously evolving model, supporting real-time updates, feedback loops, and predictive analysis across all domains.
Democratised contribution to modelling
The Orthogramic Metamodel is designed to be accessible and applicable across a wide range of roles—not only enterprise architects. It supports collaborative modelling through structured, machine-readable formats and clearly defined relationships. This contrasts with BIZBOK’s more centrally controlled documentation style.
Inter-unit domain relationships
The Orthogramic Metamodel includes a formalised structure for defining how organisational units relate to business architecture domains. It specifies roles such as Owning Unit, Providing Unit, Consuming Unit, and Dependent Unit—enabling clarity in cross-functional responsibility and alignment. These inter-unit relationships are not directly addressed in the BIZBOK framework.
Strategic Response Model
A distinctive feature of the Orthogramic Metamodel is the Strategic Response Model, which defines how environmental changes, performance insights, and stakeholder needs can drive coordinated adjustments across strategy, policy, capabilities, and initiatives. This formalises the connection between sensing and responding—beyond the more fragmented strategic analysis in BIZBOK.
Schema-first and open
The Orthogramic Metamodel is published using JSON Schema under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence. This makes it transparent, extensible, and integrable with systems that automate analysis, modelling, or validation. By contrast, BIZBOK is primarily documentation-driven and not designed for automation or data exchange.
Holistic domain interconnection
The Orthogramic Metamodel emphasises the traceable relationships between domains—such as how a Strategy influences Capabilities, which are supported by Policies and evaluated through Performance. These interdependencies are expressed in structured data and form part of a consistent logic model, enabling a system-wide view of alignment and impact.
Policy and performance as core domains
Unlike BIZBOK, where policy and performance are treated as supporting concepts, the Orthogramic Metamodel recognises Policy and Performance as full domains. This elevates their role in governance, compliance, and continuous improvement within the strategic architecture.
In summary, the Orthogramic Metamodel retains the conceptual strengths of BIZBOK while advancing it into a flexible, interoperable, and responsive framework. It is designed not just for documentation but for systemised understanding and strategic transformation—aligned with the needs of modern, adaptive enterprises.
The Orthogramic metamodel is being made available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA 4.0) license, ensuring that it remains open, collaborative, and widely accessible. In contrast, the BIZBOK (Business Architecture Body of Knowledge) framework remains a closed and proprietary model managed by the Business Architecture Guild.
Here’s why the Orthogramic metamodel offers significant advantages:
Orthogramic’s Open Model (CC BY-SA 4.0) | BIZBOK’s Closed Model | |
|---|---|---|
Openness and collaboration | By adopting a Creative Commons license, the Orthogramic metamodel fosters an open, collaborative environment. Organizations, researchers, and practitioners can contribute to its evolution, enhancing its relevance and applicability across industries. This dynamic model ensures continuous innovation and refinement. | BIZBOK is centrally controlled and proprietary, limiting external contributions. This makes it slower to adapt to emerging trends and restricts innovation to a small group of approved contributors. |
Accessibility and flexibility | The Orthogramic metamodel is freely accessible to individuals, businesses, and educational institutions. It can be used, modified, and redistributed as long as proper attribution is provided and adaptations are shared under the same license. This ensures broader adoption across industries and sectors. | BIZBOK requires paid memberships or purchases to access its materials, making it inaccessible to many organizations—particularly startups, non-profits, and universities. This barrier limits its adoption outside large enterprises willing to invest in proprietary frameworks. |
Innovation and customization | The Creative Commons license encourages innovation by allowing businesses to customize and extend the metamodel to fit their unique needs. Whether integrating with proprietary systems or adapting it to industry-specific challenges, users have the flexibility to shape the model to their advantage. | BIZBOK provides a structured but rigid framework. Users must adhere to its standardized structure, making customization difficult without explicit approval or workaround solutions. The proprietary nature restricts derivative works and adaptations. |
Community-driven support and growth | A community of practitioners and researchers can openly share enhancements, best practices, and refinements to the Orthogramic metamodel. This results in a self-sustaining ecosystem where collective intelligence drives continuous improvement. | BIZBOK restricts collaborative engagement to paying members within its formal structure. This limits organic community-driven improvements and slows down adaptation to real-world business challenges. |
Cost-effectiveness | The Orthogramic metamodel is free to use, making it an attractive option for startups, small businesses, and educational institutions that need an enterprise-grade framework without licensing fees. | Access to BIZBOK requires a paid subscription or training costs, creating financial barriers for organizations with limited budgets. This restricts the widespread use of the framework, particularly in emerging markets. |
Global adoption and standardisation | Creative Commons licensing facilitates global adoption, making the Orthogramic metamodel accessible across industries, geographies, and business functions. As organizations worldwide adopt it, it can become a widely accepted standard in business architecture. | BIZBOK’s restricted access and regional licensing limitations make it less adaptable to international collaboration. Its closed nature slows down cross-border standardisation efforts. |
Transparency and trust | Transparency is at the core of the Orthogramic metamodel. The framework’s assumptions, methodologies, and rationale are open to scrutiny, fostering trust and independent validation by experts and practitioners. | BIZBOK’s proprietary nature means that its intellectual property is not fully visible to non-members. Users must rely on the Business Architecture Guild’s interpretation without full insight into its reasoning or underlying research. |
Speed of updates and revisions | The Creative Commons approach ensures that updates and improvements can be made in real-time by the broader business architecture community. Users can adopt and benefit from immediate refinements without waiting for scheduled releases. | Updates to BIZBOK are controlled by the Business Architecture Guild and may be delayed due to bureaucratic processes. Additionally, the latest revisions are often only available to paying members, limiting access to improvements. |
While influenced by established business architecture practices, the Orthogramic Metamodel is an original work and does not incorporate or reproduce any copyrighted content from the BIZBOK Guide.