If you're experienced with BIZBOK, you'll recognise the importance of a structured business architecture approach. The Orthogramic Metamodel builds on this foundation—while significantly extending it—to meet the practical demands of dynamic, federated, and digital-first organisations.
Where BIZBOK provides a strong conceptual grounding, the Orthogramic Metamodel operationalises these concepts within a schema-first, digitally actionable structure. Each domain in the metamodel is defined with consistent JSON schemas, enabling traceability, integration, and automated governance across platforms.
The Orthogramic Metamodel includes all core BIZBOK domains such as Strategy, Capabilities, Initiatives, Stakeholders, Information, and Value Streams. It then extends this foundation with additional domains essential for modern organisations, including:
Performance – Integrated KPIs and evaluative models for continuous strategic alignment
Policy – Formalised guidance embedded within process and capability flows
Customer, Channel, Market, Risk, Finance, Supply chain, and Sustainability – Capturing operational context beyond traditional business architecture scope
Technology and People – Recognising the dual roles of digital platforms and workforce in enabling transformation
This broader scope reflects the real complexity of today’s operating environments, where architecture must bridge strategy, delivery, and external accountability.
Unlike traditional frameworks which often focus on documenting static views, Orthogramic is designed for continuous alignment. Strategic shifts, performance data, and external triggers flow directly into the Strategic Response Model, enabling rapid responses that are structurally sound and traceable to their origin.
With machine-readable domain models, automated impact analysis, and integrated document parsing, the Orthogramic platform turns business architecture from a planning artefact into a real-time strategic asset.
Conceptual Feature | BIZBOK | Orthogramic Metamodel |
|---|---|---|
Domain coverage | Broad but informal | Broad, plus adds Performance and Policy as structured domains |
Data structure | Primarily narrative | Fully structured JSON Schemas |
Interrelationships | Implicit, often described narratively | Explicit artefacts: e.g. Inter-unit domain relationships |
Scenarios | Use-case driven | Strategic Response Model formalised via triggers and structured responses |
Implementation focus | Often abstract | Designed for live, API-enabled systems |
Tooling | Tool-agnostic | Tool-agnostic, but natively supports digital platform integration |
Orthogramic preserves BIZBOK’s strengths—such as clear domain thinking and alignment focus—while addressing limitations around reusability, automation, and analytic depth.
All core business architecture domains (e.g. Capabilities, Value Streams, Information, Stakeholders) are expressed as structured artefacts in Orthogramic. Each has a JSON Schema defining its attributes, sub-elements, and relationships. This enables consistent use across platforms and teams.
Start by familiarising yourself with:
Capabilities schema
Value Streams schema
Strategy and Performance schemas
BIZBOK often refers to capability ownership and use abstractly. Orthogramic formalises this with a distinct artefact: Inter-unit domain relationships.
You can:
Define who owns, uses, supports, or depends on a capability, service, or value stream
Specify relationship strength (1–5 scale)
Link to organisation units and domain entities with traceable IDs
This enables dynamic governance modelling and improved alignment tracking.
Orthogramic introduces the SRM to formalise how an organisation responds to internal and external triggers (e.g. policy changes, customer demand shifts, regulatory pressure).
An SRM includes:
Triggers – identifiable events or pressures
Target outcomes – desired business objectives
Business response – capabilities, initiatives, and value streams activated
This fills a gap in BIZBOK around structured scenario modelling and strategic planning execution.
BIZBOK Concept | Orthogramic Equivalent or Enhancement |
|---|---|
Capability map | Capability artefacts with inter-unit relationships |
Stakeholder map | Stakeholders artefact, plus traceable stakeholder requirements |
Value stream stage maps | Value Stream artefact + Trigger integration via SRM |
Information concept model | Information artefact with data custodianship and access roles |
Governance structure | Embedded via custodian roles, ownership models, and policy artefacts |
Business scenarios | Formalised through the SRM and response modelling tools |
You can start by converting your existing capability and value stream maps into structured artefacts and layering inter-unit relationships to visualise ownership and dependency.
Review the Metamodel schemas
Start with the Capabilities, Information, and Stakeholders domains
→ The Metamodel
Use inter-unit relationships to map governance
Apply the Inter-unit relationships schema → Inter-unit domain relationships
Model a Strategic Response
Use the Strategic Response Model to simulate a business event and the intended architectural response → Strategic Response Model
Embed automation
With JSON schema conformance, the model can be consumed by APIs, validation engines, and workflow tools. Start with Organization → Organization
Contribute to the open source model
The Orthogramic Metamodel is available under Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0 for use and contribution → /wiki/spaces/~712020874b9e874018492a93e33447684fc6ce/pages/240549893