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)

Examples:

• Strategy → Capabilities (Aligns with)

• Capabilities → Value Stream (Enables)

• Value Stream → Initiative (Drives demand for)

• Stakeholders → Services (Oversees)

• Policy → Information (Governs)

These are maintained within the metamodel and visualised within Orthogramic Insights to support exploration and navigation.

Relationship type list

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