1. Introduction

The Orthogramic Metamodel is a modern, structured approach to business architecture that builds upon and extends the conceptual foundations of BIZBOK. It offers greater formalisation, clearer relationships between domains, and enhanced interoperability through its JSON schema-driven design.

While BIZBOK is highly narrative and conceptual, Orthogramic is deliberately declarative and designed for digital implementation. It enables automation, consistent data quality, and scalable integration across systems—qualities increasingly essential for operating in enterprise environments.

This guide provides a short orientation to help BIZBOK practitioners understand and begin applying the Orthogramic Metamodel.

2. Core similarities and differences

Orthogramic preserves BIZBOK’s strengths—such as clear domain thinking and alignment focus—while addressing limitations around reusability, automation, and analytic depth.

3. Key concepts to explore first

a. Domains as structured artefacts

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

b. Inter-unit domain relationships

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.

c. Strategic Response Model (SRM)

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.

4. Applying your BIZBOK knowledge

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.

5. Next steps

1. Review the Metamodel schemas
   Start with the Capabilities, Information, and Stakeholders domains
   → Model overview

2. Use inter-unit relationships to map governance
   Apply the Inter-unit relationships schema → Inter-unit domain relationships

3. Model a Strategic Response
   Use the Strategic Response Model to simulate a business event and the intended architectural response → Strategic Response Model

4. Embed automation
   With JSON schema conformance, the model can be consumed by APIs, validation engines, and workflow tools. Start with Organization → Organization | Organization JSON Schema

5. Contribute to the open source model
   The Orthogramic Metamodel is available under Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0 for use and contribution → https://orthogramic.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/~712020874b9e874018492a93e33447684fc6ce/pages/240549893