Perspectives - Structure / Grouping of TRAK Viewpoints

—Edited to reflect changes in names of TRAK Enterprise and Concept Perspectives—

Architectural frameworks normally provide ways of grouping views that have a common aspect and these collections are known as perspectives.

TRAK provides the following perspectives:-

• Enterprise (was ‘Capability’) – concerned with the overall enterprise and capabilities needed.
• Concept (was ‘Operational’) – concerned with the logical ‘‘what’’
• Procurement – concerned with projects and delivery of solutions
• Solution – concerned with the behavioural and physical aspects of the solution
• Management – concerned with the management of architectural views

They provide a way of simplifying and organising the architectural description.

TRAK defines a set of architectural viewpoints and view contents. Elements shown on a view have to be part of the underlying metamodel and can only be connected using the allowed relationships. TRAK specifies what can be shown and how it is presented and organised. This is shown in the context of IEEE 1471 in Figure 4?1. It is the ‘architecture element conforms to metamodel’ relationship outside the IEEE 1471 space and the ‘framework defines architecture viewpoint’ and ‘framework defines perspective’ that provide conformity and consistency.

IEEE1471 Conceptual Model with TRAK Metamodel Elements Added

Each TRAK viewpoint (and therefore view) is designed to address specific concerns or questions.

Enterprise Perspective

This perspective covers the enduring capabilities that are needed as part of the bigger enterprise. These are high level needs that everything else contributes to and form part of the long term strategic objectives that need to be managed. It provides a mechanism to link into the higher level goals such as ‘Keep London moving’.

Concept Perspective

The concept perspective covers the logical view of what is needed. It covers the logical connection of concept nodes, for example a service control centre, to other nodes with no recognition of how this might be realised either by organisation or technology. It provides a means of stating the operational exchange needs and information required.

Procurement Perspective

The procurement perspective provides a top level view of the solution to the problem outlined in the capability perspective and developed in the operational perspective in that it provides a way of showing how projects deliver solutions to provide capability. It provides a way of showing time dependency between projects and is an essential prerequisite for investigating capability gaps in the capability perspective. It also provides a mechanism for showing how organisations and projects relate to the systems being delivered.

Solution Perspective

The solution perspective provides views of the solution or potential solution, recognising that there may be many potential solutions which might meet the logical needs expressed in the operational perspective. Functional views provide a means of describing the behaviour in terms of functions, activity, sequence, state and interactions. Physical views describe how the system is organised, how information is routed and where parts are or must be.

Management Perspective

The management perspective covers views that are concerned with the management and production of the architecture products. It enables the scope of any architecture task to be defined and the provides ways of recording what was done and capturing the intended understanding so that the architecture can be provided to others or re-used.

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