Glossary

Traceability

The ability of an artifact to demonstrate which other artifacts it relates to and why it exists.

The ability of an artifact to demonstrate which other artifacts it relates to and why it exists. Here it is not a documentation attribute but a governance condition: if it cannot be queried, it does not exist.

It is worth not confusing this with audit. Audit records what happened in one instance; traceability declares why an artefact exists and what it relates to. You can have either without the other, and most organizations have the first.

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Related terms

Architectural object

Each of the sixteen element types the metamodel recognizes, from strategic objective to evidence.

Chain link

Each of the seven levels of the traceability chain. Skipping a link produces the pathologies the methodology seeks to avoid: processes without a service, services without capabilities, and…

Metamodel

The formal definition of which object types exist in the architecture, how they may relate, with what cardinalities, and which configurations are invalid.

Traceability chain

The ordered relationship from strategy through capabilities, services, offerings, processes and data to the indicators that verify results.