[This diagram is the exclusive work of Albin Martin Zuech of Annapolis Maryland, who placed it in the public domain in 2001. Al Zuech maintains the original Visio Diagram in numerous stages of its development between 2000 and present. Al Zuech was the Director, Enterprise Architecture Service at the Department of Veterans Affairs from 2001 until 2007. He incorporated this diagram within the VA-EA to provide a symbolic representation of the Metamodel that VA used, under his direction, to describe the One-VA Enterprise Architecture and to build an EA Repository without the use of Commercial EA Repository Software.

The One-VA EA repository was developed using an object oriented database within the Caliber-RM Software Product. Caliber-RM is intended to be used as a software configuration management tool; not as an EA repository. However this tool permitted defining entities and relationships and for defining properties upon both entities and relationships, which made it sufficient for building an EA repository, considering the technology that was available in early 2003. Mr. Zuech's motivation in selecting this tool was two-fold: (1) none of the commercial repository tools that were available at that time provided a true Zachman Framework representation of models and relationships; and (2) the available commercial tools were highly proprietary and made it difficult to incorporate best-of-breed tools and representations from other vendors or form open sources.

This diagram emphasizes several important interpretations of the Zachman Framework and its adaptation to Information technology Investment Management. (1) Progressing through the rows from top to bottom, one can trace-out the System Development Lifecycle (SDLC) which is a de facto standard across the Information Industry; (2) The diagram emphasizes the importance of the often-neglected Zachman Row-Six (the Integrated, Operational Enterprise View). Representations in Mr. Zuech’s interpretation of Zachman row-six consist, largely, of measurable service improvements and cost savings/avoidance that result from the business process and technology innovations that were developed across rows two through five. Row-six provides measured Return on Investment for Individual Projects and, potentially, for the entire investment portfolio. Without row-six the Zachman Framework only identifies sunk-cost – the row-six ROI permits the framework to measure benefits and to be used in a continuous improvement process, capturing best practices and applying them back through row-two.

Mr. Zuech lectures on these topics at the Federal Enterprise Architecture Certification Institute (FEAC) in Washington D.C. and may be reached for comment at [email protected]