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'NATO NAF v4' is a recent Architecture Framework standard designed to develop and describe architectures for both military and business sides.
This new version of the NAF is based on the OMG's UAF v1.2 Domain Meta-Model (DMM) and the Open Group's ArchiMate 3 MetaModels.

 

We particularly emphasize below on the alignment of Organization Capabilities, Services, Operations, Personnel and Physical System Resources to the Vision, Goals and Strategies as such an alignment becomes facilitated by the new NAF v4 Grid of viewpoints depicted in figure 1 below. 

Indeed, the new version of NAF brings a well-defined 'grid structure' to align viewpoints from Enterprises Vision, Strategies / Capabilities until Physical Resources.

 

While the Subjects of Concerns (rows of the grid) focus on different domains from Vision and Capabilities to the Physical Systems, the Aspects of Concerns (columns of the grid) emphasize on Structural and Behavioral dimensions of architecture elements including their Connectivity, Information Exchange, Constraints and the Roadmap to align underlying subjects.

 

The behavioral aspects of concern in the grid contain three aspects namely : Processes, States and Sequences. You can use any of them to define views related to the behavioral specifications of your architecture depending on the context brought by the needs of your stakeholders.

However, aligning Process and Sequence Viewpoint(s) to 'Desired States' will help you to avoid time wasting in struggling with unnecessary tasks such as no productive modeling.

Indeed, the only behavioral (process or sequence) diagrams that support efficiency of your operations are those that are directly aligned to your 'desired system states'.

Formatting Strategies and Capabilities of the Concepts Layer below being based on Desired States to reach also help to better align Services, Processes, then Roles and Resources of the underlying layers to these States (cf. Figure 5.1).

 

 

Figure 1 - The NATO NAF v4 Grid of Architecture Viewpoints

Please note that the 'Architecture Meta-Data' has been renamed to 'Architecture Foundation', the S2- Service Structure Viewpoint has been added to the grid and some minor changes occurred in the 2020.07 document of NAF v4 Grid as indicated below.

 

 

Architecture Methodology

 

NAF v4 defines Methodological Stages similar to TOGAF's ADM phases ; however stages do not make reference to the order in which viewpoints may efficiently be used to ensure an 'architectural coherence' facing changes and saving time in populating the grid :

https://www.nato.int/nato_static_fl2014/assets/pdf/2021/1/pdf/NAFv4_2020.09.pdf

 

The figure below shows the Architecting Stages of the NAF V4 Methodology focusing on its central entity "Manage Architecture Motivation Data'.

 

The latter makes reference to the OMG's Business Motivation Model (BMM) standard to Manage the Architecture Motivation Data such as Vision, Goals, Influencers (Drivers), Policies and Rules, ... that set the context of 'process adaptation' to major architecture drivers such as interoperability.

Arrows indicated below in blue in the official document of NAF v4 only provides you with high-level links among blocks of concepts. In reality, according to the BMM standard, for example Influencers (Drivers) impact first Goals then Strategies and Tactics, etc...please refer to the OMG's BMM standard on https://www.omg.org/spec/BMM/1.3/PDF for details or directly to https://www.goobiz.com/From_BMM_to_SOA.htm (figure 6) for a quick insight..

 

 

Figure 2 - The NATO NAF v4 - Architecting Stages around the Architecture Motivation Data Elements - While it seems to be inspired from TOGAF ADM Cycle, the 'Managing Architecture Motivation Data' Entity helps not only to set the context of 'process adaptation' to major architecture drivers but also to adjust strategies and tactics based on captured feedbacks (cf figure 6).

 

 

Architecture Enabled Engineering : Aligning the NAF v4 Viewpoints to Desired Effects / Lessons learned

 

To provide decision makers with timely and accurate information using architecture elements, NAF v4 connects "information" across and within the enterprise' by aligning different architecture viewpoints to Desired States/Effects.

Below you will find some shortcuts to avoid wastes in elaborating no-productive or potentially redundant views particularly using those starting by S4 and S6 (Service Functions and Interactions) :

• First, focus on the Motivational Elements (Vision, goals, … until requirements) using the Aspects of Vision and Constraints (C2, C8) views as well as the Desired Service taxonomy (S1) and Service Constraints (S8) views that will provide you respectively with the needed capabilities and underlying services.
• Then to understand how your existing “Capabilities” and Services need to evolve, prepare a Taxonomy of Capabilities (C1) and Services (S1) views of your existing system (baseline architecture),
• Now, you are ready to precisely define the "Desired Effects" that your organization would like to realize through the “C5 – Effects” view and analyze impacts until the Resource Architecture (P1 to P8) views.

 

In particular, 'desired states' targeted by the C5 view will guide you to focusing directly into the behavioral aspects such as (S4) and (S6) (respectively Service Functions and Interactions) views that need to be clarified for a given "target state" to reach.

Therefore all other underlying Logical and Physical Resource views located within these two behavioral aspects will be aligned with the "S4" and "S6" views to ensure coherence through the Conceptual, Logical and Physical Data (S7, L7 and P7) views.

 

 

Some complementary recommendations to ensure an Architectural Coherence :

 

The two small arrows on the left of the Grid originated from "Desired States" below 'indicate all Aspects' of Capabilities, Services and underlying Logical and Physical Resource views that need to be aligned with target "States" that are to be reached.

Such a 'State (or Goal) based alignment' aims to ensure not only the Coherence of the Architecture Building Blocks vertically ; but it does also contribute in saving time while populating the grid through appropriate views being aligned with the desired states (Horizontal Coherence) through subjects of concern...

 

Figure 3 - Correspondances between NAF V4 Grid and ArchiMate Layers aligned with the Motivation Aspect depicted on the right

 

 

Continuing with tips to ensure a better Strategic Alignment :

 

Tip 1 : The alignment of the subjects of concerns (horizontal layers) of the grid with 'Desired States' your organization would like to reach aims to provide decision makers with timely and accurate information collected through these layers and serve in realizing a dynamic "gap analysis" between existing and target desired states.

Therefore, it does not only assist you initially in preparing the roadmap of incremental capabilities using the capability roadmap (Cr) view but also helps in adjusting them through 'state based data' collected from layers (see the Data-Driven and Goal Based Alignment using the NAF v4 depicted in the last figure).

 

Tip 2 : Fragmenting capabilities into 2nd or 3rd level granularities helps for traceability in C1-SI (Capability to Service Mapping ) view to match the reality of "units of works" of services that need to be provided to consumers (cf. example depicted in figure 5 below).

Additionnaly, expressing both capabilities and services being based on objects in 'Desired States' and aligning physical functions based on logical activities through the (L4-P4) bridge viewpoint helps to ensure alignment of physical resources when Strategies evolve (therefore ensure a better reactivity).

 

Tip 3 : The "Given/When/Then" state based test format is useful to align the Physical P4 and P6 (respectively Resource Functions and Resource Sequence) views with the corresponding Logical ones (L4 and L6 views) by making reference to Logical Data Entities referenced in the L7 view (the Logical Data Model).

 

Tip 4 : Finally SysML "verify" relationships help in adding "test cases in the P1 - Resource Types Quality Requirements table view.

 

An excerpt from some of these views referenced within NAF v4 Grid are provided below from the Strategic (Concept) Viewpoint to the Resources Viewpoint with an alignment based on the Architecture Motivation Data (as outlined in Figure 2 above).

Such an alignment allows you to express elements of the architecture in coherence according to 'Desired States' you want to reach for your Organization and System Architectures.

 

Figure 4 - Orchestration of the NATO NAF v4 Viewpoints from Strategies till Resources based on the Architecture Motivation Data (Drivers, Assessments, Goals, Outcomes, Values... at the center)

 

Setting up Measures of Effectiveness (MoE) and Capturing the corresponding MoPs thru Value-Driven Services and Data-Types

 

An example of MoE (Measure of Effectiveness) using the C7 Actual Performance Parameters Table is provided below with attributes determined for the high-level "Maritime Search" Capability.

 

 

Having set up the MoEs, let's focus on the alignment of system level services based on the Goal "Save Lives", through underlying Outcomes, Value Streams, Capabilities then Services.

 

The figure below depicts on a simplified example alignment of these architecture elements till description of Data-Types based on Value Items to deliver (dashed circles in red give their correspondence).

 

Attributes of these Value aligned Data-Types depicted on the bottom part indicate data to collect for Measure of Performances (MoPs).

 

 

Figure 5-1 - 'Desired Effect-Based Alignment' from Goals, Outcomes, Value Streams and Capabilities to Services and Value-Driven Data Types

 

To ensure interoperability of services being aligned with sub-capabilities, a state transition diagram (using the S5 view) is elaborated for the 'Search' and 'Rescue' services as shown on the bottom part of the figure 5-1.

 

The NAF Logical Nodes and Processes aligned to Desired Effects (C5 viewpoint) is illustrated in the L4 - Logical Activities view below.

Objects described on the Flows that make reference to target nodes help to align these nodes to Desired effects (Values to Deliver) as described in C5 and L5 Logical States.

 

Figure 5-2- Target Nodes referenced on flows help to align them to Desired effects as described in C5 Desired Effects and L5 Logical States viewpoints.

 

Using such an alignment mechanism of Logical and Physical Resources to Desired Effects and MoPs (Measures of Performance data) collected on these assets, decision makers are provided with appropriate information.

This helps them to assess the gap to desired MoE (Measures of Effectiveness) that are set by the C7 Performance Parameters View.

 

 

Summary

 

The figure below outlines a summary of the Macro Steps to align horizontally and vertically Aspects of Concerns of the NAF V4 Grid to 'Desired States' being based on the BMM's 'Motivation Data' (Goals, Strategies, Policies, Rules - cf. Steps 1, 2 and 3 below).

Then Step 4 highlights data feed backs and insights collected from the Physical layer that are assessed by Step 5 to adjust strategies before initiating a new alignment cycle of the Architecture Views of the Grid (through a new sequence of Steps 1, 2,3). 

 

 

Figure 6 - The Data-Driven Strategic Alignment using the NATO NAF v4 Architecting Stages and its Grid of Architecture Viewpoints

 

Complementary information about the end-to-end alignment including "architecture enabled decision-making" is provided in the following trainings :

https://www.goobiz.com/NATO-Architecture-Framework-NAFv4.html ( 3 days training).

 

Should you need to understand how to put in practice the NAF v4 on an end-to-end case study, the 4 day version of the "NATO NAF v4" Training using ArchiMate on Sparx EA might be a best fit for you.

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Last updated, April 8th, 2024 - Birol Berkem, Ph.D Informatics