The Department of Defense Architectural Framework (DODAF) is an architecture and infrastructural body which main responsibility is publication of materials. In fact, the department publishes information regarding development in the architectural field.
These materials are usually submitted by any of its members to the editorial department. The editorial board works with authors to determine the appropriateness of information submitted by members, and after making the necessary changes, they ensure that the document is released to the public for use by architects and other stakeholders in the building and construction sectors.
Compared to other Architectural Frameworks, such as Zachman one, it was discovered that the potentiality of the Department of Defense Architectural Framework was not very effective due to the absence of knowledge required to run the organization (Haynes 28). The knowledge necessary to support maintenance of the framework might be inadequate due to the rationale behind the architectural design.
This happens if the original architectural works are not available at a seemingly approaching date when they need to be used. Thus, without a systematic design process, the architectural design and its quality would have highly depend on experience of the designer who might have gone and left no traceable marks at that time.
A study carried out on this issue found out that some of the frameworks have specified the processes and methodologies used in the construction of viewpoints. In this case, framework, such as DoDFAF, suggested using tradeoffs while others, such as The Open Group Architectural Framework (TOGAF), specified on the use of capture of design rationale (Blanchard et al. 78).
According to Zachman (Inmon, Zachman and Geiger 71), the motivation behind the Department of Defense Architectural Framework helps set primary goals which every architect in the organization is supposed to achieve. This will aid the organization in meeting its goals and objectives (Mathews et al. 228).
Failure to set operational goals for the architects to achieve them will lead to worsening and violating the organization’s standards, in terms of both quality and quantity production as most of the tasks will not be performed in the required manner.
This will not work for good for the organizations as failure in designs may be fatal when it comes to real applications on the ground, and thus this will appear as part of its shortcomings. It also acts as a crucial goal setting strategy in which all the firm’s aims are defined, and then the reference is made in accordance with a motive directed towards what the organization wishes to achieve at the end.
The logic identifies and describes the rules which serve as important parts to ensure there is a continuous and clear recording of all entries (O’Rourke, Fishman and Selkow 87). The conceptual view identifies the chain of command of goals that is made or set to support the primary objectives. These rules and regulations are to be followed in the maintenance of long term goals.
The entity “how” highlights the list of all known processes that are supposed to be followed, and any response is supposed to be directed towards making clear and visible to everyone who is interested in where and how these processes are to occur and go.
The conceptual view provides process descriptions, input and output processes in accordance with how they occur as the process tends to approach a point of termination. This also identifies and describes the process in which transistors are expressed as verb-noun phrases without regard to physical or technical implementation in the processing cycle and completion of the task allocated.
These architectural frameworks provide a structured approach to designing a system and architectural software which are specifically created for use in the architectural industry.
The assertion is true, and the following are some of the ways in which DODAF may be modified and upgraded in order to ensure that the expected impacts of shortcomings are curbed in advance.
One of the ways includes ensuring that there is proper communication and coordination between stakeholders and architects since large scale systems involve multiple stakeholders’ communication and coordination in the process to ensure that essential knowledge, such as design reasoning, raises the quality of the design decisions (O’Rourke, Fishman and Selkow 68).
Raising the level of knowledge retention among architects is another way, and this could be done by carefully ensuring that decision making process in architectural design is as relevant as possible. This will assure of retention of reasoning knowledge that is equally valuable to all, hence promoting equality in architectural field.
Lowering the potential risk of architecture design is another factor. Since architecture design often involves integration and utilization of multiple systems and software components which final outcomes are unclear sometimes; this calls for careful considerations and rationalizing of the combined behavior of the systems that are required to mitigate the risks that may arise as operations proceed.
Lowering the impact of architecture design, the decisions made earlier the former architectural designs are harder to change or reverse once they are made because later basic change of design will have a substantial cost and schedule impact. This may also take a lot of time and resources as a result, so several processes might happen simultaneously and be rejected later.
Works Cited
Blanchard, Karen, and Peter Fabrycky. Systems Engineering and Analysis, Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1998. Print.
Haynes, Robert. Properties of Architecture Analysis Tools. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Print.
Inmon, William H., Zachman, John A. and Jonathan G. Geiger. Data stores, data warehousing, and the Zachman Framework: managing enterprise knowledge. USA: McGraw-Hill, 1997. Print.
Matthews, Robert W., and William C. McGee.”Data Modeling for Software Development“, IBM Systems Journal 29.2(1990): 228–234. Print.
O’Rourke, Carol, Fishman, Neal and Warren Selkow. Enterprise Architecture Using the Zachman Framework. Virginia: MITRE Complex, 2003. Print.