Glossary

Application Programming Interface · Web API

An application programming interface: a published contract that lets one piece of software request data or actions from another without knowing how the other is built.

Application Inventory · APM

The full set of applications an organization runs, recorded with owners, costs, users, lifecycle and the capabilities each supports, so it can be managed as one set of investments.

Portfolio Rationalization

The effort to reduce cost, risk and overlap in an application portfolio by deciding, application by application, what to keep, invest in, replace, consolidate or retire.

In CSDM, a deployed, running instance of an application, such as the production or test environment, together with the infrastructure it depends on.

AaC

Writing architecture descriptions as machine-readable files kept in version control, so they are reviewed like code, checked automatically in the delivery pipeline and compared with what is actually deployed.

ADR · Decision Record

A short document that captures one significant architecture decision: its context, the options considered, the choice made and the consequences accepted, kept with the work it affects.

ADL · Modeling Language

A modeling language with defined elements, relationships and rules for describing an architecture, so a model can be checked, exchanged between tools and read the same way by everyone who uses it.

Governance Log · Exception Register

The running record of governance outcomes: review decisions, exceptions to standards, waivers of principles and deviations, each with its conditions, owner and expiry, so compliance can be followed up rather than remembered.

Design Principle

A durable rule that guides architecture choices, stated with its rationale and implications, such as preferring shared services to duplicates, so many decisions stay consistent without case-by-case debate.

EA Repository

The managed store for an organization's architecture content, including models, standards, principles, decisions and reference material, kept current so others can find and reuse it.

ARB · Design Authority · Architecture Review

A standing forum that reviews significant designs and exceptions against principles and standards, and records the decisions so they can be traced and reused.

APM · Asset Performance

The practice and software of using condition data, failure history and risk to keep physical assets available at the lowest total cost: predicting failures, choosing maintenance strategies and deciding when to repair or replace.

An explicit boundary within which one domain model and its terms have a single, consistent meaning. The same word, such as Customer, may mean something different in another context.

A reusable component of an architecture, such as a capability, service or package of functions, defined by what it provides and its interfaces so it can be combined with others.

Business App

In CSDM, the record that represents an application as the business knows it, independent of where or how many times it is deployed, used for portfolio, ownership and capability mapping.

BA · BizArch

The discipline that models what an organization does and how it creates value, using capabilities, value streams, information, organization units and strategy, so business and technology decisions share one frame.

BC · Capability

Something the organization must be able to do to deliver its outcomes, named for what it achieves rather than for how it is done, who does it or which system supports it.

Outcome

A measurable change in results the organization wants, such as faster order delivery or lower cost to serve, stated independently of the projects or systems expected to produce it.

Process · BP

A defined sequence of activities, with a trigger, inputs, outputs and an end point, that people and systems carry out to get a piece of work done.

In CSDM, a service delivered to business users or customers, described in terms they recognize and offered through one or more Service Offerings.

Heat Map · Capability Assessment

A capability map colored by an assessment such as strategic importance, current performance, maturity, cost or risk, so the places that need attention stand out at a glance.

Capability Tier · Capability Depth

The depth of a capability in its hierarchy, from broad groupings at the top to specific, assessable abilities at the bottom. Each level should cover its parent completely, without overlap among siblings.

Business Capability Model · Capability Model

A one-page arrangement of an organization's Business Capabilities, usually grouped by domain and layered by level, used as a shared vocabulary for strategy, investment and architecture decisions.

Configuration Management Database

A configuration management database: the store of Configuration Items and the relationships among them, used to understand what supports what when planning change or resolving incidents.

CI

Any component that needs to be managed to deliver a service, such as a server, database, application or service record, tracked in the CMDB with its attributes and relationships.

Baseline Architecture · As-Is

A description of the architecture as it exists today: the capabilities, processes, applications, data and technology in use, with enough fact to judge what must change.

Data Stewardship

The decision rights, policies, roles and controls that determine how an organization's data is defined, owned, protected, kept accurate and used.

A record of where data came from, which systems and transformations it passed through, and where it is used, so its trustworthiness and the impact of a change can be traced.

A dataset published for others to use and managed like a product: it has a named owner, documented meaning, quality commitments and a stable interface that consumers can rely on.

Twin · Virtual Twin

A live digital model of a physical asset, process or system, kept in step with its real counterpart at an agreed frequency and fidelity, so it can be monitored, analyzed and tested without touching the real thing.

DDD

An approach to software design that centers the code on a model of the business domain, built and refined with domain experts and expressed in a language both sides share.

EOL · End of Support · EOS

The date after which a vendor or project stops supporting a product version, so no further fixes or security patches are issued for it.

EA

The practice of describing how an organization's business, information, applications and technology fit together, and of guiding change so that individual decisions add up to the intended direction.

EDA · Event-Driven

An architecture style in which components announce that something has happened as events, and other components react to those events, rather than calling each other directly and waiting for answers.

Architectural Fitness Function

An automated, objective check that measures whether a system still has an architectural property it needs, such as a dependency rule, latency budget or security setting, run as part of delivery.

Gap Assessment

A comparison of current and target states that lists what must be added, changed or removed to close the difference, as the input to a roadmap and its work packages.

In CSDM, a record describing a kind of business data, such as customer or invoice data, so its classification and the applications that handle it can be tracked.

IaC

Defining servers, networks and cloud resources in version-controlled files that tools apply automatically, so environments are reproducible, reviewable and consistent.

Enterprise Integration Pattern · EIP

A named, reusable approach for connecting systems, such as publish-subscribe, request-reply or change data capture, with known strengths and failure modes.

A pre-configured cloud environment with accounts, networking, identity, security guardrails and logging already in place, so workloads can be deployed into a governed foundation.

LTS

A release line that a vendor or project commits to maintain with fixes and security updates for an extended, published period, intended for systems that cannot upgrade often.

Macro · Domain · L0

The top grouping in this catalog's capability model: eight broad areas, such as Finance or Technology & Data, that collect related L1 capabilities for navigation and roll-up reporting.

Master Data Management

The core shared records an organization runs on, such as customers, products, suppliers, employees and locations, that many processes and systems reuse and must agree on.

Microservices · Microservice Architecture

A small service that owns one business function and its own data, runs in its own process and can be built, deployed and scaled independently of the other services in the system.

Monolithic Application

An application built and deployed as a single unit, where all of its functions share one codebase, one process and usually one database.

O11y

The degree to which a system's internal state can be understood from what it emits, such as metrics, logs and traces, so teams can explain unfamiliar failures, not only detect known ones.

Target Operating Model · TOM

How an organization arranges its people, processes, technology, governance and locations to deliver its strategy, including how much it standardizes and integrates across business units.

OT · Industrial Control Systems · ICS

Hardware and software that monitors or controls physical equipment and processes, such as control systems, sensors and plant historians, as opposed to systems that handle business information.

Internal Developer Platform · IDP

Building and running an internal platform of self-service tools, templates and managed infrastructure that lets product teams deliver software without each team solving the same plumbing problems.

PC · Module

A function a software product offers, such as a module or feature set, described so it can be linked to the Business Capabilities it helps realize.

A generic, reusable structure, such as a capability, process or technology model, that an organization adapts as a starting point instead of building its own from a blank page.

Architecture Roadmap · Transition Plan

A time-ordered plan of the changes that move an organization from its current state toward its target state, showing sequence, dependencies and rough timing rather than task-level detail.

SLO

An internal target for how reliably a service should behave, stated as a measured indicator such as success rate or latency over a time window, for example 99.9 percent of requests served under 300 ms.

Offering

In CSDM, a specific variant of a Business Service or Technology Management Service with its own commitments, such as support hours, availability or price, that consumers subscribe to and that support routes against.

The complete set of services an organization manages, from those being planned through those offered today to those being retired, used to decide where to invest in services.

SoR · Authoritative Source · Source of Truth

The application designated as the authoritative source for a given kind of data, where changes are made first and from which other systems take their copies.

Target Architecture · To-Be · Future State

A description of the architecture the organization intends to reach, tied to its strategy and stated clearly enough to compare with the current state and plan the moves between them.

Tech Debt

The extra future cost of changing a system that comes from earlier shortcuts, outdated designs or aging components, paid as slower delivery and higher risk until it is addressed.

Technology Lifecycle Management · TLM

The stages a technology or version moves through in an organization, from emerging and approved through contained and retiring to retired, used to steer new use and plan replacement.

Technical Service

In CSDM, a service that IT teams deliver to other IT teams, such as hosting, database or network services, rather than directly to business users.

TRM · Technology Taxonomy

A structured classification of the kinds of technology an organization uses, such as relational databases or message brokers, used to place products, standards and lifecycle decisions in one frame.

Approved Technology · Tech Standard

An approved choice of technology, product or version for a given purpose, published with its lifecycle status so teams know what to use, what to avoid and what is being phased out.

TIME · Tolerate Invest Migrate Eliminate

A four-way classification of applications by business fit and technical quality into Tolerate, Invest, Migrate and Eliminate, used to give each application in a portfolio a disposition.

TCO

The full cost of an application or technology over its life, covering licenses, infrastructure, support, staff time, integration and eventual retirement, not just the purchase price.

Plateau · Interim State

An intermediate state between the current and target architectures that delivers value on its own and is stable enough to operate, so a long change can be planned as a series of safe steps.

VS · End-to-End Flow

The end-to-end sequence of stages an organization goes through to deliver a result of value to a customer or other stakeholder, from the triggering request to the outcome that stakeholder recognizes.

VSM

A lean technique for drawing how work, material and information actually flow through a process, with wait times and handoffs, so delays and steps that add no value become visible and can be removed.

Stage

One step in a Value Stream, defined by the value it adds or the decision it produces, with an entry condition and an exit condition that make clear when the stage is done.

Architecture Viewpoint

A convention for building one kind of architecture view, naming the stakeholders and concerns it serves and the model types and notation it uses.

ZT · Zero Trust Architecture · ZTA

A security model that grants no implicit trust based on network location: every request is authenticated, authorized and checked against policy, and access is kept to the minimum needed.