NATO Architecture Framework


NATO Architecture Framework

The aim of the NATO Architecture Framework Version 4 is to provide a standard for developing and describing architectures for both military and business use. It provides a standardized way to develop architecture artefacts, by defining the following:
The NATO Architecture Framework v4, issued by the Architecture Capability Team of the NATO Consultation, Command and Control Agency in January 2018, provides guidance on describing both enterprise architectures and systems architectures.
The objectives of the framework are to:
NAFv4 Chapter 2 provides a methodology which includes how to set up an architecting environment, govern, manage, define and evaluate architectures. The methodology has been developed from accepted best practice and standards, detailing the following:
NAFv4 Chapter 3 defines Viewpoints, Views and Architecture Descriptions. It details a two-dimensional classification scheme for the standardized architecture viewpoints, this serves as the baseline for any NAF-Compliant architecture effort. To aid architects, these viewpoints are organized into a logical and consistent manner and presented as a “grid”. This ‘grid’ structure, represents the various ‘subjects of concern’ and ‘aspects of concern’, as shown below:
The selection of Viewpoints must be tailored to the specific architecture effort; i.e. suitable Viewpoints need to be identified in the grid, should additional Viewpoints be required they must defined.
A View is specified by a Viewpoint, this prescribes the concepts, models, analysis techniques and visualizations that are provided by the View.
The Architecture Description typically addresses a set of related concerns and is tailored for specific stakeholders.
Note: the NAFv4 specifies how views of NAF version 3 can be reused, i.e. each cell of the “grid” refers to the NAFv3 views and the NAFv4 methodology explains how forward and backward compatibility can be ensured.

Adoption of Industry Meta-Models

Chapter 4 of the NATO Architecture Framework identifies the commercial meta-models which can be used to creation viewpoints described in chapter 3:
Official site to download the latest version of NAF is available or on the.
Search for “Architecture” and select the “NATO Architecture Framework, Version 4” entry.