Archi Update – A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Slightly belated Summer Solstice Greetings! It’s time to provide an update on the latest events and progress from Archi world. These are interesting times we live in, and it’s an interesting time of the year. Hence the title of this update – referring of course to Shakespeare’s play dealing with the themes of confusion, trickery, and dreams. And hopefully, as in the play, after a night of foolery and ambiguity, it all works out in the end.

Archi 3.3.2

I released a maintenance release of Archi, version 3.3.2, at the beginning of June. This contained a few bug fixes and some new features for the Visualiser and HTML reports. Both contributions were provided by Jean-Baptiste Sarrodie, now working for Arismore in Paris, who has over the years proved to be an absolutely amazing supporter for me personally, and tireless evangelist for Archi. As we move forward, J-B’s vision and involvement in the project will prove to be more vital. It was a pleasure to finally meet J-B in London at The Open Group’s event earlier this year.

There was quite a gap between the previous release, version 3.3.1 in October 2015, and 3.3.2 released this month, and the reason for this was to allow the dust to settle on last year’s release of The Open Group’s ArchiMate Exchange Format, and to wait for the official release of ArchiMate 3.0.

ArchiMate 3.0

The latest version of ArchiMate was officially released on June 14th. This is a significant development, as we shall see. I won’t go into all the details of what’s new and what’s changed but it’s as if a new broom has come in and swept up all the bad stuff, and re-arranged all the furniture at the same time, hopefully for the better. There are new concepts, such as Capability, Resource, Course of Action, a new Physical layer, relationships to relationships, and a whole lot more. This is a major update to the language. There’s a summary of what’s new here.

Archi, ArchiMate 3.0 and the future

Archi does not currently support ArchiMate 3.0, only version 2.1. I’m now seeing the same question being asked repeatedly on Twitter, in forums, in webinars, in emails, and in person – “When will Archi support ArchiMate 3.0?”.

As I type this, I’ve stopped to consider my response to this burning issue. There are a number of possible responses and I’m not sure which one to choose. Should I mention the significant amount of work involved in this? Should I ask where I might find the time for such a non-trivial task? Should I question whether I am prepared to work for several weeks, if not months, to single-handedly code, document, test, deploy and support a major new update to a piece of software used by hundreds (although it’s probably thousands) of professional enterprise architects. For free?

Let’s be clear about one thing – since it’s initial release in 2010, Archi has become an extremely popular tool in this domain, and many organisations (and some very major ones, too) use it and depend on it. Archi is downloaded on average about 3,000 times a month. Every month. Archi is a game changer and it is a major contributor, if not the major contributor, to the uptake of ArchiMate globally. This is a significant responsibility for one person. For free?

And let’s be clear about another thing – updating Archi to support ArchiMate 3.0 is not a trivial undertaking. It is not simply a matter of adding a few new concepts, compiling the code and then heading down the pub to celebrate. There are many factors to consider – a whole new refactoring of the code, backward compatibility, documentation, testing, asset management, build processes, and of course providing unpaid support. Typically, this process is managed by a team of employed developers, not one (unpaid) person. Some people have suggested that the work can be done in a weekend, or that their nephew has just learnt Java and will do it for a packet of chewing gum.

This has to change, and I have personally come to a crunch point. To be blunt, either I get funding to continue with Archi or I’ll do something else.

Having said that, there is hope. As Robert Fripp says:

In strange and uncertain times such as those we are living in, sometimes a reasonable person might despair. But hope is unreasonable and love is greater even than this. May we trust the inexpressible benevolence of the creative impulse.

Indeed, there is hope. But there are dark clouds, too.

Consider the overall strategy of promoting and supporting the ArchiMate language with an open source implementation and data format. A central plank in this strategy is The Open Group’s ArchiMate Exchange Format. This has proved to be a significant thing, with more and more tools supporting the format, and users discovering further uses for it and realising many benefits of an open data format.

However, the introduction of ArchiMate 3.0 means that a new version of the exchange format needs to be developed, and, indeed, this initiative is ongoing.

But this means that I will need to develop a new implementation of the exchange format in Archi. Archi currently supports the exchange format for ArchiMate 2.1. But, here’s the thing – Archi cannot implement and support a new version of the exchange format if it does not implement ArchiMate 3.0. Obviously, implementation of ArchiMate 3.0 is a pre-requisite for implementation of a new ArchiMate exchange format in Archi.

Furthermore, we need now to recognise that Archi has become an Enterprise in itself. Jean-Baptiste Sarrodie made the compelling case for this with reference to Tom Graves. To use Tom’s definition of an “Enterprise”, Archi has become

a bold endeavour; an emotive or motivational structure, bounded by shared-vision (purpose), shared-values and mutual commitments.

And, to me at least, it’s clear that Archi incorporates a powerful shared vision, and one held by many stakeholders. It is too important to fail.

As I said, there is hope. Hope lies in the fact that funding may have been secured from a benevolent source so that we can proceed with our bold endeavour. On the other hand, the dark clouds that I mentioned are manifesting as opposition to this funding from some not-so-benevolent quarters.

So, please, if you feel that you are part of this “bold endeavour”, speak up and assert your support for Archi. The future is open.

Phil Beauvoir, June 2016