Architecture Questions
Zachman classifies architectural descriptions using six questions and six transformations from an idea to its operating instance. It is not a development process. Its rows are transformations of representation, not levels of detail or steps in a runtime story. Framework definition, Zachman on the rows.
| Question | What this doctrine requires us to keep intelligible |
|---|---|
| What | Commitments, selected choices, records, evidence and actual work |
| How | Permitted operations and the relationships between constituents and successors |
| Where | Ownership, resource custody and execution/distribution boundaries; source modules alone are insufficient |
| Who | Decision owner, actor, beneficiary and responsibility for follow-up |
| When | Trigger, order, validity window, interruption and survival of owed work |
| Why | Product purpose, policy rationale, constraints and the reason for a change |
Different representations answer these questions differently. A business owner defines what entry means and why it is allowed. An engineer models its relationships. A builder chooses Rust/storage mechanisms. An operating instance supplies actual events and evidence. None may silently invent the meaning owned by another representation.
The worked Zachman map follows one workshop through all 36 intersections. It exposes the demonstration model's omissions as omissions: its fixture identity is not Google authentication, and its memory is not durable storage. It does not pretend to model the entire enterprise.
Use the classification to discover a missing question, mismatched representation or unsupported claim. Do not require 36 new documents for every edit, reinterpret telescoping as Zachman's rows, or use the matrix as an automated conformance score.
Reasoning Tools and Their Limits
The thinking-tools guide selects six tools from Untools for concrete questions: abstraction laddering, concept mapping, issue trees, the ladder of inference, second-order thinking and inversion. They support framing, explanation, investigation and comparison. They are not extra authority and are not compulsory steps for every task.
For example, inversion can expose a public constructor that would allow a caller to forge approval. It does not decide who should approve. A consequence map can reveal which consumers change together; it does not decide their owners' policy.
Interpretation and Change
Use the smallest truthful arrangement that preserves the commitment, its current facts and understandable evolution. An alternative implementation can satisfy the doctrine; a visual copy of a reference can violate it.
The human course develops judgment through examples. The agent guide applies these commitments compactly. Their examples, tools and incidental implementation choices do not amend this document by repetition. Changes to the doctrine should state the changed commitment, reason and consequences and preserve source lineage.
The owner's wider term derivability is not reduced here to a derive macro, inheritance or an associated-type trick. The materials demonstrate consequence tracing: predict what a changed selection permits, then follow its realization. No additional formal claim is silently attached to that term.