Business Architecture
What the organisation does, who it serves, and how it makes money or impact.
Enterprise architecture, practically applied
XAF Connected Architecture
Practical enterprise architecture for organisations that need rigour without the framework overhead.
The problem
Most architecture frameworks were built for organisations that don't exist anymore
Enterprise architecture frameworks were designed for organisations with dozens of architects, multi-year roadmaps, and the time to write 200-page artefacts before anyone touches a system. That’s not most Australian SMBs, non-profits, or government departments.
So teams either skip architecture entirely and end up in chaos, or bolt on a heavyweight framework and watch it slow them down. Both leave the same gap: decisions that aren’t recorded, connections that aren’t surfaced, and architecture knowledge locked inside individual people.
What XAF is
Six connected domains, treated as one practice
XAF is the architecture practice we use ourselves, refined across government, corporate, and SMB engagements. Every domain has a small set of core artefacts and explicit relationships to the others, so a decision in one domain surfaces its impact on the rest.
Information Architecture
What data exists, who owns it, and how it flows.
Application Architecture
What systems run the business, and how they fit together.
Technology Architecture
The platforms, networks, and infrastructure underneath.
Security Architecture
Controls, threat models, and compliance posture, embedded throughout.
Governance
How decisions get made, recorded, and revisited.
Why connected
Most practices treat the six domains as silos. XAF makes the connections first-class.
When you change a business capability, you can see which applications, data flows, and security controls are affected. The governance trail captures why the change was made, not just what changed.
Strategy ties to capability, capability ties to information, information ties to technology. Security embeds at every layer instead of being reviewed at the end. Innovation gets assessed against architecture readiness before it ships.
Who XAF is for
Built for teams that need rigour without the overhead
Scaling SMBs
Past 50 staff and feeling complexity bite. Needs architectural discipline before things fragment.
Non-profits
Lean ICT teams stewarding sensitive donor and beneficiary data with limited resources.
Government departments
Architectural rigour proportional to scale, without TOGAF certification headaches.
New architects
A practical framework that produces real artefacts in weeks, not quarters.
How we deliver XAF
From discovery to embedded delivery in roughly three months
01
Discovery
2–3 weeks
We map your current six domains as they are. What's there, what's working, where the friction lives.
02
Connections workshop
1–2 weeks
We surface the implicit connections between domains and identify where misalignment is causing the most pain.
03
Target architecture
6–8 weeks
We propose a target state with a phased roadmap and decision records you can actually use.
04
Embedded delivery
Ongoing
We work alongside your team to land the changes, or hand off the documentation if you have internal capability.
Read the series
Deep-dive into XAF
The XAF series on the insights blog covers each domain in depth, the connections that matter, and how to put governance first instead of last.
Free discovery session
Ready to apply XAF to your organisation?
A 30-minute call to work through your six domains, identify where the connections are weakest, and decide whether XAF makes sense for your situation.