ISO 15704:2019

Overview

ISO 15704:2019 - Enterprise modelling and architecture defines a reference base of concepts, principles and requirements for enterprise-referencing architectures and methodologies. The standard is intended to enable consistent enterprise development, integration, interoperability, human understanding and machine processing of enterprise architectures and models. It specifies what enterprise‑referencing models and modelling languages should support, while clarifying that it does not prescribe standard enterprises, organizational structures, processes, data or specific modelling processes.

Key topics and technical requirements

ISO 15704:2019 addresses core technical topics that underpin robust enterprise architecture and enterprise modelling:

• Concepts and principles: foundational terms and principles to capture stakeholder concerns and support enterprise life‑cycle activities (conception, design, operation, change, decommissioning).
• Requirements for models and languages: expressiveness, semantics, syntax, names/labels and glossary requirements for modelling languages used to represent enterprise architectures.
• Model types and views: guidance on enterprise‑referencing models, model views and viewpoints to support human understanding and automated processing.
• Architectural concerns and perspectives: human-, process-, decision-, realization-, technology-, environment‑, lifetime‑ and interoperation‑oriented viewpoints.
• Structuring and behaviour: internal structure, hierarchy, recursion, iteration, and representation of short‑ and long‑term behaviour.
• Interoperation and integration: elements supporting enterprise interoperation, compatibility of structuring approaches and verification/validation orientation.
• Tools, modules and model management: expectations for tool support, modularity and availability/format of model information.
• Alignment with GERAM and other standards: Annex B updates on the Generalized Enterprise Reference Architecture and Methodology (GERAM) and harmonization with standards such as ISO/IEC/IEEE 42010.

Practical applications

ISO 15704:2019 is a practical foundation for:

• Designing and documenting enterprise architectures that support integration and interoperability.
• Defining modelling language requirements and model repositories for enterprise transformation programs.
• Ensuring models support stakeholder communication, model reuse, verification and automated processing.
• Guiding selection or development of EA tools that meet expressiveness and semantic consistency needs.

Typical use cases include supply‑chain integration projects, enterprise transformation and systems-of-systems engineering where consistent architecture references are essential.

Who should use this standard

• Enterprise architects and enterprise modelling teams
• Systems engineers and IT architects focused on interoperability
• Tool vendors and modelling language designers
• Program managers overseeing enterprise change and integration
• Standards developers aligning EA standards and frameworks

Related standards

ISO 15704:2019 forms a basis for aligning enterprise architecture standards and is harmonized with, or related to:

• GERAM (Generalized Enterprise Reference Architecture and Methodology)
• ISO/IEC/IEEE 42010 (architecture descriptions)
• IEC 62264, ISO 15745, ISO/IEC 10746 and other ISO/TC 184/SC 5 outputs

Keywords: ISO 15704:2019, enterprise modelling, enterprise architecture, enterprise interoperability, GERAM, modelling languages, enterprise-referencing architectures.