Introducing the CIGREF diagram
As we have seen, business alignment has much to see with vocabulary and the right expression of concepts that are related to the functional domains. For those of us who are more comfortable with schemas, there exists a more graphical way to visualize this alignment, and it is called the four-layer diagram.
In France (where I am from), it has been popularized by the Club Informatique des Grandes Entreprises Françaises (a large French company club for software architecture), but this is a very widespread way of thinking and no ownership has been claimed on this idea, at least that I know of. The concept is quite simple and is about separating the different levels of an information system, each using the levels I will present to work. At the top of the diagram, one will find the business processes that the system serves, and one level down are the business functions that are needed for this. These two layers are purely functional and are not even...
