[Zachman reasons that] an analogous set of architectural representations is likely to be produced in building any complex product. - John Zachman

It is not adequate merely to produce running code. In the long term, enterprise value lies in the models themselves. They have intrinsic value in their own right, as they constitute the baseline for managing change

The world contains entities, processes, locations, people, times, and purposes. Computer systems are filled with bits, bytes, numbers, and the programs that manipulate them. If the computer is to do anything useful, the concrete things in the world must be related to the abstract bits in the computer. Zachman’s framework for information systems architecture (ISA) makes that link. It provides a systematic taxonomy of concepts for relating things in the world to the representations in the computer.

Decentralization without structure is chaos.