The Utility of Modeling an Enterprise Architecture for Air Force Digital Transformation

The Air Force Materiel Command is undergoing a digital transformation to increase the speed of delivering new warfighter capabilities. This Digital Campaign consists of six Lines of Effort (LOEs) formed with diverse goals to transform the enterprise. This research investigated using the Zachman Framework and Systems Modeling Language to analyze this transformation. Extensive modeling captured the as-is Preliminary Design Review (PDR) process, and mapped LOE goals as primary impacts to Zachman cells. This led to an identification of a to-be digital PDR process. Secondary affected cells were then traced following a relationship analysis. Four discoveries were made. (1) Enterprise modeling in Zachman is analogous to a system decomposition under typical systems engineering approaches. (2) As long as the transformation goals do not change, the Zachman cells, and those entities mapped into those cells, will be directly affected by the new digital enterprise. (3) Different from past process transformation efforts, the Digital Campaign has focused on technology upgrades to drive process change. (4) Lastly, model analysis revealed transformation gaps within certain cells that should be covered with new goals. This research provides a formal, model-based methodology for guiding improvements in pursuit of Air Force digital transformation