The Department of Defense Architecture Framework (DoDAF) is an architecture framework for the United States Department of Defense (DoD) that provides visualization infrastructure for specific stakeholders concerns through viewpoints organized by various views. These views are artifacts for visualizing, understanding, and assimilating the broad scope and complexities of an architecture description through tabular, structural, behavioral, ontological, pictorial, temporal, graphical, probabilistic, or alternative conceptual means.

This Architecture Framework is especially suited to large systems with complex integration and interoperability challenges, and it is apparently unique in its employment of "operational views". These views offer overview and details aimed to specific stakeholders within their domain and in interaction with other domains in which the system will operate.

The DoDAF provides a foundational framework for developing and representing architecture descriptions that ensure a common denominator for understanding, comparing, and integrating architectures across organizational, joint, and multinational boundaries. It establishes data element definitions, rules, and relationships and a baseline set of products for consistent development of systems, integrated, or federated architectures. These architecture descriptions may include families of systems (FoS), systems of systems (SoS), and net-centric capabilities for inter-operating and interacting in the non-combat environment.

The purpose of DoDAF is to define concepts and models usable in DoD's six core processes:
  1. Joint Capabilities Integration and Development (JCIDS)
  2. Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution (PPBE)
  3. Defense Acquisition System (DAS)
  4. Systems Engineering (SE)
  5. Operational Planning (OPLAN)
  6. Capability Portfolio Management (CPM)


The DoDAF process (the following figure) is only recommendable. You can choose the creation sequence of diagrams according to your needs.

DoDAF process

DoDAF 2.0 viewpoints