Solving Enterprise Architecture Challenges with Component Matrix

Component Matrix is a powerful way to visualize relationships between two dimensions of your data at scale. It's ideal for spotting patterns, gaps, duplicates, and missing connections across your portfolio — for example, seeing which applications belong to which business capabilities, or which systems are owned by which teams.

In this article, we'll walk you through how Component Matrix works and how to create a meaningful visualization in minutes.

We'll use one of the most common use cases as a working example: helping enterprise architects prioritize investments during an application rationalization process.

Understand which applications provide the greatest business value and what is the level of support provided.

What this view shows

Value
Helps application portfolio managers prioritize investments, identify rationalization opportunities, and focus governance efforts on the applications that matter most.

Understand which applications support business capabilities and where technology investments are concentrated.

What this view shows

Value
Enables architects to evaluate whether technology investments align with strategic business priorities.

Understand how initiatives contribute to capability evolution.

What this view shows

Value
Provides executives with a high-level view of business transformation progress and strategic alignment.

Evaluate applications according to their strategic importance and recommended migration path.

What this view shows

Value
Supports application rationalization and technology investment decisions.

Gain a structured overview of business data and its sensitivity.

What this view shows

Value
Supports data governance, security assessments, and regulatory compliance initiatives.

Quickly identify DR plans and their responsible owners.

What this view shows

Value
Improves operational readiness and simplifies disaster recovery governance.

Analyze strategic fit in the context of application maturity.

What this view shows

Value
Helps organizations identify applications that should be invested in, migrated, or retired.

Get a complete overview of initiatives across the organization.

What this view shows

Value
Provides PMOs and leadership teams with visibility into ongoing change initiatives and portfolio balance.

Understand where application spend is concentrated.

What this view shows

Value
Supports cloud migration, cost optimization, and application rationalization initiatives.

Analyze application spend across business units.

What this view shows

Note: this matrix is built using the old UI.

Identify capability stewards and domain experts across the organization.

What this view shows

Value
Makes it easier to identify stakeholders, accelerate decision-making, and support capability governance.

Note: this matrix is built using the old UI.

Component Matrix showing differentiating capabilities, the technology that enables them, and the application owners.

From the Home page, click Explore Data and select the dataset you want to visualize.

For this example, we'll select Business Capability as the component type.

Now, add a reference to Applications.

Click on Applications component in the Dataset metamodel view, and select a reference to Organization Units.

Once your data is loaded, navigate to View Settings to configure the matrix.

Choose the Component Matrix view style.

Component type

This defines what will be visualized as the main data points inside the matrix. Select the component type you want to appear in the cells.

Row and Column Select the reference or field you want to use to group your data along each axis. This is what creates the two dimensions you'll analyze across.

You can select a field to group by, or a component type that the visualized component has a reference to. The highlighted component type is what your matrix will be grouped by.

In addition to applying conditional formatting and grouping to highlight critical data and organize your view, the view has following capabilities:

List and multi-list field support for row and column properties
You can plot the matrix using the list and multi-list fields to visualize complex, multi-variable relationships within a single view.

Adjusting cell size

You can drag the cells to adjust the width and height of columns and rows to make the matrix easier to read.

Adding field labels on the headers
You can display field values as labels directly on row and column headers to provide clear context on what data is being mapped.

Customising names of the headers
You can override default system labels with custom display names to make header titles more intuitive for business stakeholders.

Hiding cells with no value
You can dynamically hide empty rows and columns to declutter the viewport and keep presentations focused only on active data intersections.

Colouring headers by component colour
You can apply native component color styling directly to the headers to create a cohesive, scannable, and visually rich matrix layout.

Adding reference and component fields as labels
You can display additional reference metadata and component fields inside individual cell cards to layer extra data density directly into the view.

Sorting of the columns and rows
You can automatically organize the layout of your matrix by inheriting the custom sorting order defined in your navigator or apply additional sorting within the row, column settings. This layout will persists every time you reopen the view.

Collapsing and expanding all rows and columns at once
You can use a one-click global toggle to instantly collapse or expand all nested hierarchical structures to smoothly transition between executive summaries and deep-dive views.

Though highly stable, this view is currently in active development. We will continue making it even better by adding the following capabilities:

Do you feel like something is missing? We’d love your feedback as we continue evolving the experience.