Coverage Template

Coverage Templates are reusable patterns of coverage expectations for specific types of organizations or industries. A template states, for each business architecture domain it covers, the coverage level an organization of that sector and size would typically aim for. An organization can adopt a template as its baseline and then refine it with its own coverage expectations.

Schema: coverage-template.schema.json
Specification: JSON Schema Draft-07

Overview

What is a Coverage Template?

A Coverage Template specifies:

• The sector it applies to (for example Government, Health or Finance)
• The size category of organization it is intended for
• A list of expectations: for each domain, the target coverage level

Why Coverage Templates Matter

Organizations rarely need to model every domain with equal depth. Coverage Templates help:

• Focus effort — Prioritize domains that matter most to your context
• Measure progress — Give coverage status assessments a baseline to compare against
• Set expectations — Align stakeholders on what "complete" means
• Enable comparison — Benchmark coverage across units or organizations of the same kind

Relationship to Other Coverage Records

Template Structure

Coverage Template

Attribute	Type	Required	Description
coverageTemplateID	String	✓	Unique identifier for the coverage template
name	String	✓	Human-readable name of the template (e.g. "Public Sector – Large Agency")
description	String		Explanation of the context and applicability of this template
sector	String	✓	Applicable industry or sector (e.g. Health, Government, Finance)
sizeCategory	Enum	✓	Size category of organizations the template is intended for
expectations	Array[Object]	✓	Domain-specific coverage expectations defined by the template
createdBy	String	✓	User or system that created the template
createdAt	Date-time	✓	Timestamp of creation

Template Expectation (expectations)

Each entry in expectations names a domain and its target level.

Attribute	Type	Required	Description
domain	String	✓	The business architecture domain (e.g. "Capability", "Policy")
targetCoverageLevel	Enum	✓	Target coverage level for the domain

Size Category (sizeCategory)

Value	Description
small	Small organizations with few units and a narrow scope
medium	Medium-sized organizations with several business units
large	Large organizations with many units and formal governance
enterprise	Enterprise-scale or multi-entity organizations

Target Coverage Level (targetCoverageLevel)

The coverage levels are shared by all coverage records and are ordered from least to most coverage.

Value	Description
none	The domain is not documented
minimal	A few entities are recorded with little detail
documented	Core entities and their attributes are recorded
analysed	Relationships, dependencies and gaps have been analysed
governed	Ownership, review and change control are in place
optimised	The domain model is maintained continuously and used to drive decisions and improvement

Example Templates

Public Sector – Large Agency

{
  "coverageTemplateID": "ct-public-large-001",
  "name": "Public Sector – Large Agency",
  "description": "Typical baseline coverage for large, compliance-driven public agencies.",
  "sector": "Government",
  "sizeCategory": "large",
  "expectations": [
    {
      "domain": "policy",
      "targetCoverageLevel": "governed"
    },
    {
      "domain": "capability",
      "targetCoverageLevel": "analysed"
    },
    {
      "domain": "performance",
      "targetCoverageLevel": "documented"
    }
  ],
  "createdBy": "architecture.office@example.gov",
  "createdAt": "2025-06-01T12:00:00Z"
}

Financial Services Enterprise

{
  "coverageTemplateID": "ct-finance-enterprise-001",
  "name": "Financial Services – Enterprise",
  "description": "Comprehensive coverage for regulated financial institutions.",
  "sector": "Finance",
  "sizeCategory": "enterprise",
  "expectations": [
    {
      "domain": "capability",
      "targetCoverageLevel": "governed"
    },
    {
      "domain": "valueStream",
      "targetCoverageLevel": "analysed"
    },
    {
      "domain": "risk",
      "targetCoverageLevel": "optimised"
    },
    {
      "domain": "policy",
      "targetCoverageLevel": "governed"
    },
    {
      "domain": "finance",
      "targetCoverageLevel": "analysed"
    },
    {
      "domain": "customer",
      "targetCoverageLevel": "analysed"
    },
    {
      "domain": "information",
      "targetCoverageLevel": "governed"
    },
    {
      "domain": "technology",
      "targetCoverageLevel": "documented"
    }
  ],
  "createdBy": "ba-practice@example.com",
  "createdAt": "2025-06-15T09:00:00Z"
}

Usage Guidelines

Creating Effective Templates

1. Start with objectives — What does this kind of organization need to achieve?
2. Prioritize domains — Not every domain is equally important; omit those that do not apply
3. Set realistic levels — optimised everywhere is rarely achievable or necessary
4. Weight domains in goals — Relative importance is set per organization in organization goals (weighting)
5. Document rationale — Use description to explain where the template applies

Template Lifecycle

For Data Engineers

Coverage Templates can inform data catalog completeness metrics. Map template expectations to OpenMetadata data quality rules to automatically track which business architecture domains have corresponding data assets documented.

Related Documentation

• Organization Goal — Weight domains and set gap tolerances
• Coverage Status — Compare achieved coverage with expectations
• Coverage Expectation — Set the target level for a domain