The Zachman framework was published by John Zachman for EA in 1987. Zachman was motivated by increased levels of complexity involved in the design of information systems, which forced him to think of a logical construct for designing the architecture of enterprises, which in turn led to the development of the Zachman framework for enterprise architecture. The framework does not focus much on providing any form of guidance on sequence, process, or implementation. The core focus is to ensure that all views are well established, ensuring a complete system regardless of the order in which they were established. The Zachman framework does not have any explicit compliance rules as it does not belong to the category of a standard written by a professional organization.

The Zachman framework was initially developed for IBM but now has been standardized for use across enterprises. The main motivation behind the Zachman framework is to derive a simple logical structure for enterprises by classifying and organizing the various components of an enterprise in a manner that enables easy management of enterprises and facilitates easy development of enterprise systems such as manual systems and automated systems. The simplest form of the Zachman framework has the following depictions:

• Perspectives depicted in the design process, that is owner, designer, and builder.
• Product abstractions, such as what (material it is made of) and how (a process by which it works).
• Where (geometry by which components are related to one another), who (operating instructions) is doing what kind of work, when (timing of when things happen), why (engineering aspects due to which things happen). In some of the older versions of the framework, there were some additional perspectives present such as planner, sub-contractor, and so on.

The various perspectives that are typically used in the Zachman framework, as well as their roles in the enterprise architecture landscape, are as follows:

• Planner: A planner positions the product in the context of its environment and specifies the scope
• Owner: An owner will be interested in the business benefits of the product, how it will be used in the organization, and the added value it will offer to the organization
• Designer: A designer will carve out the specifications of the product to ensure that it meets the expectations of the owner. All aspects of product design are taken care of by the designer
• Builder: A builder manages the process of assembling various components of the product
• Sub-contractor: A sub-contractor incorporates out-of-context components that are specified by the builder

Please note that perspectives with respect to the Zachman framework keep changing as per the enterprise landscape.

The simplest depiction of the framework has the following components: