Introduction to Turbo EA¶
What is Turbo EA?¶
Turbo EA is a modern, self-hosted platform for Enterprise Architecture Management. It enables organizations to document, visualize, and manage all components of their business and technology architecture in one place.
Who is this guide for?¶
This guide is for everyone who uses Turbo EA — enterprise architects, IT managers, business analysts, developers, and administrators. Whether you are evaluating the platform, managing your organization's IT landscape day-to-day, or configuring the system as an admin, you will find the information you need here. No advanced technical knowledge is required to get started.
Key Benefits¶
- Comprehensive visibility: View all applications, processes, capabilities, and technologies across the organization in a single platform.
- Informed decision-making: Visual reports (portfolio, capability maps, dependencies, lifecycle, cost, and more) that facilitate evaluation of the current state of technology infrastructure.
- Lifecycle management: Track the status of every technology component through five phases — from planning through retirement.
- Collaboration: Multiple users can work simultaneously, with configurable roles, stakeholder assignments, comments, todos, and notifications.
- AI-powered descriptions: Generate card descriptions with a single click. Turbo EA combines web search with a local or commercial LLM to produce type-aware summaries — complete with confidence scores and source links. Runs entirely on your infrastructure for privacy, or connect to commercial providers (OpenAI, Google Gemini, Anthropic Claude, and more). Fully admin-controlled: choose which card types get AI suggestions, pick your search provider, and select the model.
- Visual diagrams: Create architecture diagrams with the embedded DrawIO editor, fully synchronized with your card inventory.
- Business process modeling: BPMN 2.0 process flow editor with element linking, approval workflows, and maturity assessments.
- ServiceNow integration: Bi-directional sync with ServiceNow CMDB to keep your EA landscape connected with IT operations data.
- Multi-language: Available in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Chinese.
Key Concepts¶
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Card | The basic element of the platform. Represents any architecture component: an application, a process, a business capability, etc. |
| Card Type | The category a card belongs to (Application, Business Process, Organization, etc.) |
| Relationship | A connection between two cards that describes how they relate (e.g., "uses", "depends on", "is part of") |
| Metamodel | The structure that defines what card types exist, what fields they have, and how they relate to each other. Fully admin-configurable |
| Lifecycle | The temporal phases of a component: Plan, Phase In, Active, Phase Out, End of Life |
| Inventory | Searchable, filterable list of all cards across every type. Bulk edit, Excel/CSV import-export, and saved views with sharing |
| Reports | Pre-built visualizations: Portfolio, Capability Map, Lifecycle, Dependencies, Cost, Matrix, Data Quality, and End-of-Life |
| BPM | Business Process Management — model business processes with a BPMN 2.0 editor, link diagram elements to cards, and assess maturity, risk, and automation |
| PPM | Project Portfolio Management — manage Initiative cards as full projects with status reports, Work Breakdown Structures, kanban + Gantt task boards, budgets, costs, and a per-initiative risk register |
| TurboLens | AI-powered EA intelligence — vendor analysis, duplicate detection, modernization assessment, the 5-step Architecture AI wizard, and compliance scans against EU AI Act / GDPR / NIS2 / DORA / SOC 2 / ISO 27001 |
| EA Delivery | The TOGAF-aligned delivery surface — Statements of Architecture Work, Architecture Decision Records, and the landscape-level Risk Register |
| SoAW | Statement of Architecture Work — a formal TOGAF document scoping an architecture initiative |
| ADR | Architecture Decision Record — captures a decision's context, alternatives, and consequences, with status workflow and card linking |
| Risk Register | Landscape-level TOGAF Phase G risk register, separate from initiative-level PPM risks. Owner assignment auto-creates a Todo |
| Web Portal | Public, slug-based, read-only view of part of the EA landscape — shareable without a login |
| MCP Server | Read-only AI tool access via the Model Context Protocol — query EA data from Claude Desktop, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, and other MCP clients |
| RBAC | Role-Based Access Control — app-level roles plus per-card stakeholder roles with 50+ granular permissions |