Your first week

You've signed up, verified your email, and your tenant is ready. Now what?

This guide gives you a concrete sequence of actions — not exhaustive configuration, just the highest-value moves for getting a real signal from Northwise in your first week.

Day 1: Foundation

Import or create your first principles

Standards → Principles is the single most important starting point. Even five principles give you something to assess against with Plumbline.

If you have existing principles in a document or spreadsheet, create them manually (it takes 2–3 minutes each) or paste them in bulk. If you're starting from scratch, use the principle templates under Standards → Principles → Import from template — Northwise ships with TOGAF-aligned starter sets.

Target: 5–10 active principles by end of day 1.

Invite your core team

Invite the 2–4 architects who will co-author content. Don't worry about getting the whole organisation in yet — start small.

See Inviting your team for the step-by-step.

Add your first Landscape elements

Create a handful of elements in Landscape that represent your most important applications or domains. You don't need the full estate on day 1 — just enough to connect things and make the model feel real.

Go to Landscape → Elements → New element. Choose the ArchiMate element type that fits (Application Component, Technology Service, Business Actor, etc.).

Day 3: Assessment + Catalogue

Run your first Plumbline assessment

By day 3 you should have enough principles and elements to run a Plumbline assessment.

Go to Plumbline → Assessments → New assessment. Select the scope (which applications or domains to include) and run it. Plumbline scores each section against your principles and produces findings where violations are detected.

Your first assessment will have gaps and noise — that's expected. The goal is to see the model in action and identify the most glaring issues.

Start your Technology Catalogue

Go to Standards → Technology Catalogue and add the 10–15 technologies that appear most in your estate. Assign lifecycle stages (Trial / Adopt / Hold / Ban) based on your current standards. When you later link applications in Landscape to these catalogue entries, Plumbline can automatically surface Hold/Ban violations.

Day 5–7: Team + Governance

Run a real review

Create a review in Reviews → New review. If you've configured the Decision Matrix already (Settings → Decision Matrix), the system routes it automatically. If not, assign it manually for your first one.

A completed review cycle — even a simple basic review — gives you proof that the governance workflow works for your team.

Invite readers and broader stakeholders

Once your data is in reasonable shape, invite the delivery teams, product managers, and senior stakeholders who should have visibility. Reader access is free and they can start consuming architecture output immediately.

Review your assessment findings

Go back to Plumbline and look at the findings from your first assessment. Resolve the ones that are already addressed (mark them Resolved), assign owners to the ones that need work, and raise linked initiatives for the ones that require a project-level response.

End of week one: what success looks like

By the end of your first week, you should have:

• 5–20 principles in Standards
• 10–30 elements in Landscape
• At least one completed Plumbline assessment with findings triaged
• 5–15 entries in your Technology Catalogue
• Your core team invited and active
• At least one review cycle completed (even if it was a demo run)

That's a live architecture practice, not just a set of documents.