A Practitioners’ Approach to Developing Enterprise Architecture Following the TOGAF^® ADM

The Open Group

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The TOGAF^® Standard, a Standard of The Open Group

The TOGAF Standard is a proven enterprise methodology and framework used by the world’s leading organizations to improve business efficiency.

This Document

This document is a TOGAF^® Series Guide: A Practitioners’ Approach to Developing Enterprise Architecture Following the TOGAF^® ADM. It has been developed and approved by The Open Group.

About the TOGAF^® Series Guides

The TOGAF^® Series Guides contain guidance on how to use the TOGAF Standard and how to adapt it to fulfill specific needs.

The TOGAF^® Series Guides are expected to be the most rapidly developing part of the TOGAF Standard and are positioned as the guidance part of the standard. While the TOGAF Fundamental Content is expected to be long-lived and stable, guidance on the use of the TOGAF Standard can be industry, architectural style, purpose, and problem-specific. For example, the stakeholders, concerns, views, and supporting models required to support the transformation of an extended enterprise may be significantly different than those used to support the transition of an in-house IT environment to the cloud; both will use the Architecture Development Method (ADM), start with an Architecture Vision, and develop a Target Architecture on the way to an Implementation and Migration Plan. The TOGAF Fundamental Content remains the essential scaffolding across industry, domain, and style.

Trademarks

ArchiMate, DirecNet, Making Standards Work, Open O logo, Open O and Check Certification logo, Platform 3.0, The Open Group, TOGAF, UNIX, UNIXWARE, and the Open Brand X logo are registered trademarks and Boundaryless Information Flow, Build with Integrity Buy with Confidence, Commercial Aviation Reference Architecture, Dependability Through Assuredness, Digital Practitioner Body of Knowledge, DPBoK, EMMM, FACE, the FACE logo, FHIM Profile Builder, the FHIM logo, FPB, Future Airborne Capability Environment, IT4IT, the IT4IT logo, O-AA, O-DEF, O-HERA, O-PAS, Open Agile Architecture, Open FAIR, Open Footprint, Open Process Automation, Open Subsurface Data Universe, Open Trusted Technology Provider, OSDU, Sensor Integration Simplified, SOSA, and the SOSA logo are trademarks of The Open Group.

UML is a registered trademark and BMM, BPMN, Business Motivation Model, Business Process Modeling Notation, and Unified Modeling Language are trademarks of the Object Management Group, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries.

All other brands, company, and product names are used for identification purposes only and may be trademarks that are the sole property of their respective owners.

About the Authors

(Please note affiliations were current at the time of approval.)

Dave Hornford, Conexiam

Dave Hornford is Conexiam’s Managing Partner and leads Conexiam’s Boston practice. Dave serves on the board of trustees of The SABSA^® Institute. He is the former Chair of The Open Group Architecture Forum and was a key contributor to the TOGAF^® 9 standard. Based in North America, he works in a variety of industries including financial services, oil and gas, technology, and capital-intensive industry. Typically, he helps clients develop and execute a roadmap to transform.

Nathan Hornford, Conexiam

Nathan Hornford is a management consultant and ABACUS Certified Architect and Designer. Nathan is based in Canada. Nathan works with all of Conexiam’s practices to provide consistent architecture methods and tools that address the client’s change needs.

Sriram Sabesan, Conexiam

Sriram Sabesan is a Certified Distinguished Architect, certified by The Open Group. Based in North America, he specializes in technology, manufacturing, telecommunication, and financial services industries. Sriram helps clients to develop and execute strategies in response to digital or economic disruptions. He is actively involved in development of different Open Group standards.

Sadie Scotch, Conexiam

Sadie Scotch is an Enterprise Architect. Sadie is based in the US and is a member of Conexiam’s Boston practice. Sadie specializes in governance, option analysis, and roadmap development. She helps clients to develop and govern change programs to address current Enterprise priorities.

Ken Street, Conexiam

Ken Street is an Enterprise Architect. Based in Canada, he leads Conexiam’s Governance and IT4IT™ initiatives. He is the current Vice-Chair of The Open Group Big Data project and is active within The Open Group IT4IT™ and Open Platform 3.0™ Forums. He works primarily in financial services and oil and gas, helping clients to develop their EA Capability, improve their IT organization, and execute architecture-driven change programs.

Samantha Toder, Conexiam

Samantha Toder is a management consultant and ABACUS Certified Architect and Designer. Sam is based in the US. She helps clients to develop in-house EA Capability and execute complex transformation programs in the financial services industry.

Acknowledgements

The Open Group gratefully acknowledges the authors and also past and present members of The Open Group Architecture Forum for their contribution in the development of this Guide.

Referenced Documents

The following documents are referenced in this TOGAF^® Series Guide:

• ArchiMate^® 3.1 Specification, a standard of The Open Group (C197), published by The Open Group, November 2019; refer to: www.opengroup.org/library/c197
• Architecture Project Management: How to Manage an Architecture Project using the TOGAF^® Framework and Mainstream Project Management Methods, White Paper (W16B), published by The Open Group, August 2016; refer to: www.opengroup.org/library/w16b
• John Carver: Reinventing your Board: A Step-by-Step White Paper to Implementing Policy Governance, Jossey-Bass, 2006
• Jeff Conklin: Wicked Problems & Social Complexity within Dialog Mapping: Building Shared Understanding of Wicked Problems, Wiley, 2005
• Donald C. Hambrick, James W. Fredrickson: Are you Sure you have a Strategy?, The Academy of Management Executive, 15, 4; ABI/INFORM Global, November 2001
• ISO/IEC 38500:2015: Information Technology – Governance of IT for the Organization
• ISO/IEC/IEEE 42010:2011: Systems and Software Engineering – Architecture Description
• Robert S. Kaplan, David P. Norton: The Balanced Scorecard – Measures that Drive Performance, Harvard Business Review, 70(1), Jan-Feb 1992
• Philippe Kruchten: Architectural Blueprints – The “4+1” View Model of Software Architecture, November 1995; refer to: www.cs.ubc.ca/~gregor/teaching/papers/4+1view-architecture.pdf
• Henry Mintzberg, Bruce Ahlstrand, Joseph Lampel: Strategy Bites Back: It is Far More, and Less, than You Ever Imagined, April 2005
• The TOGAF^® Standard, 10^th Edition, a standard of The Open Group (C220), published by The Open Group, April 2022; refer to: www.opengroup.org/library/c220
• TOGAF^® Series Guide: Architecture Project Management (G188), published by The Open Group, April 2022; refer to: www.opengroup.org/library/g188
• TOGAF^® Series Guide: Integrating Risk & Security within a TOGAF^® Enterprise Architecture, The Open Group Guide (G152), published by The Open Group, April 2022; refer to: www.opengroup.org/library/g152
• World-Class Enterprise Architecture, White Paper (W102), published by The Open Group, April 2010; refer to: www.opengroup.org/library/w102

Suggested Reading

• Cuypers Ataya: Enterprise Value: Governance of IT Investments, The Business Case, IT Governance Institute, 2006
• Peter Swartz: The Art of the Long View: Planning for the Future in an Uncertain World, Currency Doubleday, 1996
• Kees van der Heijden: Scenarios: The Art of Strategic Conversation, 2nd Edition, Wiley, 2005