TOGAF 9: An Implementation Perspective

My first observation on TOGAF 9 was that it is more business focused compared to TOGAF-8 with the addition of Business vision, drivers and capabilities (which is also inline with SCN). Before this version 9 TOGAF was definitely in the IT realm, and IT was essentially defined as hardware and software. By bringing business perspective with lifecycle into Business, Information, Data and Application architecture TOGAF has added a new set of offerings to its arsenal.

Note 1: The definition of IT in TOGAF 9 is the lifecycle management of information and related technology within an organization. In-line with what we have been discussing in class that we need to take a problem and build a business solution rather than build a solution and find Business problem.

For past few years, IT has been looked at a medium of simply automating tasks to reduce cost and getting tasks accomplished by throwing requirements over the wall. TOGAF provides an approach of integrating IT with Business using the ADM as a comprehensive guideline for establishing Enterprise architecture program by step by step procedures. This is especially useful for organizations considering starting an Enterprise architecture program.

Note 2: The single biggest news about TOGAF is a new, mature, well-defined architecture content framework of 170 pages, built on the experience of major systems integrators through hundreds of architecture projects. Emphasizes on Organizational learning (also discussed in class) via meta model is an important aspects.

Developing meta-model for enterprise content across the organization and utilization of the content for strategic and operational planning is the only way Business, Operations and IT can be aligned together. Most large organizations like the one that I work for; have multiple data repositories disparately fragmented across the organization. Due to lack of catalog management of this data, the organizational learning curve is low and leads to accessibility problem for right information at the right time and for the right objective. TOGAF proposes a detailed solution to this problem with the architecture content framework; by putting emphasis on the actual information, its access, presentation, and quality, so as to provide not only transaction processing support, but analytical processing support for critical business decisions provides great edge to TOGAF. This change gives new perspective value proposition for Enterprise architecture framework.

Note 3: TOGAF 9 puts emphasis on Service Oriented Architecture and Integrated system approach – Business Perspective of SOA
The biggest implementation aspect of TOGAF 9 is the emphasis on service oriented systems and integrated system approach. This is due to involvement of system integrators; who are one of the most important stakeholders of the Enterprise architecture program. To get the best return on investment for SOA, it is important to understand from a business perspective what capability your business has and why. One thing that’s really key about TOGAF 9 is that it takes a lot of ideas and practices that exist within individual organizations or proprietary frameworks, building a consensus around it, and releasing it into a public-domain context. Once that happens, the value you can get from that approach increases exponentially. Now, you're not talking about going to one vendor and having to deal with one particular set of concepts, and then going to a different vendor and having to deal with another set of concepts, and dealing with the interoperability between those.

Note 4: TOGAF 9 allows enterprise architecture to be molded with operations management, system design, portfolio management, service management, business planning, and the Governance Institute's COBIT guidelines. – Compatibility

One critical aspect of adopting a framework is evaluation of compatibility of the framework in the organizational ecosystem. TOGAF is very well equipped in this aspect due to compatibility guidelines for managing operations, systems design, portfolio management, service management, business and strategic planning. In addition to this, TOGAF provides governance guidelines to ensure alignment of Business, operations and IT and providing the equilibrium to provide optimal solutions for priority business problems.
To conclude, Fred Brooks has very truly pointed out that there is no silver bullet for building the best solution and “Doing the things right!!” but using TOGAF solves four of the most critical aspects for reducing the accidental complexity which are: Organizational learning via Content model frameworks, emphasis on Business perspective of SOA, Value propositions alignment to investments and finally the guidelines for effective governance by Enterprise architecture program.
References

Name
Reference
TOGAF 9 users see benefit for SOA
http://searchsoa.techtarget.com/news/article/0,289142,sid26_gci1347340,00.html
TOGAF 9 advances IT maturity while offering more paths to architecture-level IT improvement
http://briefingsdirectblog.blogspot.com/2009/02/togaf-9-advances-it-maturity-while.html
Never Mind the Architecture Frameworks: Here’s TOGAF 9
http://rasmussenreport.wordpress.com/2009/02/06/never-mind-the-architecture-frameworks-heres-togaf-9/
TOGAF 9 Architecture Documentation
http://www.opengroup.org/architecture/togaf9-doc/arch/

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