Nowadays, adoption of enterprise architecture is getting adopted by various business and TOGAF is a popular framework for the development of Enterprise Architecture. This framework can be adopted by any business organization for developing their Enterprise Architecture. It is famous for security, application, enterprise, data, and system architecture.
In October there were around 11,306 people on the foundation level of the certification. And approx 25,507 people at the “certified” level. It becomes possible due to the presence of various study material such as Video Tutorials, PDFs and Togaf Certification that includes all the information related to Enterprise Architecture. But with learning, it’s also necessary that you apply your learning in real scenarios; it helps you to update your knowledge in a better way.
In this blog, a detailed description is given of how the TOGAF framework allows a business to achieve the Business-outcome-driven Enterprise Architecture.
Starting point – Business Strategy
Before using the TOGAF framework, you must have a clear knowledge of your business strategy. The beginning of business-outcome-driven Enterprise Architecture includes a clear understanding of the business strategy and direction. Of course, your business strategy must drive the choices which you make while developing the EA. Additionally, the strategy has a huge impact on the techniques and the method that you use for developing the EA.
For example, Strategy includes the early adoptions of the latest technologies and better innovation which demands the more flexible and agile framework. Where as, the strategy focuses on risk avoidance and consolidation requirements for the EA framework with the correct policies and governance structure.
Framework adoption
With direction and business strategy, you can get the clear idea that how to apply TOGAF in your business and what outcomes you will achieve by using the TOGAF. The framework is very generic and extensive. It is essential to identify that which TOGAF module is useful for your organization and which is not.
Preliminary Phase is the first phase in the ADM – TOGAF Architecture Development Method. In this phase, “where, why, who and how we develop architecture” is defined. In other words, you can say that you are adapting to the Togaf framework and able to customize your business requirements. However, this process may not as simple as it looks. There are numbers of steps involved in the preliminary phase, but the approach is very generic. If all the steps are not proper, then the organization may be stuck in the preliminary step which can result in too many debates and unexpected outcomes.
Thus, to avoid mistakes in this phase and to achieve the desired outcomes, you must apply the lean management principles to the process of Architecture. Check all the activities and outcomes to analyze the benefits they add, avoid wastage and unnecessary sign-offs which delay the process, have a continuous improvement in your way to work. It is very important to focus on the given three major aspects:
- Use limited EA deliverable TOGAF can suggest you the number of deliverables, but only a few of them are useful to begin EA initiative and achieve the desired outcomes.
- Potential business value is the most important aspect of the Selection and configuration of these deliverable. Who will use the Key deliverable and what are the expected outcomes? In EA initiative's early phase, it is very important to inform the various stakeholders about the value added by EA deliverable.
- Do and Learn: You cannot define the entire EA framework before you execute the framework in a waterfall approach. Start with the iterative approach and then improve your way to work.
Support- Quick Start Program
For supporting the organization, focusing on the above three aspects is necessary. These aspects will further help in executing the TOGAF preliminary phase. Usually, to execute it, a workshop cycle is used. Within the workshop, there are series of small workshops that helps in understanding and utilization of key features of the Togaf framework.
Each workshop is the collection of accurate results and detailed decisions. Further, the discussed topics are classified within three phases:
- Plan: Plan phase is completely about discussing goals, role, and “what you need to achieve.” Further, required deliverable and “what exactly you require making it successful” are also discussed in this phase.
- Design: In this, the discussion on architecture governance and modeling practices are done. Who is involved in this work and how will you describe your architecture? Such questions are discussed in this phase.
- Build and Run: In this phase, first EA deliverable is created as an initial point for deploying the first Architecture Development Cycle.
The cycle can further be increased with workshops related to other topics like using the material of existing architecture, requirements management of architecture. It will assist you to initiate every phase of the ADM process. It will help in completing the ADM first iteration quickly.
It requires a few weeks time to complete the workshop cycle by boosting your EA initiative. It involves all the stakeholders, and its quick program high speed generate the dynamic environment that further helps in delivering the business value quickly.
