TOGAF 9: A Sunny Day in San Diego

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It’s just a standard day in San Diego. That is to say, the friendly people over here are kind of used to blue skies and summer temperatures at the beginning of February. On the other hand, these days are quite special. The Open Group just released version 9 of TOGAF (The Open Group Architectural Framework) at its first 2009 conference, and I am convinced that we are witnessing nothing less than a breakthrough in the world of Enterprise and IT Architecture. Consider it: the role of architecture as a crucial tool to put strategy into practice is becoming more and more prominent. After all, architecture always has been the antidote to complexity, misalignment and lack of direction. And these are exactly the phenomena we have to deal with in the typical business / IT climate of today.

A sign of a maturing craft is standardization: the availability of repeatable processes, clearly defined results, reusable best practices and the tools to support that all. In the world of Enterprise / IT architecture, entire careers have been dedicated to creating methodologies, frameworks and meta-models. Actually, some made a career out of comparing and selecting methodologies and yet others managed to create frameworks to assess frameworks (go ahead, take your time to fully appreciate this). In the end, every architect seemed to own his or her own methodology and more than once, I had the feeling architects were more occupied with discussing methodologies and frameworks than actually using them. Yes, architects were brought together. But only to discuss their differences.

These days might finally be over now. TOGAF 9 will further strengthen its position as the de facto standard for Enterprise and IT Architecture. And not even primarily because of its superior methodological content (although the list of enhancements to the previous version is very elaborate and convincing and we find SOA, iterative principles and even the acknowledgement of standard packages in the new TOGAF), but much more because TOGAF 9 is the result of an open and collaborative industry consensus process.

We are delivering change in a globalised world and we need methodological tools that are recognized and accepted across the globe. Not just by one region. Not just by one company. And certainly not just by one architect. The only way to produce a standard like that is transparent collaboration between many parties that are all ready to bring in their valuable knowledge, experience and assets.

A true meritocracy indeed, and I can only say that I was proud to see my colleagues Mike Turner, Mick Adams and Den Donovan play such a visible role in the conference program. They have been instrumental in creating some of the crucial new elements of TOGAF 9 and they were not afraid to bring in years of knowledge and experience with our own, internal framework (IAF, Integrated Architecture Framework).

A lot has already been said and tweeted about TOGAF 9, so let me just point you to a few useful blogs and articles. Nick Malik of Microsoft sees “substantial and deep improvements in TOGAF 9, and so does his colleague – and Architecture Strategist – Mike Walker: “Whether you are using TOGAF in your organization or not TOGAF 9 is definitely a framework you want to evaluate. I didn’t find anything that was negative about TOGAF 9. Even though there are some gaps and some areas that could be more developed the bits that are refined were really good.” Then you should have a look at the blog of Dana Gardner on ZDNet that offers several briefings of the launch. Elemental Links also provide useful first impressions, and you also will find some really nice live-blogs of some of the conference presentations. David Linthicum on Infoworld claims “TOGAF means better architecture” and Beth Gold-Bernstein on ebizQ argues that the “death” of SOA is due in a large part to the fact that organizations are not adept at enterprise architecture discipline. Finally, Wayne Horkan of SUN sees TOGAF as the key to establish a common language for architects - “I see TOGAFs main value in bringing a common and standardised language, set of semantics and terminology to Enterprise Architecture.”

And that is exactly the point: having such a contemporary standard marks an important maturity step within the profession. And even better, architects don’t need to spend time on discussing and comparing methodologies and frameworks anymore. Imagine, they could all go to their clients instead and actually create marvellous Enterprise and IT architectures.

Oh well, just another working day in sunny San Diego.

Posted by Ron Tolido on February 5, 2009 in Architecture | Digg this | Seed Newsvine

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Comments

# on February 5, 2009 10:04 AM, Tim Kelly said:

Does this mark the beginning of the end of IAF? Given that TOGAF 9 now includes all the best features of IAF, and that Capgemini are deeply involved in the evolution of TOGAF, there can surely be limited lifespan for IAF (and other proprietary architecture approaches).

btw - the twitter search link is borked. It lacks a search parameter.

# on February 5, 2009 5:08 PM, Ron Tolido said:

@Tim, I would not call that an 'end' and obviously some of the best capabilities of IAF are now indeed a part of TOGAF 9 (e.g. the Content Framework). I would argue that the 'IAF way of architecting' is actually a 'design school' which fits very well into the TOGAF framework. And we should take care of our assets and we probably should use 'IAF' as the containing framework for this unique style of architecting. But yes! Always as part of an open, global methodology framework. No doubt this is TOGAF. And thanks for noticing the wrong Twitter search link. Fixed now.

# on February 6, 2009 11:40 AM, Wayne Horkan said:

Hi Ron,

Many thanks for the mention; very kind of you.

When I last worked with Capgemini using the IAF I remember it being very much Zachman influenced, dare I say derived, in fact I recall the main overview diagram was extremely similar to the classic Zachman 'framework' diagram (a layered approach incorporating the six serving men model).

It's a good job you guys have donated so much of your time and experience to the TOGAF standard, because frankly the Content Framework (or lack thereof) was the most obvious gap in the TOGAF portfolio. However I look forward to that particular area maturing because it is still only the first iteration. I believe that weaknesses in that particular area are the no.1 reason that Enterprises are still having to adopt more than one EA Framework to achieve a realistic EA.

There is one major gap still in TOGAF of course, but it shares this particular issue with all the major EA frameworks. And that is if only TOGAF could teach one how to architect then we might be getting somewhere!

Then we get down to the 'minor' practical areas that still need to be addressed, i.e. addressing 'Ivory Tower' syndrome, maintaining programme sponsorship and support, delivering an inclusive EA Governance structure that includes vendors and partners, rotation of EA staff into delivery programmes to maintain estate awareness, maintaining programme relevency during the current economic downturn (when the Enterprise will be forced to focus on tactical issues), compartmentailising EA delivery into individual 'steps' which deliver incremental tactical advantage, getting the EA team to deliver value quickly, avoiding excessive focus on EA tools when the focus needs to be on defining a sharable and readily communicable EA, approaches to delivering an agile EA and derived estate which can readily adopt and react to industry and other outside pressures (such as radical innovation and 'disruptive' technology, changes in legislation, the effect of aquisitions and mergers, or new business stream and extreme business change). I would go on, but I'm sure you can think of many more yourselves.

Great post by the way, I enjoyed it a lot and agree wholeheartedly with much that you've captured here, especially around standardisation and having a common language across the EA community.

All the best,

Wayne

Chief Technology Officer, United Kingdom and Ireland, Sun Microsystems
Blog: http://blogs.sun.com/eclectic/

# on February 8, 2009 1:38 PM, Carsten Molgaard, The Rasmussen Report said:

I remember evangelising TOGAF and IAF as a "match made in heaven" back in 2005 when Capgemini joined The Open Group.

Now, TOGAF 9 presents the first public enterprise architecture framework to cover the full spectrum of content, process and needed capabilities, enabling the company to say "Never mind the architecture frameworks" and just use TOGAF.

A step forward for enterprise architecture!
_

# on February 8, 2009 5:26 PM, Ron Tolido said:

@Wayne: Thanks for your feedback. I would not really dare to suggest that Capgemini's IAF is so much influenced by Zachman, I think it has a few quite unique features of its own. And both IAF and Zachman provide very useful perspectives that can easily be embedded in a TOGAF-driven enterprise architecture engagement. And you are right, many other things to achieve in architecture. But let's be realistic: already sharing a common, non-proprietary methodological language between architects is a huge, huge step forward towards further maturity of the profession. Keep in touch!

# on February 8, 2009 5:31 PM, Ron Tolido said:

@Carsten: a match in heaven indeed, and we can taste the result through TOGAF 9 quite well. Never mind the bollocks, never mind the frameworks, but no anarchy in the UK: it's time to build some architectures rather than to discuss HOW to build them.

# on February 15, 2009 2:34 PM, Darwinian said:

I don't want start a flame war, just want to balance some of the above.

I have been told by old CG hands that IAF was influenced by Zachman Framework. And it looks like that anyway.

TOGAF 8 already had a content framework. In fact it had two. The Enterprise Continuum (a two dimensional classification, which shares one dimension with the two dimensional Zachman Framework). And the Taxomomy of Views structured according to Archiecture Domains.

I'm not convinced advising people how to use TOGAF for tacical solution architeture is a priority, since many already do that.

I think the focus should be on improving the overall integrity, not on adding more topics.

TOGAF is the de facto industry standard. Overall, TOGAF 9 is better 8. And I will use it happily. But some of the new contributions fall short of what one hoped. A couple of the new chapters would be better left as white papers. The new content framework is a move in the right direction but not yet fully integrated with the legacy. The content meta model is a move in the right direction, but not yet wholly aligned with the text.