TOGAF - What Is It and Why Is It So Important?
TOGAF
The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF) is a framework used for enterprise architecture to improve business efficiency and presents an approach for designing, planning, executing, and administering an enterprise IT architecture.
TOGAF was first published in 1995. It was based on the US Department of Defense Technical Architecture Framework for Information Management, with The Open Group Architecture Forum basing the TOGAF methodology on this foundation.
Why TOGAF?
TOGAF is recognized as a global best practice for enterprise architecture, and this is because it provides you the right balance between IT efficiency and business change. TOGAF will help IT professionals, to create genuinely open systems-based solutions to meet business needs, while not agreeing on ability. TOGAF has been developed in collaboration with over 300 Architecture Forum member companies, including some of the world’s leading organizations.
The Benefits from TOGAF for Various Types of Stakeholders
In doing this, we want to consider the different stakeholders that have a post in architectural changes. The value and benefits for all stakeholders will differ depending on the quality of the changes, the role and interests of the stakeholder, and their relationship to other stakeholders.
The IT Organization:
The IT organization is accountable for developing, maintaining, and operating the IT elements within the enterprise architecture. Typically, this covers services, applications, data, infrastructure technologies, security, etc.
Direct Benefits from Enterprise Architecture:
- Better knowledge and management of the IT landscape.
- A holistic/systemic view of all IT elements and their business, organizational, and environmental circumstances.
- Enhanced ability to deliver joint, standard, or reusable elements across the IT scene.
- Criteria, qualities, or characteristics of more agile, richer IT components.
- A discipline that supplements others, such as agile, ITIL, COBIT, etc., and unites these disciplines in a broad, holistic, systemic way.
- Overcome IT complexity.
Direct Benefits from TOGAF:
- Good understanding of how to combine architecture development with (IT) strategy planning, business strategies, solution design, IT development, implementations, and program/project management through the use of the ADM.
- Good knowledge of how to combine architecture governance with IT governance.
- The two reference models provide a reasonable contextual basis for structuring and populating an enterprise-specific model.
- Techniques and artifacts that can be adapted to meet IT and architecture needs.
Indirect Benefits Approved by Applying TOGAF:
- Reduced IT operating costs.
- More effective IT operation.
- Increased portability of applications.
- Improved interoperability.
Benefits of Using TOGAF
The benefits of ADM are that it is customizable to organizational needs. There is no need to create a structure that does not serve your business. These smaller units are also scalable, so if one team rolls it out, it can successfully be rolled out to other organizations without much tweaking.
This supports the enterprise to establish a process with multiple checkpoints so that there are some errors the wider the architecture is performed.
There can also be advantages to individuals who certify in TOGAF. Knowledge of industry employees indicates that enterprise architects, software architects, and IT directors, among others, who want to earn a certification in TOGAF often see average yearly pay of $110,663 over similarly placed colleagues who are not certified.
Some experts in enterprise architecture point out that while TOGAF may seem very logical, it is quite a shakeup to traditionally educated technology consultants today, but perhaps this will change TOGAF adoption remains along steadily.
Success and Criticism of TOGAF
According to the Open Group, TOGAF is used in more than 80 percent of Global 50 companies and more than 60 percent of Fortune 500 companies. Through analysis of the structure is often that it is too tricky or theoretical to be applicable, it appears that plenty of companies are using the framework.
Companies who have completed the framework admit that failings do happen because TOGAF cannot be a cure-all for enterprise issues. While the problem can be TOGAF principles or the enterprise architecture itself, others argue that sometimes key stakeholders and C-level management do not always take the time to set up essential factors, such as key performance indicators, to make the architecture team successful.
This lack of full buy-in may sometimes be due to the complicated nature of TOGAF when looked at in its totality. Indeed, even when the framework feels impressive, the best advice may be to pick what works best for your company.
Some technology experts recommend precisely that: skip what appears overdone or chance and implement the pieces that look most important. After all, the key stakeholders are the ones who require to find value in this structure, and they understand the company the best.
Many know that TOGAF is a work in progress considered by new statements every few years. Even doubters of TOGAF and enterprise architecture frameworks, in general, see that the applied use of TOGAF is often successful simply because it is better than doing nothing.
When companies need to jump on board a new technology, it often requires building out the right tech team from scratch and then tracking down all sorts of data. It gets messy, and the rapid pace that technology shifts and improves, these requests happen a lot more often than they used to.
This can read, in part, the bustling IT and architecture teams that are always busy yet anyhow still look behind.
TOGAF is no miracle tool, but it does give structure to help these teams and upper-level management from having to reinvent the wheel each time the company needs to include new technology.
When organizations apply TOGAF, they typically “fall into four buckets”: those who misapply it, and therefore show no value; those who achieve some baseline success in handling legacy problems; those who achieve explicit business goals; and those who want to manage change better overall. This final group examines enterprise architecture as a way to become more agile.
As its general use indicates, TOGAF can help enterprises of any size and any industry. But those who employ it are best served by understanding its pros and cons first and then applying the parts that make a particular sense for their own company.
Summary
Getting TOGAF certified shows, you are at the top of the enterprise architecture field. It helps you learn and show a full understanding of the reasons behind every element of its structure. It also gives you the ability to develop and re-organize your business architecture to fix its shortcomings.
There many more benefits of TOGAF that exceed this, making you more relevant to your business and the rest of your team. Plus, there are industry-wide factors that are excellent motivation to get TOGAF certified.
