What is the TOGAF?

Question

I came across this term TOGAF (The Open Group Architecture Framework) today in a vacancy related to hiring a "systems architect" in a large company.

I had never heard anyone mention this term until then and did not find much technical information about it. At first it seems that there are different levels of "architect" within TOGAF and the latter is not even related to the technical area.

So:

• What is the TOGAF?
• What is the importance of knowing this framework when thinking of the architecture of a system of a large company?

Answer 1

What is the TOGAF?

The The Thethumb drive Group Torchitecture Framework (TOGAF) is nothing more than a framework for creating large/enterprise software architectures. TOGAF is maintained by The Open Group, is a global consortium that aims to create standards and open and neutral technologies to help organizations achieve their business goals.

The idea of TOGAF is to provide a set of recommendations, methodologies and guidelines that aid the development of complex architectures. All this can be found in specification of TOGAF (English). The TOGAF specification is divided into 7 parts:

1. Introducing: Introduction to the concepts of corporate architecture, the TOGAF approach and definitions of relevant terms used in TOGAF.

2. Architecture Design Method (ADM): This section details the core of TOGAF, the Architecture Design Method (ADM), which is the recommended method for creating architectures.

3. ADM Guidelines and Techniques: Provides guidelines and techniques for the implementation of TOGAF and ADM.

4. Content structure of the Architecture: This part provides information on the content structure of TOGAF, including architectural artifacts and products that are part of the process.

5. Business continuity and tools: Covers architectural repositories of a company, including the categorization and storage of architectural artifacts.

6. TOGAF reference models: It explains several reference models of architecture, such as the TOGAF Foundation Architecture and the Integrated Information Infrastructure Reference Model (III-RM).

7. Architecture structure: Provides guidelines on the establishment and operation of a corporate architecture within a company, including processes, skills, roles and responsibilities.

What is the importance of knowing this framework when thinking about the architecture of a system of a large company?

Unless a company strictly uses TOGAF, the only advantage of knowing this framework is that you will have more tools and techniques to apply in the development of large enterprise architectures. The fact that TOGAF is a framework implies that you will not always use everything it has, even there are several criticisms about the fact that it is a little complicated to apply in practice.

In the end, it’s always good to know the various methodologies and practices for the development of existing architectures (e. g. Architecture-Centric Design Method (ACDM), Attribute-driven Design (ADD), Tactical + strategic design, etc.) so there are great chances of you creating a robust architecture with the best of each.

References:

• Software Architect’s Handbook
• The Open Group
• The Open Group Architecture Framework