I've Downloaded TOGAF, Now What?
- Sanda Morar,
Last Sunday (20th April), I presented a tutorial titled “I've Downloaded TOGAF, Now What?” at the Open Group Conference in Glasgow (the sessions and presentations will be available here). It was an interesting experience and also a challenge to make the presentation interesting to an audience comprising of TOGAF veterans and newbies.
In the presentation, I addressed the questions of “What TOGAF is?” and “What TOGAF is not?” Other aspects covered include the need for lining up support within the organization and the need for appropriate governance. This was probably one of the very few presentations addressing such basic questions. (An aside - The Open Group plan to reuse this presentation a part of the introduction pack for organizations new to TOGAF).
- Option 1 - Read 524 pages end to end, i.e. 8.73 pages / minute
- Option 2 - Identify the relevant parts to read and keep the rest of the pages as reference material
- A good idea is to start by understanding what you downloaded – i.e. What TOGAF is and is not and some of TOGAF’s concepts
- Before you do any more reading, remember that you cannot apply TOGAF without buy-in from your organization or your customer. How do you gather support for TOGAF and get a mandate within the organization? You have your work cut out to demonstrate the benefits of TOGAF to convince people
- Once the battle is won and you have the go ahead to use TOGAF, you will need to do some more work. For instance, you will need to customize, model and extend the TOGAF Framework to address your organization’s specific needs
So, what is TOGAF?
That is something you will have to explain a lot to your boss, to your customers and then to your friends and family. The definition is provided by The Open Group, but is not always easy to explain to a customer. Making a table and showing what TOGAF is and what it is not clears the ambiguity.
Which of TOGAF’s concepts are relevant and which aren’t?
Well, “togaf811.pdf” will tell you that depends on a lot of things. The problem is that when you have all those “things”, togaf811.pdf will not help you out with a rule or sort of a logic to identify the “relevant concepts”. You don’t really want to ramble the whole of togaf811.pdf in front of a customer.
How do you get buy in from your organisation or customer?
Yes, TOGAF is cool but so what? How do you show the value? Enterprise Architecture is full of the unknown and things that cannot always be quantified. So, you will be glad that sometimes things can be measured - like “customer satisfaction”
How do you customise, model and extend TOGAF?
Again, togaf811.pdf will tell you that “it depends”. This goes back to the question of what TOGAF is and what is not. TOGAF is a generic and very good framework, but you will have to apply yourself to make TOGAF work for you.
I have noted below some of the thoughts expressed during the course of a stimulating discussion (post-session)
- TOGAF is not easy but it can be make it work for you in a matter of weeks
- I felt the same way about TOGAF, that it is difficult to understand
- Does the new version of TOGAF address the problems highlighted in the session?
- Are there best practices and guidance about how to customise, model and extend TOGAF?
I am writing this late at night. I had an awesome evening here at the conference and I learned a lot of things and met a lot of cool people
I’ll cover more about TOGAF in my next post - what TOGAF is and what it is not, how to enlist support, how to customise, model, extend TOGAF and what to do next.
