The Architecture Development Methodology

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Enterprise architecture is the description of the structure and behavior of an organization’s information system, processes, technology, personnel and organizational sub-units aligned with the organizational core goals the strategic decision. TOGAF uses for an enterprise architecture which provides a comprehensive approach for, implementing, designing, planning and governing an enterprise information architecture.  Also this frame work provides the detailed methods and tools for assisting in the acceptance, production, use, and maintenance of an enterprise architecture. It is based on a continuation process model supported by best practices and a re-usable set of existing architecture assets. 

Architecture Domains

There are four architecture domains that are commonly accepted as subsets of an overall enterprise architecture, all of which TOGAF is designed to support:

Business

Data

Application

Technology

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The Business Architecture defines the business aims, strategy, authority, organization, and key business processes and methods.

The Data Architecture describes the structure of an organization's consistent and physical data resources and data management properties.

The Application Architecture provides a proposal for the individual application systems to be organized, their connections, and their associations to the central business processes of the organization.

The Technology Architecture defines the logical software and hardware capabilities that are required to support the development of business, data, and application services. This includes IT infrastructure, middleware, networks, communications, processing, standards and the connections.

Architecture Development Methodology (ADM)

The Architecture Development Methodology (ADM) provides a recognized and repeatable process for developing architectures.

The Scope

The scope of ADM includes the below listed activities, which are generally carried out in iterative cycles of continuous architecture definition and realization; thus aiding a controlled transformation of an enterprises in response to business goals and opportunities

Establishing an architecture framework

Developing architecture content

Transitioning

Governing the understanding of architectures

Originally designed as a way to develop the technology architecture for an organization, TOGAF has evolved into a methodology for evaluating the overall business architecture. The first part of TOGAF is a methodology for developing your architecture design, which is called the Architecture Development Method (ADM). It has the following nine basic phases:

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Preliminary phase: Framework and principles. Get everyone on board with the plan.

Phase A: Architecture vision. Define your scope and idea and map your overall strategy.

Phase B: Business architecture. Describe your current and target business architectures and determine the opening between them.

Phase C: Information system architectures. Develop target architectures for your data and applications.

Phase D: Technology architecture. Create the overall target architecture that you will implement in future phases.

Phase E: Opportunities and solutions. Develop the overall strategy, determining what you will buy, build or reuse, and how you will implement the architecture described in phase D.

Phase F: Migration planning. Prioritize projects and develop the migration plan.

Phase G: Implementation governance. Determine how you will provide oversight to the implementation.

Phase H: Architecture change management. Monitor the running system for necessary changes and determine whether to start a new cycle, looping back to the preliminary phase.

These phases provide a standardized way of analyzing the enterprise and planning and managing the actual implementation.

Benefits from using TOGAF

Any organization planning to start, the design and implementation of an enterprise architecture for the support of mission-critical business applications, using open systems building blocks. Customers who design and implement enterprise architectures using TOGAF are ensured of a strategy and a procurement requirement that will greatly ease open systems implementation, and will enable the benefits of open systems to accrue to their organizations with reduced failures and risks.

Comparison between ADD and TOGAF

ADD is a method for designing the software architecture of a system or collection of systems based on a clear articulation of the quality attribute goals for the system.

The method is suitable for any quality attributes but has been particularly elaborated for the attributes of performance, reliability, availability, modifiability, security and usability. The method has been used for designing the software architecture of products ranging from embedded to information systems.

supporting the earliest stages of the design process where the ability to achieve desired quality attributes is determined and allowing design to begin early enough in the life cycle to support modern time-to-market requirements

TOGAF provides a common-sense, real-world, cautious, and effective method of developing an enterprise architecture.

TOGAF consists of three main parts:

The TOGAF Architecture Development Method (ADM)

A reliable, proven way of developing the architecture

Architecture views which enable the architect to ensure that a complex set of requirements are adequately addressed

Linkages to practical case studies

Guidelines on tools for architecture development

The Enterprise Continuum, which is a "virtual repository" of all the architecture assets - models, patterns, architecture descriptions, etc. - that exist both within the enterprise and in the IT industry at large, which the enterprise considers itself to have available for the development of architectures. At relevant places throughout the TOGAF ADM, there are reminders to consider which architecture assets from the Enterprise Continuum the architect should use, if any. TOGAF itself provides two reference models for consideration for inclusion in an enterprise's own Enterprise Continuum:

The TOGAF Foundation Architecture - an architecture of generic services and functions that provides a foundation on which specific architectures and Architecture Building Blocks (ABBs) can be built. This Foundation Architecture in turn includes:

The TOGAF Technical Reference Model (TRM), which provides a model and classification of generic platform services.

The TOGAF Standards Information Base (SIB), which is a database of open industry standards that can be used to define the specific services and other mechanisms of an enterprise-specific architecture.

The Integrated Information Infrastructure Reference Model (III-RM), which is based on the TOGAF Foundation Architecture, and is specifically aimed at helping the design of architectures that enable and support the vision of Boundary less Information Flow.

The TOGAF Resource Base, which is a set of resources - guidelines, templates, background information, etc. - to help the architect in the use of the ADM.

The latest version is TOGAF 9.1, launched on 1 December 2011. An evolutionary development from TOGAF 8, TOGAF 9 includes many new features including

Increased rigor, including a formal Content Metamodel that links the artifacts of TOGAF together

Elimination of unnecessary differences.

Many more examples and templates.

Additional guidelines and techniques include:

A formal business-driven method to architecture

Business capability-based planning

Guidance on how to use TOGAF to develop Security Architectures and SOAs

The Open Group provides TOGAF free of charge to organizations for their own internal noncommercial purposes.