Chapter 1: Enterprise Architecture and Its Practicality

Enterprise Architecture (EA) is a discipline that many organizations have adopted or have been motivated to adopt over the last two decades or so due to its promises to bridge the gaps between business and technology. EA is the art of defining and categorizing the elements that compose an enterprise and defining the relationships among these elements to get useful information that supports making strategic and tactical decisions. There are several frameworks that guide EA implementation, but the most popular one is TOGAF®.

This chapter starts by highlighting what made TOGAF® the de facto standard for implementing EA and puts the spotlight on the problems that most TOGAF® practitioners face – some (if not all) of which I am quite sure you will have faced. As I have learned, talking about problems is never helpful without providing solutions, so we will introduce a hands-on approach that has been extracted from years of practical experience in the EA domain to help you in aligning the theory with the practice smoothly and more productively.

Please remember that this book is not about teaching TOGAF®; I expect that you already have some knowledge of and experience with the framework and are looking for solutions to the problems that you may have already faced. It is also not about making comparisons between TOGAF® and other frameworks to show the advantages versus disadvantages of each. This book is based on TOGAF® and ArchiMate® only and will explain how to use them in a way that can help your organization to get quick, tangible outcomes from adopting them.

The following is a list of topics that will be covered in this chapter:

• Understanding TOGAF®
• Introducing agile EA
• Introducing ArchiMate®
• Introducing Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect

Let's start by talking about the benefits and drawbacks of TOGAF®.