What is the content of TOGAF, and how is it organized?
The content in TOGAF can be seen as a Body of Knowledge covering good practice in enterprise architecture. This body of knowledge is organized to help in the everyday routines of Enterprise Architects.
Before an organization uses TOGAF the various stakeholders need to be sure that it is going to make a difference and be of benefit.
Part I of the TOGAF documentation provides an overview of the core concepts and explains their benefits.
After that, it helps to think of the TOGAF body of knowledge as covering three areas: TOGAF describes a discipline – a way of thinking about the structure of an enterprise in a disciplined way. TOGAF outlines a process for architecting an enterprise. And TOGAF describes the set of work products that describe the structure of an enterprise.
With the appropriate level of EA capability in place, the EA team can follow a defined process or method. This is described in Part II – the Architecture Development Method or ADM. An effective method may need to be tailored to your needs, and TOGAF provide guidelines to this in Part III, along with supportive techniques.
The process produces work products, and these are described in Part IV – the Architecture Content Framework. Content needs to be stored and analyzed using Tools, and these are described in Part V, along with the Enterprise Continuum – which is a way to leverage generic architectures and reference materials.Part VI describes the TOGAF Reference Models, supporting this idea of reusing generic architectures and solutions.
The enterprise needs to have in place the necessary organization structure, processes, skills, roles and responsibilities to set up and operate an architecture function. This is Part VII in TOGAF: the Architecture Capability Framework, which is about the discipline of EA.