Enterprise Architecture & Frameworks -TOGAF, ITIL, COBIT, PMBOK
Enterprise architecture (EA) is “a well-defined practice for conducting enterprise analysis, design, planning, and implementation, using a holistic approach at all times, for the successful development and execution of strategy. Enterprise architecture applies architecture principles and practices to guide organizations through the business, information, process, and technology changes necessary to execute their strategies. These practices utilize the various aspects of an enterprise to identify, motivate, and achieve these changes.” — OpenGroup
“Enterprise architecture (EA) is a discipline for proactively and holistically leading enterprise responses to disruptive forces by identifying and analyzing the execution of change toward desired business vision and outcomes. EA delivers value by presenting business and IT leaders with signature-ready recommendations for adjusting policies and projects to achieve target business outcomes that capitalize on relevant business disruptions.” — Gartner.

The purpose of enterprise architecture is to optimize across the enterprise the often fragmented legacy of processes (both manual and automated) into an integrated environment that is responsive to change and supportive of the delivery of the business strategy.
Architecture domains:
Reference to the Open Group Architecture Framework and Zachman; the architecture domains are listed below based on four interrelated areas of specialization
- Business architecture which defines the business strategy, governance, organization, and key business processes of the organization
- Applications architecture which provides a blueprint for the individual systems to be deployed, the interactions between the application systems, and their relationships to the core business processes of the organization with the frameworks for services to be exposed as business functions for integration
- Data architecture which describes the structure of an organization’s logical and physical data assets and the associated data management resources
- Technical architecture which describes the hardware, software, and network infrastructure needed to support the deployment of core, mission-critical applications

Advantages of Enterprise Architecture
The advantages that result from a good enterprise architecture bring important business benefits, which are clearly visible in the net profit or loss of a company or organization:
- A more efficient business operation
- Lower business operation costs
- More agile organization
- Business capabilities shared across the organization
- Lower change management costs
- More flexible workforce
- Improved business productivity
- A more efficient IT operation:
- Lower software development, support, and maintenance costs
- Increased portability of applications
- Improved interoperability and easier system and network management
- Improved ability to address critical enterprise-wide issues like security
- Easier upgrade and exchange of system components
- Better return on existing investment, reduced risk for future investment:
- Reduced complexity in the business and IT
- Maximum return on investment in existing business and IT infrastructure
- The flexibility to make, buy, or out-source business and IT solutions
- Reduced risk overall in new investments and their cost of ownership
- Faster, simpler, and cheaper procurement:
- Buying decisions are simpler, because the information governing procurement is readily available in a coherent plan
- The procurement process is faster — maximizing procurement speed and flexibility without sacrificing architectural coherence
- The ability to procure heterogeneous, multi-vendor open systems
- The ability to secure more economic capabilities
Requirements or Need for Enterprise Architecture
Alignment : Architecture aligns strategy to operations and business demand to IT supply, ensuring that changes are in line with strategy and goals
Insight : Architecture provides insight into the current and desired state of the organization, information systems and technology
Quality : Architecture improves the quality of individual solutions, simplifying their development and maintenance en prolonging their life time
Process Chain and Frameworks
Let’s take TOGAF as a bases to our process chain and its relation with other known frameworks such as COBIT, ITIL and PMBOK to know How they integrated with each other; where they start and where they end. The relation between above frameworks (TOGAF, COBIT, ITIL, PMBOK) can show as below
COBIT & TOGAF
- COBIT covers most of the activities of TOGAF
- Describes them only at a high level
- Provides a slightly different view on activities and deliverables
- Covers only the IT-perspective; enterprise architecture also includes the business perspective
- COBIT adds information to the TOGAF activities
- Relates them to generic IT-related goals and accompanying metrics
- Adds architecture-specific process goals and accompanying metrics
- Adds responsibilities for TOGAF activities in the form of a RACI Chart
- COBIT puts TOGAF into context by relating architecture processes to all other IT-processes
PMBOK & TOGAF
- Both frameworks provide activities, practices and deliverables for project management
- PMBOK can be used to manage an architecture project
- TOGAF can be used as a lightweight project management framework (not recommeded)
- An architecture constructed with TOGAF should drive the definition of a project
- Provides essential requirements to projects
- Provides a scope to the project, expressed using models that are part of the architecture
- Project deliverables should be checked for compliance with architectures that are constructed by TOGAF
ITIL & TOGAF
- ITIL can be seen as an architecture for IT service management
- Both frameworks provide guidance for design
- TOGAF describes design at an enterprise architecture level
- ITIL describes design at a solution (architecture) level
- An architecture developed with TOGAF requires input from as well as provides input for ITIL processes
- The repositories that support ITIL and TOGAF are related and should build upon each other

New techniques have emerged to help EA practitioners leverage business architecture to guide investment and execution decisions, including business capability models, business canvas, ecosystem modeling, journey maps and persona modeling. This webinar explores the current business architecture trends in the age of digital business.
