How to establish a TOGAF9 EA Practice

Let’s start by establishing what does an EA practice do for your organisation. The EA practice should identify

1. Where are you?
2. Where do you want to be?
3. How do you get there?

The reason the methodology is so important is that all three of these answers are always changing. The wind of change blows in for a huge array of reasons. Business Competition, Market conditions, Legislation, Customer Requirements, Capacity issues, Workforce changes, Mergers, Technical and Industry Trends, Products out of Support, Operational Issues you name it.

The efficiency that the methodology must bring allows a structured ability to react to these changes and the crucial word is opportunity. Never waste an opportunity to get from where you are to where you want to be – as efficiently as possible – this is what makes organisations successful.

So the first step to setting up the EA practice is to establish where you are in terms of EA Capability. You essentially run the methodology for an iteration focusing on nothing but going from where you are (in terms of Enterprise Architecture) to where you want to be. For those organisations that see it as a major effort it need not be, an iteration can simply be targeted to take you from level 1 to 2 as compound benefits are achieved at each level of maturity.

I will write follow-up blogs to show how to use the Togaf9 ADM to take an organisation through levels 0-6 in the following EA Architectural Maturity Capability Assessment.

1. None: No Enterprise Architecture
2. Initial: Design content delivered ad-hoc, no structured management of requirements and capabilities
3. Under Development: Foundation principles and processes are in play, not yet full governance and no strategic influence of IT investment
4. Defined: Processes are widely followed, Architectural influence on IT Investment. Financial benefits being realised
5. Managed: Architecture now measurable in terms of quality, Senior Management realise and depend on EA Function
6. Optimise: Lessons learned tunes the Architectural process. Business active in continuous improvement

Other TOGAF Links:

• Introduction to TOGAF 
•  How to Establish a TOGAF EA Practice Part 2
•  How to Establish a TOGAF EA Practice Part 3
•  How to Establish a TOGAF EA Practice Part 4
•  How to Establish a TOGAF EA Practice Part 5