In New Orleans The Open Group Architecture Forum hosted or was involved in the
following meetings:
- On the evening of Sunday, October 17th there was an Open
Tutorial: "Introduction to TOGAF" by Chris Greenslade of
Architecting-The-Enterprise Limited.
- A key focus of the Architecture Forum at New Orleans was the public Architecture
Practitioners' Conference, which took place from mid-day Tuesday October 19th through
mid-day Thursday October 21st.
- On the afternoon of Thursday October 21st there was a members-only TOGAF ADM Workshop, in which the members of the Architecture Forum
progressed work on TOGAF Version 9.
- On Friday, October 22nd there were two parallel sessions:
Open Tutorial: Introduction to TOGAF
The Open Group is uniquely positioned within the IT industry to bring together the buy
side and the supply side to agree on the real requirements that the industry needs to
address, and effective methods of addressing them. Within the architecture domain, The
Open Group has been active for over a decade, developing and making freely available an
architecture framework and methodology - TOGAF. Developed by The Open Group Architecture
Forum, TOGAF is today accepted and used around the world as a genuinely open framework and
method for enterprise architecture.
For the first eight years of its existence, The Open Group Architecture Forum focused
primarily on evolving TOGAF as a framework for developing technical architectures that
fully meet the business needs of an organization. That goal reached maturity with TOGAF
Version 7.
As of TOGAF Version 8, the Architecture Forum began to respond to new challenges, with
the increasing realization within the industry of the importance of enterprise
architecture in the development of information systems. IT users are now seeking a
framework that helps to develop enterprise architectures to address all aspects of an
organization's information services. They are also seeking skilled architectural
practitioners and suitable tool sets that will support them.
This tutorial by Chris Greenslade of Architecting-The-Enterprise described what the
Architecture Forum has achieved so far with the development of TOGAF, and showed how the
Forum is responding to the new challenges with the development of TOGAF 8 "Enterprise
Edition". Topics covered included:
- The Architecture Forum
- Our motivation for developing TOGAF
- The TOGAF Architecture Development Method (ADM)
- Other aspects of TOGAF
- Mapping to the Zachman framework
- Other activities of the Architecture Forum
- Architecture practitioners
- Architecture tools
- Future role of Architecture and the Architecture Forum
Enterprise architecture is becoming an essential function in many organizations,
providing strategic context for the evolution of information technology within the
enterprise, in response to the changing needs of the business environment. It also enables
organizations to maintain the right balance between permitting innovation and catering to
the integration needs of the extended enterprise.
This two-day Conference was aimed specifically at Enterprise Architecture Practitioners
and those directly involved in the management and oversight of enterprise architecture. It
addressed the key issues and challenges that enterprise architects and executives
overseeing enterprise architecture face today.
There is a separate report for the Architecture Practitioners'
Conference.
Judith Jones of Architecting-The-Enterprise led this workshop, the structure of which
was based around the following themes previously identified for TOGAF Version 9:
- The Enterprise, Culture, and Stakeholders
- Architecture Creation
- Architecture-based Transformation
- Architecture Realization
- Architecture Management
There were presentations and/or project reports from:
- Architecting-The-Enterprise
- CGI
- IBM
- Metaplexity Associates
- Raytheon
- Real IRM
- The Open Group
In addition to the TOGAF 9 ADM, there were substantial discussions on: TOGAF 9 Product
Marketing; and the future of the Standards Information Base and Building Blocks
Information Base, and on possible integration of these concepts. This work will be
progressed and a report back given to the next meeting in San Francisco.
Plans for the further development of TOGAF 9 were agreed, with a view to having a
baseline document available for review at the next meeting in San Francisco.
IT Architecture Profession Certification Project
This project within the Architecture Forum is being led jointly by HP and IBM.
On the evening of Tuesday, October 19th, the Architecture Practitioners' Conference at
New Orleans featured an open Birds-Of-a-Feather (BOF) session, which discussed the
recognition of IT architecture as a professional discipline, and the setting up of a
certification program for the IT architecture profession within the IT industry. Not
surprisingly considering the audience, there was considerable interest in the topic, and a
lively discussion ensued.
On the morning of Friday, 22nd October the members of the Architecture Forum received a
report of the discussions at the BOF, and a presentation on a draft White Paper on this
subject developed jointly by IBM and HP.
The proposals within the White Paper were discussed and warmly welcomed, and will now
be progressed further within the Architecture Forum.
DODAF / TOGAF Integration Workshop
On Friday 22nd October, there was a meeting of the DODAF / TOGAF Integration project
team, under the leadership of Rolf Siegers of Raytheon.
This project aims to align the TOGAF Architecture Development Method with the products
of the DODAF framework, with leading experts from both fields seeking to establish synergy
between the two frameworks.
The project team made significant progress, and will continue to further the work
off-line from the Architecture Forum meetings.
