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| Architecture Development Method |
Last week I went to Utrecht to get educated on TOGAF, a framework for enterprise architecture.
The first day was a bit messy to get there. Arriving in Utrecht I took a cab to the wrong address but eventually I got on my destination, albeit a bit later than expected.
In this initial day we looked at the overall scope of TOGAF and its Architecture Development Method (ADM). At the end of the day, I wondered if TOGAF could be applied in an agile/lean manner, surely something I will look in to.
During the other days, I constantly tried to imagine how TOGAF could be used for the customer where I'm working for at the moment. I do believe that I can go back to work next Monday with a better understanding on how to approach the Enterprise Architecture journey. The good thing about the methodology is that it not only provides a guidance during the EA exercise, but also guidance on how to set it up. This is especially interesting for the situation that I'm in at the moment.
I also found it very interesting to learn how TOGAF deals with the management of artefacts that are produced or brought into the Enterprise Architecture. I believe that the repository that I've started with will look a bit more different from now on. However, the simple SharePoint setup is still sufficient for this job if you ask me.
In this course I really learned that demystifying complexity by using various viewpoints for the different stakeholders is a really important aspect. If this helps to get the stakeholders in line, then it is a job well done. Secondly there is time and space foreseen for finding and dealing with cross project synergies, a topic that I believe is much needed in my current company. The part about governance was a bit heavy and tuned to the bigger enterprises, perfectly fine I just need to figure out how it can be downscaled to the appropriate size for us.
I had one disappointment on the chapter about requirements management. In my simple mind I was misled by the size of the circle on the ADM and thus I had pretty high expectations about it. It came out that TOGAF specifies the importance of it, but not really a way to accrue or manage these requirements. I reckon that this is subject for a different course :)
I would like to thanks Rienk de Kok of the-unit (www.the-unit.nl) for his dedication during the course, he's a good instructor that I would advise without a blink. Secondly I would also like to thank the other 11 attendees as they made the course even more interesting.
Next step is to turn the theory into practice, but that's food for a next post.