A paper introducing ArchiMate® 2.0 and TOGAF® 9.1 and showing how the two standards can be used together by organisations to facilitate business transformation.

The title of this white paper might upset some TOGAF practitioners, but my intention is not to dismiss TOGAF as a nonpractical framework, but rather to highlight the importance of using modeling standards when developing architectures. I will start with a short introduction to TOGAF 9.1 and ArchiMate 2.0, highlighting key parts of these Open Group standards to create a context for the rest of the white paper.

TOGAF 9.1 was released on the 1st of December 2011, and the introductory chapter provides a good background on the benefits of using enterprise architecture in organizations. I just want to highlight a single benefit from this first chapter to emphasise the point that TOGAF is meant to support business transformation:

"“Any organization undertaking, or planning to undertake, the development and implementation of an enterprise architecture for the support of business transformation will benefit from the use of TOGAF.”

I believe an organization will benefit from using TOGAF, but there is a gap that needs to be filled before TOGAF can be used consistently across organizations to support business transformation.

I believe that with the release of ArchiMate 2.0, this gap can be filled. To substantiate my claim that ArchiMate 2.0 is required to make TOGAF 9.1 practical I will use ISO 15704 (Requirements for enterprise-reference architectures and methodologies) as a generalised framework for describing the components needed for an enterprise engineering or enterprise change initiative. The ISO 15704 standard includes an annex known as the Generalised Enterprise Reference Architecture and Method (GERAM) that I will use to graphically highlight the components required to successfully implement change in an organization.

I will conclude the white paper by briefly explaining how the ArchiMate 2.0 models support the different TOGAF 9.1 Architecture Development Method phases.