TOGAF 9.1: What's New and Why is it Important?

TOGAF 9.1 was released on the 1st of December 2011 without a lot of fanfare and almost did not make a ripple on the social media sphere (just the normal set of insiders tweeting and blogging about the new version). I personally believe the update from TOGAF 9 to 9.1 is going to have a significant impact on how Enterprise Architects will use the standard going forward. The reason for my belief is twofold; firstly the standard is now becoming more consistent and readable, and secondly the inclusion of up-to-date and practical SOA content is exposing more mainstream architecture professionals to SOA techniques and best practices.

I found that surprisingly few people (including Enterprise Architects) have really read the TOGAF 9 document in any level of detail, and I don’t believe this is due to a lack of trying on their side either. Version 9.0 of the standard was a great leap forward from the previous version (TOGAF 8.1.1) and the new standard almost doubled the size of the document to 778 pages. Integrating the contributions from a variety of organizations across the world is no small task and despite all the best efforts, TOGAF 9 still did not feel like an integrated standard, with inconsistent definitions, usage of different terms and outdated legacy components floating around.