TOGAF® EA on Weekends

This unit lays the groundwork for understanding Enterprise Architecture (EA) and the TOGAF® Standard. You’ll explore:

• Understanding Enterprise Architecture: Gain clarity on how EA serves as a blueprint for strategic business objectives, with responsive architectural solutions that facilitate and sustain change.
• Defining “Enterprise” in TOGAF® Terms: Learn how TOGAF conceptualises an enterprise as a combination of internal structures and external partnerships unified by shared strategic aims.
• Exploring the Four Architectural Domains: Delve into the Business, Data, Application, and Technology domains, and understand how each contributes to building scalable, efficient enterprises.
• Getting to Know TOGAF Frameworks: Get familiar with essential tools such as the Content Framework, the Enterprise Metamodel, and the Architecture Repository that help manage architecture components.
• Techniques for Simplifying Complexity: Learn how to structure and abstract complex systems into digestible layers, from contextual to physical, to streamline architectural analysis and communication.
• Structured Problem Solving: Develop proficiency in identifying risks and gaps within current systems using structured methods that support sound decision-making.

Upon completing this unit, you’ll have a practical grasp of the strategic role of EA and the foundational tools provided by TOGAF to support enterprise change.

This unit focuses on equipping you with the vocabulary needed to navigate TOGAF® with confidence.

• Building Terminological Precision: Master critical terms such as “architecture”, “actor”, “ABB” (Architecture Building Block), and more, ensuring accurate and professional dialogue in EA contexts.
• Understanding Structuring Concepts: Get to grips with terms that aid in handling complexity, including “abstraction” and “partitioning”, which are central to managing large-scale enterprise models.
• Real-World Relevance: Apply this terminology to real scenarios, improving your ability to conduct analyses, structure models, and execute planning activities effectively.
• Strategic Communication: Learn how consistent use of terminology supports better planning, accountability, and communication between stakeholders.

By the end of this unit, you’ll be fluent in TOGAF’s core language, laying the foundation for deeper understanding and application throughout the course.

This unit introduces the TOGAF® Architecture Development Method (ADM), the backbone of structured architecture practice.

• Understanding ADM Phases: Familiarise yourself with each phase of the ADM, from initial groundwork in the Preliminary Phase through to continuous evolution in Architecture Change Management.
• Working Iteratively: Explore how TOGAF’s cyclic approach enables adaptability while maintaining architectural rigour, allowing for responsive updates in dynamic environments.
• Governance and Quality Control: Learn how governance mechanisms underpin each phase, ensuring delivery remains consistent with enterprise goals.
• Scoping and Structuring Architecture Projects: Develop strategies for defining project boundaries, managing dependencies, and evaluating trade-offs within real-world constraints.
• Agile Integration: Understand how TOGAF’s ADM can be adapted to complement Agile delivery models, combining speed with structural integrity.

You’ll complete this unit with the confidence to initiate, manage, and guide architecture projects using a globally recognised development method.

This unit focuses on the practical tools that enhance the application of ADM in varied organisational contexts.

• Establishing Principles and Scenarios: Learn to articulate architecture principles and construct business scenarios that define solution direction and stakeholder needs.
• Performing Gap Analysis: Master the technique of identifying and resolving discrepancies between current capabilities and future requirements.
• Assessing Readiness for Transformation: Evaluate your organisation’s readiness for change, helping pre-empt barriers and enhance success rates.
• Ensuring Coherent Systems: Address interoperability to ensure seamless integration across systems and services, reducing redundancy and fragmentation.
• Managing Architecture Risks: Equip yourself with tools to identify, assess, and mitigate risks that could compromise architectural outcomes.

By mastering these techniques, you’ll be well-placed to design resilient architectures that support growth and innovation across your enterprise.

This unit empowers you to apply the ADM effectively across various business and technical environments.

• Customising the ADM: Learn how to adapt the ADM structure to reflect your organisation’s objectives, operational context, and technical realities.
• Leveraging Iteration and Partitioning: Understand how concurrent cycles and partitioning strategies help manage complexity by enabling distributed yet cohesive architectural efforts.
• Navigating Architecture Levels: Explore the distinctions between Strategic, Segment, and Capability Architectures and how each supports different levels of decision-making.
• Enabling Agility and Transformation: Discover how TOGAF supports business agility, enabling responsive changes without sacrificing long-term coherence.
• Framing Architecture Projects: Develop methods to define clear architecture scopes, from strategic portfolios to targeted projects that deliver measurable value.

By the end of this unit, you’ll know how to adjust and apply the ADM to support strategic intent, operational needs, and organisational readiness.

This unit introduces the structures and mechanisms that ensure Enterprise Architecture efforts remain on course and compliant.

• Principles of Architecture Governance: Learn how governance structures provide oversight, promote accountability, and support strategic consistency across architectural initiatives.
• Layers of Governance: Examine how governance functions at different levels, corporate, technology, IT, and architecture, and understand their interconnected roles.
• The Architecture Board’s Role: Explore how the Architecture Board maintains quality and consistency through oversight, decision-making, and compliance monitoring.
• Governance Instruments: Understand how Architecture Contracts define mutual responsibilities, while compliance assessments ensure conformance to standards and goals.
• Risk and Decision Management: Use governance as a framework for identifying and managing risks, improving transparency, and enabling informed decision-making.

By completing this unit, you’ll be equipped to design and participate in governance models that support control, compliance, and strategic execution of architecture projects.

This unit explores the core outputs produced during each ADM phase and how they contribute to a structured, transparent architecture practice.

• Understanding Key Deliverables: Learn how to produce and interpret core artefacts such as the Architecture Vision, Requirements documents, and Architecture Definition.
• Engaging Stakeholders through Views
   Discover how to identify stakeholder concerns and communicate solutions using viewpoints that speak directly to their interests and responsibilities.
• Working with Building Blocks: Explore the role of Architecture Building Blocks (ABBs) including modular elements such as services, processes, or platforms, that serve as the foundation for reusable, consistent architecture.
• Documenting with Clarity and Purpose: Understand the importance of structured documentation in matching architectural outputs with governance, strategy, and compliance requirements.
• Flexibility within Structure: Develop the ability to create architectures that are both adaptable to change and complementary with business intent.

Upon completion, you’ll be capable of delivering architecture artefacts that are complete, compliant, and valuable to both stakeholders and organisational objectives.

This unit develops your understanding of how Enterprise Architecture supports organisational transformation and decision-making.

• Architecture as a Strategic Enabler: Explore how EA provides the structure and foresight needed to manage change, support innovation, and match execution with long-term goals.
• Setting a Vision for Change: Learn how EA assesses the current environment, defines a future state, and maps the steps required to bridge the gap between the two.
• Governance in Action: Understand how EA frameworks manage risk, monitor compliance, and ensure every architectural initiative serves strategic intent.
• Architects as Leaders: Define the role of the enterprise architect in providing direction, maintaining architectural integrity, and enabling collaboration between technology and business leaders.
• Navigating Complexity in Change Initiatives: Gain insight into managing diverse influences, from policy and regulation to shared service arrangements, that shape change agendas.

On completion, you’ll be ready to apply EA as a governance and change-enabling function that brings structure, coherence, and agility to enterprise strategy execution.

This unit equips you with the ability to manage stakeholder involvement across the architecture lifecycle.

• Understanding Stakeholder Needs: Identify key individuals or groups, assess their concerns, and map them to relevant architectural outputs to ensure relevance and buy-in.
• Adapting Views for Different Audiences: Learn to customise architectural views and visualisations to resonate with varied stakeholders, from executives to technical teams.
• Clear and Impactful Communication: Develop the skills to explain complex architectural concepts in language that inspires understanding and support.
• Managing Conflicting Interests: Use proven trade-off techniques to reconcile diverging priorities and ensure that architectural decisions are balanced and well-justified.
• Driving Stakeholder Commitment: Foster ongoing collaboration to ensure the architecture remains both relevant and supported across the organisation.

By the end of this unit, you’ll be equipped to engage effectively with stakeholders, gaining their trust and cooperation to deliver strategic architectural outcomes.

This unit guides you through the foundational activities of Phase A in the TOGAF® ADM, where strategic direction and project scope are established.

• Clarifying the Purpose of Phase A: Understand how this initial phase sets the trajectory for the entire architecture project by defining the scope, vision, and stakeholder expectations.
• Creating a Compelling Architecture Vision: Learn how to collect insights and develop a vision that reflects business priorities, addresses stakeholder concerns, and satisfies enterprise strategy.
• Incorporating Security from the Start: Identify and integrate early-stage security considerations into your architectural approach to mitigate risks and meet compliance expectations.
• Delivering Phase A: Master the creation of essential documents like the Statement of Architecture Work and the Architecture Vision, which serve as the cornerstone of the project.
• Securing Early Engagement: Build the skills to communicate the Architecture Vision persuasively, ensuring support across stakeholders before deeper development begins.

By completing this unit, you’ll be able to confidently shape an Architecture Vision that positions your architecture project for successful execution and strategic impact.

This unit provides an in-depth look at the core development phases of the ADM and how to use them to produce coherent architectures.

• Phase B – Business Architecture: Capture and articulate business functions, processes, and capabilities that underpin the operating model and strategic direction.
• Phase C – Data and Application Architectures: Map out the information flows and systems that support business processes, meeting current needs and future flexibility.
• Phase D – Technology Architecture: Design the foundational technology infrastructure that enables the organisation’s information systems and supports scalability and security.
• Producing Deliverables with Purpose: Learn how to document Architecture Definitions that link clearly to business outcomes, enabling traceability and governance.
• Embedding Risk and Security: Incorporate risk assessments and security architecture to safeguard operational integrity and ensure resilience.
• Ensuring Architectural Cohesion: Understand how Phases B, C, and D interact to form a seamless architecture that supports enterprise goals holistically.

By mastering these phases, you’ll be prepared to deliver comprehensive and secure architectures that drive meaningful organisational outcomes.

This unit focuses on translating architectural plans into action, using TOGAF® ADM Phases E, F, and G to deliver measurable outcomes.

• Phase E – Implementation and Migration Planning: Learn to prioritise and sequence Work Packages based on value, dependencies, and risk, setting a realistic path for deployment.
• Designing Transition Architectures: Understand how to create interim states that guide change over time, enabling phased delivery without disrupting operations.
• Phase F – Migration Planning: Develop the skills to finalise the Architecture Roadmap, allocate resources, and plan project portfolios for execution.
• Phase G – Governance for Implementation: Explore the mechanisms that ensure project success with the approved architecture, including architecture contracts and performance tracking.
• Maintaining Architectural Integrity: Apply oversight techniques to ensure implementers stay integrated with architectural guidelines, while managing deviation and change.
• Security and Risk in Delivery: Incorporate security requirements and manage implementation risks through structured governance and proactive engagement.

After completing this unit, you’ll be ready to lead architecture implementation confidently, ensuring structure, oversight, and strategic value delivery.

This unit equips you with the tools and insight to oversee changes to architecture in a controlled, value-driven way.

• Recognising Triggers for Change: Identify internal and external drivers that necessitate updates to the enterprise architecture, from market shifts to technological evolution.
• Evaluating Change Requests: Understand how to assess change initiatives for relevance, impact, and strategic fit before incorporating them into the architecture.
• Stakeholder Collaboration in Change: Learn to engage stakeholders transparently, ensuring all parties are informed and supportive of changes.
• Maintaining Consistency Through Change: Apply structured methods to ensure that updates maintain architectural coherence, reduce risk, and support broader transformation agendas.
• Documenting Change Outcomes: Master the production of change logs, updated artefacts, and compliance reports to maintain transparency and traceability.

By mastering change management in architecture, you’ll ensure your frameworks remain responsive and relevant, without sacrificing structure or stability.

This unit focuses on the dynamic nature of requirements and how to manage them throughout the architecture lifecycle.

• Identifying Requirement Sources: Understand how business drivers, stakeholder expectations, regulations, and system constraints generate a wide range of architecture requirements.
• Prioritising and Structuring Inputs: Develop the skills to assess, organise, and prioritise incoming requirements to support effective decision-making.
• Integrating with ADM Phases: Learn how requirements are captured, tracked, and refined throughout every phase of the ADM.
• Producing Actionable Outputs: Master the creation of artefacts such as prioritised requirements lists and traceability matrices that provide transparency and accountability.
• Governance and Responsiveness: Explore how well-managed requirements reinforce architectural governance and enable flexibility in responding to change.

By the end of this unit, you’ll be able to manage complex, evolving requirements with clarity and rigour, ensuring your architecture remains relevant and strategically focused.

The final unit gives you the practical resources and tools needed to support the successful application of the ADM.

• Using the TOGAF Library: Familiarise yourself with supporting materials, including templates, reference models, and guides, available through The Open Group’s library.
• Applying Key Techniques: Learn to use Business Scenarios to explore needs, Compliance Assessments to validate outputs, and Migration Planning tools to define transformation pathways.
• Managing Architectural Assets: Understand how to organise and control architectural content through repositories and frameworks that enhance reuse, consistency, and governance.
• Working Across Architecture Levels: Develop the capability to navigate between strategic, segment, and capability architectures, ensuring consistency across viewpoints and project scales.
• Strengthening Structure and Adaptability: Apply frameworks such as the Content Metamodel and Implementation Factor Catalog to deliver architecture that is both rigorous and flexible.

By mastering these support tools and practices, you’ll be able to drive successful outcomes from architecture projects, ensuring consistency, quality, and strategic relevance throughout the ADM cycle.