TOGAF® and Zachmanby Roger Evernden

The TOGAF documentation states that TOGAF is designed to be customized and to work with other EA approaches. But what it doesn’t really explain is how you go about reconciling two or more approaches. Although there are many architecture frameworks and there are plenty of practitioners who have their own interpretation on what EA is all about – the two most common approaches are probably TOGAF and Zachman. But The Open Group Architecture Framework and the Zachman Framework are quite different – so how do you actually reconcile the two of them?

That was the question a client asked me last week. This company had adopted enterprise architecture seven years ago, and was using an approach loosely based around the Zachman Framework. The head of EA decided that it would be useful to train all staff in TOGAF – to give some consistency of approach. But now the company had two different architecture frameworks and couldn’t figure out how to combine them.

If you are not familiar with the Zachman Framework, here is a brief introduction. John Zachman published details of his framework in the 1980s. He was one of the first people to talk about and apply the concept of a “framework” to enterprise architecture. Originally his framework was called a “Framework for Information Systems Architecture”, but it is now frequently known as the Zachman Framework. It is popular, partly because it has been used as the starting point for many derivative frameworks. The Zachman Framework is represented as a matrix or grid of cells (see the figure below):

Back to my topic: how do you reconcile the Zachman Framework with TOGAF?

The first issue is that neither the Zachman Framework or TOGAF is a framework!! Strictly speaking the Zachman “Framework” is an ontology or schema – it describes the elements that exist in an enterprisei; it is not a framework in the now commonly accepted ISO 42010 definition of the termii. And TOGAF is more a “framework of frameworks” than a single framework. So reconciling Zachman and TOGAF is not a question of choosing one over the other – it is more about combining the strengths from both to form a pragmatic and effective EA approach.

TOGAF Series #20 | ATL002:20

© Copyright 2015 Good e-Learning. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, resold, stored in a retrieval system, or distributed in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. Such requests for permission or any other comments relating to the material contained in this document may be submitted to: marketing@goodelearning.com. Good e-Learning is a trading name used by Educa-

tional Systems Ltd. The Open Group® and TOGAF® are registered trademarks of the Open Group in the United States and other countries

Figure 1: The Zachman Framework for EA – version 3.0 (2011)

© Copyright 2015 Good e-Learning. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, resold, stored in a retrieval system, or distributed in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. Such requests for permission or any other comments relating to the material contained in this document may be submitted to: marketing@goodelearning.com. Good e-Learning is a trading name used by Educa-

tional Systems Ltd. The Open Group® and TOGAF® are registered trademarks of the Open Group in the United States and other countries

It will be helpful to use an analogy to help explain how you go about doing this. Imagine you are in the kitchen and about to prepare a meal. You can think of a framework as equivalent to a recipe – a recipe tells you all of the ingredients you need, and what you need to do to make it; a framework tells you the factors you need to consider and how you would use them to create or change an architecture.

Now say you are planning a dinner party with some friends, so you are using a combination of several recipes – you have some starters, some mains, and some desserts. You’ve thought carefully about this, and you’ve made sure that there is something to meet everyone’s tastes, that there will be plenty of food for everyone, and that it is well within your capabilities to prepare the food and have it all ready on time. The EA equivalent is that you need several frameworks to address the full range of stakeholder concerns. Each framework serves a slightly different purpose – just like the difference recipes. You might have a content framework to keep track of all of the components you are changing, the artifacts and work outputs. You might use a capability or skills framework to check that you have all of the skills you need or that you’ve covered all of the roles needed for the project. And you might have a process/responsibilities framework to make sure that someone is responsible for each of the tasks and actions. All of these frameworks are necessary as they each serve a slightly different purpose. It is also important that all of the frameworks work together, just as the recipes need to work together.

How to you make sure that everything works together? The simple answer is that all of the recipes start at the same point: they all require quantities and ingredients; they all describe the process for making the recipe; and they all use utensils and cookers to mix, bake, boil, roast or prepare the food. They will all then need crockery, cutlery, glasses, napkins, tables and chairs to serve the food.

The EA equivalent is a set of factors that are common for all EA approaches and frameworks – in the same way that it is the same set of ingredients that we use in different ways to make different recipes. I don’t have time here to describe all of the ingredients or factors for EA, but I can give a couple of examples.

The most basic factor is about the subject matter or areas covered by EA. In both TOGAF and Zachman the main focus is the enterprise. In TOGAF this is broken down into the four high-level domains or architectures: business, data, application and technology; and if you look carefully you will find similar high-level categories in the Zachman Framework. Each high-level domain is then broken down into sub-categories or sub-domains. For example, business might include process, product, event, business rule and capability; technology might include hardware, platforms, stacks, and networks. As soon as you take TOGAF and Zachman back to this fundamental factor you will see the overlaps, similarities and differences. Starting from these categories or subject areas you can now compare these, and any other architecture frameworks.

Another basic factor covers the various processes for developing, changing and governing architectures. TOGAF explicitly describes the ADM, and the documentation also covers many other processes – such as governance or the use of certain techniques. In Zachman there are implied processes – for example, the process of taking requirements from an executive perspective and tracing these through a business management, architect, engineer, and technician perspectives to create the enterprise. Once again – by recognizing that process is a distinct factor, and by listing the types of process, it becomes possible to compare Zachman with TOGAF.

© Copyright 2015 Good e-Learning. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, resold, stored in a retrieval system, or distributed in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. Such requests for permission or any other comments relating to the material contained in this document may be submitted to: marketing@goodelearning.com. Good e-Learning is a trading name used by Educa-

tional Systems Ltd. The Open Group® and TOGAF® are registered trademarks of the Open Group in the United States and other countries

The full set of eight factors are shown in the figure belowiii:

Zachman and TOGAF are both multi-dimensional. They both try to cover all of the topics and factors that are relevant in EA, but neither of them explicitly describe the fundamental factors that they use as they starting point. It is like having recipes without knowing the difference between vegetables, fruits, spices, meats or fish! My research suggests that there are eight fundamental factors or dimensions that are found in every EA approach! It is difficult to think about or visualize more than three factors or dimensions at one time. So it is no surprise that the Zachman Framework and TOGAF can be difficult to comprehend at first glance, because they are showing all eight dimensions at once!!!

How do you reconcile TOGAF and Zachman? By starting from the basics – by starting with the eight fundamental factors used in EA, and using these to create a set of multiple, integrated architecture frameworks.i If you want to read more about the Zachman Framework,

the best and most authoritative sources is this article on the evolution of the Zachman Framework: https://www.zachman.com/ea-articles-reference/54-the-zachman-framework-evolution

ii http://www.iso-architecture.org/ieee-1471/afs/ iii The eight factors were described in detail in my book,

Information First; the 2nd edition of this will be published later this year with the new title: Enterprise Architecture – the Fundamental Factors.