Architecture Development Method
TOGAF's iterative cycle for developing enterprise architecture, which is valuable as a checklist of concerns and harmful when followed literally.
The cycle runs: preliminary setup, architecture vision, business architecture, information systems architecture (data and application), technology architecture, opportunities and solutions, migration planning, implementation governance, and change management — with requirements management at the centre throughout.
Its value is as a checklist of things that get forgotten. Stakeholder concerns, the gap between current and target state, migration sequencing, and the governance needed for implementation are all genuinely necessary and all routinely skipped in practice.
Its danger is literal application. A full pass produces a large volume of documentation over many months, and by the time the target architecture is described the business has moved. The method's reputation for producing shelfware is earned, and it comes from completeness-driven use rather than from the method itself.
The pragmatic reading: use the phases as prompts, iterate in weeks rather than quarters, and model only to the depth a live decision requires. Enterprise architecture is most useful when attached to a specific programme — a rationalisation, a migration, a compliance obligation — and least useful when performed as an exercise in describing the estate.
And note that the vocabulary matters commercially even where the method is not followed: certification and terminology are common currency in large organisations and in supplier conversations.