practice

TOGAF

An enterprise architecture framework whose central element is the ADM, an iterative cycle from vision through business, data, application and technology architecture to implementation governance.

frameworkadmgovernance

Its genuine contributions are a shared vocabulary, a systematic checklist of concerns that stops things being forgotten, and a repeatable structure for organisations that had none.

Its genuine risk is that the framework becomes the work. TOGAF applied literally generates a very large volume of documentation, and the artefact count is easy to mistake for progress. The framework itself says to tailor it; that instruction is the most-skipped page.

The pragmatic position: use the ADM phases as a checklist of what to think about, use the vocabulary so people mean the same things, and produce only the artefacts someone will read. Framework knowledge is not a substitute for architectural reasoning, and interviewers who ask about TOGAF are usually probing whether you know that.