Enterprise architecture is a management practice that was initially developed within the IT discipline to manage the complexity of IT systems, as well as the ongoing change constantly triggered by business and technology developments.
Today, one of the primary reasons EA is adopted in organizations worldwide is to promote alignment between business requirements and IT solutions. EA is expanding into other business disciplines, as well: to enable business strategy development, improve business efficiency, facilitate knowledge management and assist with organizational learning, to name a few.
In order to effectively implement EA in organizations, architects are increasingly looking for best practices and frameworks to assist them. One of the few architecture frameworks publicly available to guide architects in their implementation is TOGAF. Put simply, TOGAF is a comprehensive toolset for assisting in the acceptance, production, use and maintenance of enterprise architectures. It is based on an iterative process model supported by best practices and a reusable set of existing architectural assets. Since it was developed by members of The Open Group Architecture Forum more than 10 years ago, TOGAF has emerged as arguably the de facto standard framework for delivering enterprise architecture.