posted 11 years ago
I haven't seen anyone say they use TOGAF, but I've been TOGAFish since I dunno when. I learnt TOGAF because I had been an architect for about 4 years now, and I was looking for a job, and I wanted some certification on my resume. Also, I wanted to get an idea of what other people mean when they say "architect" outside my company.
While studying TOGAF, I figured out that a lot of people use TOGAF in principle. TOGAF borrows a lot from a lot of good practices that people already follow. IOW, TOGAF is basically codification of industry wide architecture principles. So, a lot of people have been TOGAFian in principle, but probably not TOGAFian in the detail. So, if you ask me "do you know what kind of diagram to draw that addresses which features should be built first?" I will say "Umm.. maybe Value Chain diagram.. let me look it up in the book at get back to you". However, conceptually, (or as TOGAFians like to say, in the architecture continuum), I've been following TOGAF, since even before I was an architect. I have drawn diagrams to address specific concerns for specific stakeholders. Have I stuck to to the diagrams that TOGAF reccomends? No
Simon, you might want to look at TOGAF, if you haven't. I haven't read the whole book, but looking at your sample chapters, you might be a TOGAFian at heart. It has it's roots in big enterprise architecture, and parts of it is designed to enable "relay style development". However, the current version of TOGAF is more agile and iterative, and also addresses some of the things that you say. For example, previous versions of TOGAF simply prescribed what kidn of artifacts the EA should create, whereas the current one talks about adding a governance phase that drives you next iteration of architecture work. Which is basically TOGAFian-speak for "make sure the developers are sticking to your architecture, and if they are not figure out why and change your architecture accordingly"