The ADM, agility, and other approaches

Agile meets the ADM in Phase G

The guide places alignment between TOGAF and Agile development in Phase G, where projects are delivered. This is Agile development of projects, which must be distinguished from developing the Enterprise Architecture itself in an Agile way, covered by other guides.

In Phase G, the practitioner serves the stakeholders of Agile projects by guarding enterprise value: the mission, vision, goals, and investment roadmap. They do not deliver increments in place of the teams and do not block sprints.

What architecture brings to Agile teams

Architecture helps decide which products the enterprise must have, where their boundaries lie, and which constraints apply to the product owner. These constraints deliberately limit the team’s choices: this is where a product must bend to enterprise concerns, and a product owner’s local preference does not hold. In short, a good architecture defines the enterprise’s backlog.

Developing architecture for different purposes and at different levels of detail makes this possible: an architecture supporting strategy or portfolio reveals products and priorities, while an architecture supporting solution delivery sets the constraints, controls, and requirements teams follow sprint after sprint.

• Identify needed products and their boundaries
• Set the constraints that frame the product owner
• Feed the enterprise’s backlog

Enterprise agility and other frameworks

The standard points out that enterprise agility goes beyond Agile software development: it lets the enterprise respond to change with a stronger customer and product focus, greater efficiency, and better support for regulatory compliance. TOGAF responds through partitions, which split work into several initiatives, levels, which vary granularity and detail, and iteration. Dedicated guides go further: Applying the ADM Using Agile Sprints, Enabling Enterprise Agility, and the Open Agile Architecture standard.

Finally, most architecture frameworks mainly describe deliverables and say little about method. TOGAF can be used on its own, or have its generic deliverables replaced or extended by those of another framework. The architect tailors the method to fit the enterprise’s processes, combining it where needed with ITIL, CMMI, COBIT, PRINCE2, PMBOK, or MSP.