Architect's Toolkit Overview
Channel: The Open Group
Date: 2021-08-05

Toolkit Overview by Steve Nunn, President and CEO of The Open Group. 

Welcome to Toolkit Tuesday, where we highlight the various components and leading experts of the Architect’s Toolkit, a collated portfolio of the most pertinent technology standards for Enterprise Architects. 

During the series, I will be calling on a number of recognized experts who will bring their particular insights on how to most effectively use the various tools in the Architects toolkit. We will have a mix of interviews, panel sessions, and pre-recorded presentations along the way 

Today, we’ll demonstrate the “Better Together” foundation of the Architect’s Toolkit with two of our standards:
- the TOGAF Standard, which is an Enterprise Architecture framework that delivers efficient and effective Enterprise Architecture to support organizational transformation for different use-cases and architecture styles, and
- the Open Agile Architecture, which provides guidance on how an organization should address Digital and Business Transformation in an Agile manner. 

We will illustrate the synergy and value of bringing them together to provide an improved overall outcome when driving Digital Transformation. While all standards of The Open Group are designed so they can be adopted independently of one another, the greatest value for an organization can be derived when they are used in unison — the sum of the parts should be greater than the whole.

In the Architect's Toolkit, we have collated a portfolio of the most pertinent ones for Architects together in one place. For most of these tools, Certification from The Open Group is also available so practitioners can demonstrate that they have the skills required, and recruiters can take the guess work out of the recruitment process — all backed up by our Open Badges program. 

At The Open Group, we have a proud record of creating and maintaining Standards, Frameworks, Reference Architectures, Tools, Models, and Guides that have proven to be invaluable to the Enterprise Architects community, whether they are industry-wide or aligned to specific vertical sectors. 

What they all have in common though is that they have been created by leading experts in their associated field, based on industry best practices adopting a thought leadership approach, ensuring they meet the exacting needs of their audience. 

These documents reside in The Open Group Library, and represent an extensive new body of knowledge that Enterprise Architecture practitioners can use to support the development of Enterprise Architectures, whether as part of their Digital Transformation activities, or otherwise. 

To illustrate the synergy between standards, here we see the value the TOGAF® and Open Agile Architecture™ Standards bring together, providing an improved overall outcome when used to drive Digital Transformation. 

What's in the toolkit for enterprise architects?
- TOGAF® Standard and Framework
- Open Agile Architecture™ (O-AA) Standard
- ArchiMate® 3.1 Specification
- IT4IT™ Reference Architecture
- Open FAIR™ (Factor Analysis of Information Risk) Body of Knowledge (BoK)
- Risk Taxonomy (O-RT) Standard
- Risk Analysis (O-RA) Standard
- Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA) core principles
- Digital Practitioner Body of Knowledge™ Standard (DPBoK Standard)
- Microservices Architecture (MSA)

To learn more, visit: www.opengroup.org