This series of blogs is totally dedicated to usage of TOGAF in REAL Time Scenario.The intention keeping so many blogs for TOGAF is to emphasize on each focus area as well to bring out outputs for desired deliverable corresponding to an implementation project.I have focussed mostly arround ADM of TOGAF as well used references to TOGAF methodology By OPEN Group.This series constitutes
Using TOGAF- Part2-Preliminary Phase
Using TOGAF- Part3- Architecture Vision
Using TOGAF- Part4- Business Architecture
Using TOGAF- Part5- Information System Architecture-Data
Using TOGAF- Part6- Information System Architecture-Application.
Using TOGAF- Part7- Technology Architecture
In order to begin as per TOGAF Enterprise means” Collection of organization that has a common set of goals”. Enterprise Architecture "can be used to denote both an enterprise encompassing all of its information and technology services, processes and infrastructure and specific domain with enterprise".
In our implementation i could see this definition coming to live with a insurance company one known for its insurance products and pension services with presence across all countries and having a sizeable customer base.It has its own IT department supported by its infrastructure departments cutting across all functional domains such as Claims, Recovery,Billing, Customer relationship,...etc.In common the goal is to maximize its market penetration and customer reach as well provide better quality of services, realize revenues and potential of emerging markets.
This company has many disparate systems that are developed on different platforms, but catering to the similar business functions e.g. Order & Buy (O&B) which allows the user to get a insurance quote and buy the same online. The number of business functions that could be performed using these online applications is limited and customers have to interact with call centers to avail most of the functionalities. This has resulted in having a huge call centre setup for the above purposes increasing the cost and maintenance overhead. TOGAF has been selected for its usage to lower software development ,support and maintain cost, increase portability of application, increase interoperability, increase enterprise security and for easier upgrade & exchange of system components and most important is that most of stakeholders was align towards TOGAF capability framework which includes Architecture Development Methods, Architecture guidelines and techniques, Architecture content framework ,Enterprise continuum and tools , and TOGAF reference Model .It has been established that DATA(structure of an organisation,logical and physical data assets and data management resources),Application(provide a blue print for the individual application systems to be upgraded or deployed),Technology(provide enterprise wide level logical software and hardware) and Business(provide business strategy,governance,organisation of key business processes ) has to be consolidated on a same framework .The need of the hour was to explore and establish a strong foundation for an enterprise architecture, governance and an architecture repository with deliverables and artifacts as well to show evolution from foundation architecture to organization specific architecture.
So to start with we formulated business objectives for such transformation exercise to be stated explicitly and after certain brainstorms and workshops with key stake holders we could make it out as
- Reduction of operational costs as much as possible.
- Increase in customer satisfaction that would result in more business.
- Transparent operations to customer through self service that would increase customer confidence thereby business.
- Update the technology landscape to provide better end user experience.
In the context of Order & Buy fit in those objectives it resulted into
- Reduce the infrastructure administration and application development overhead.
- Improve the customer experience and reduce the call centre work load.
- Reduce different applications used for Order & Buy service.
- Cost of IT infrastructure.
- Ability of the customer to self service as many operations as possible
Moving On to next Blog
Using TOGAF- Part2-Preliminary Phase
