By Loren K. Baynes, Director, Global Marketing Communications, The Open Group
On Wednesday, April 27, The Open Group London 2016 began with the second TOGAF® User Group Meeting held in the conservatory of Central Hall Westminster. Steve Nunn, President and CEO of The Open Group, opened the meeting with a warm welcome to the community. He stated a session like this is ‘trailblazing’ the way for the development of TOGAF®, an Open Group standard, which now has reached over 55,000 total certifications!
Following the success of the inaugural TOGAF® User Group Meeting at the San Francisco event in January, this session focused around an ‘Open Debate’, chaired by Terry Blevins, a Fellow of The Open Group and member of The Open Group Governing Board. He stressed that as the community continues to grow, it is so important to hear real-world experiences of those using the standard to get a broader perspective on what works, what doesn’t, and how it can evolve. A heated discussion ensued, as the debaters Chris Armstrong, President, APG, and Paul Homan, Enterprise Architect, IBM, argued their case on either side of the proposition:
“TOGAF® ADM is not agile and therefore there is a need to change the specification to make it agile.”
After a series of audience questions, the session ended with a vote, which revealed that more people had been persuaded by the ‘for’ argument, to change the ADM spec, however the ‘against’ argument still had more support in the room. This conclusion demonstrated that there was a display of two sound and compelling arguments for each side, and Terry took note that more time for questions would be needed at the next debate!
Two breakout sessions were then held: ‘The Roles of People in TOGAF® Driven Architecture Initiatives’ from Len Fehskens, Editor, Journal of Enterprise Architecture, AEA, and ‘Using TOGAF® for Digital Business Transformation’ from Sonia Gonzalez, Architecture Forum Director, The Open Group. These sessions were used to open up a dialogue between users, to discuss their ideas and experiences around TOGAF®.
The afternoon continued with various tracks on the Internet of Things, EA Practice, Architecture Methods and Techniques, Security Requirements and ArchiMate® Case Studies and Workshop. ArchiMate is an Open Group standard.
A special thank you to our sponsors and exhibitors: avolution, BiZZdesign, Good e-Learning, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), Troux by planview, Association of Enterprise Architects (AEA), ITSMF UK, qualiware, Van Haren Publishing, The ITSM Review
Please join us at The Open Group Austin 2016 in July which will also include the next TOGAF® User Group Meeting!
@theopengroup #ogLON #ogAUS
Loren K. Baynes, Director, Global Marketing Communications, joined The Open Group in 2013 and spearheads corporate marketing initiatives, primarily the website, blog, media relations and social media. Loren has over 20 years experience in brand marketing and public relations and, prior to The Open Group, was with The Walt Disney Company for over 10 years. Loren holds a Bachelor of Business Administration from Texas A&M University. She is based in the US.