TOGAF Architecture Development Method (ADM) provides a structured, iterative process for defining, planning, and governing enterprise architectures across an organization. Within the Fractal Organization Agile Model (FOAM), the ADM is strategically tailored to balance structured architectural rigor with FOAM’s agility, purpose-driven alignment, and value optimization. This strategic tailoring ensures that the ADM phases are applied in a way that maximizes relevance, responsiveness, and adaptability across FOAM’s three key layers: Strategic, Architectural, and Operational.

In FOAM, TOGAF ADM is split into three overarching objectives:

1. Defining the Right Architecture – Tailoring the ADM to ensure that the architecture aligns with FOAM’s core purpose and strategic vision.
2. Defining the Architecture Right – Ensuring that the architecture’s design is robust, aligned with purpose, and scalable.
3. Implementing, Governing, Learning – Adapting and governing the architecture to ensure continuous alignment, learning, and responsiveness.

This approach allows FOAM to make the ADM phases more contextualized, agile, and actionable, embedding purpose and adaptability into every phase while preserving architectural integrity.

1. Defining the Right Architecture

In FOAM, Defining the Right Architecture focuses on establishing a strategic foundation for the architecture, ensuring alignment with the organization’s purpose, core values, and long-term goals. This phase uses TOGAF’s Preliminary Phase and Phase A (Architecture Vision) to develop a purpose-driven architecture vision that aligns with FOAM’s **Golden Circle (Why, How, What)** and Value Stick principles.

Key Phases and Tailoring in FOAM

• Preliminary Phase:
  • FOAM Tailoring: In FOAM, the Preliminary Phase goes beyond establishing general governance and principles. It aligns the architecture strategy explicitly with the Why of the organization, embedding purpose into the architecture’s foundations. The focus is on defining the guiding principles that reflect both strategic objectives and the organization’s mission, ensuring the architecture is built to reinforce the organization’s core values.
  • Actionable Adjustments: FOAM adapts this phase to include the Value Stick framework, allowing early-stage decisions to consider customer needs, employee engagement, and value creation across stakeholders.
  • Outcome: The output is a purpose-driven architectural framework that guides all subsequent phases, ensuring that architectural decisions are both meaningful and value-oriented.
• Phase A: Architecture Vision:
  • FOAM Tailoring: FOAM uses Phase A to articulate a clear, purpose-aligned architecture vision that aligns with both short-term initiatives and long-term strategic goals. The architecture vision is developed by defining the Value Proposition Map and Strategic Alignment with the Golden Circle, ensuring that the architecture supports the organization’s mission and resonates with its stakeholders.
  • Agility and Contextualization: In FOAM, this vision is not a rigid roadmap but a flexible guide that allows for iterative adjustments based on Sense & Respond feedback, ensuring relevance in a rapidly changing environment.
  • Outcome: A high-level Architecture Vision document that includes purpose-aligned goals, a value proposition framework, and a strategic roadmap for architectural development.

FOAM’s Added Value in Defining the Right Architecture

• Contextualization with Purpose: By integrating the Golden Circle, FOAM ensures that defining the right architecture is deeply tied to the organization’s core purpose, aligning every architectural decision with strategic goals.
• Enhanced Responsiveness: FOAM’s Sense & Respond mechanisms make this phase adaptable, allowing real-time adjustments based on feedback from stakeholders and changing conditions, ensuring the architecture remains strategically aligned.

2. Defining the Architecture Right

Once the right architecture has been defined, FOAM focuses on Defining the Architecture Right, using TOGAF’s Business, Data, Application, and Technology Architecture Phases (Phases B, C, and D). This stage involves designing the detailed architecture components necessary for sustainable and scalable operations, ensuring they align with FOAM’s purpose-driven principles and are optimized for adaptability and value creation.

Key Phases and Tailoring in FOAM

• Phase B: Business Architecture:
  • FOAM Tailoring: FOAM tailors Business Architecture to map directly to the Value Stick levers—WTP (Willingness to Pay), Price, Cost, and WTS (Willingness to Sell). This ensures that the business processes and organizational structures designed within this phase are explicitly linked to value creation, reducing operational costs and enhancing customer experience.
  • Agility and Actionability: Business Architecture in FOAM is not static. Using Sense & Respond, FOAM allows teams to adjust business processes and organizational structures as customer needs evolve, maintaining relevance and optimizing efficiency.
  • Outcome: A flexible business architecture that maximizes stakeholder value while supporting purpose-driven operations, documented with capability maps, process models, and functional requirements aligned with strategic objectives.
• Phase C: Information Systems Architectures (Data and Application):
  • FOAM Tailoring: FOAM tailors Data and Application Architecture to enable real-time data-driven decision-making and agile product development, critical for adapting to changing customer needs. By integrating Yodl Guilds as Enabling Teams, FOAM facilitates decentralized expertise, ensuring data models and applications support a wide range of team-specific needs without creating dependencies or bottlenecks.
  • Modular and Agile Design: The architecture is designed to be modular and scalable, enabling rapid adjustments to data flows and application functionalities based on Sense & Respond feedback from operational teams.
  • Outcome: Data and Application Architectures that are modular, responsive, and optimized for agility, supporting efficient, autonomous team operations and continuous value delivery.
• Phase D: Technology Architecture:
  • FOAM Tailoring: FOAM enhances Technology Architecture by focusing on flexibility and scalability, ensuring the technology stack supports autonomous, Stream-Aligned Teams with minimal dependencies. Technology choices are made with FOAM’s Value Stick framework in mind, ensuring cost-effectiveness and value optimization.
  • Decentralized Enablement: Platform Teams within FOAM play a key role in implementing Technology Architecture, providing shared services that minimize cognitive load and support the agile delivery of value.
  • Outcome: A resilient, scalable technology infrastructure that aligns with business goals, promotes autonomy, and reduces operational friction, documented with technology blueprints and deployment guidelines.

FOAM’s Added Value in Defining the Architecture Right

• Contextualized with Value Optimization: FOAM integrates the Value Stick into architecture design, ensuring every component of the architecture is tied to value maximization.
• Support for Decentralized Teams: FOAM leverages Yodl Guilds and Platform Teams to decentralize architectural support, enabling autonomous teams to operate effectively while maintaining alignment with the larger architecture.

3. Implementing, Governing, and Learning

The final objective within FOAM’s use of the ADM is Implementing, Governing, and Learning. This phase involves executing the architecture, ensuring compliance with governance standards, and enabling continuous learning and adaptation through TOGAF’s Phases E, F, G, and H.

Key Phases and Tailoring in FOAM

• Phase E: Opportunities and Solutions:
  • FOAM Tailoring: FOAM enhances this phase by focusing on value-aligned opportunity assessment, determining which solutions align most closely with strategic objectives and the organization’s Why. Each opportunity is evaluated not just for feasibility but for its contribution to the overall mission.
  • Agile Implementation Planning: Rather than committing to a single implementation approach, FOAM uses agile, iterative plans, allowing Stream-Aligned Teams to prioritize high-value initiatives and pivot as necessary based on real-time feedback.
  • Outcome: A prioritized, purpose-aligned implementation roadmap that supports rapid, incremental delivery and continuous assessment of value.