I ran into our SWAT team guy for integration after a meeting one day. He came from an organization with a more mature enterprise architecture practice. He also happens to be our resident expert in Archimate. I was hoping to pick his brain and see whether what I was doing a) was on the right track and b) would help him and the rest of the SWAT team in any way.
“I have something to show you.”
We wandered back to his cubicle. He shook his mouse a bit and unlocked his screen saver.
“I found a really nifty tool called Archi. I’ve been using this to document our enterprise.”
He opened up our Technology Reference Model (TRM). He and the other architects built it a while back and the SWAT Team Lead introduced a draft to us during the TOGAF certification training.
Goldmine!
The Technical Reference Model (TRM) in TOGAF serves as the high level model and taxonomy for the architecture. Basically a high level model of what we have, where it fits, and what we are going to call it.
Your IT department should have something like this lying around their shop. Or at least in their heads. Our draft was based on IT’s service catalog.
And there are many ways to visualize this model.
Ohio State provides a nice one.
Idea2Prod also provides excellent examples of a TRM + other diagrams and graphics
Since I am working in a segment (and a business segment at that), I wasn’t worried about creating an entire Technical Reference Model. That rightly belongs in your IT department. I am, however, worried about particular sections of that model. The sections in red.
Behind each of those little boxes is a lot more detail.
Except for Learning Management and Training under Enterprise Applications.
The SWAT team left that for me.
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