 Hello, I'm Steve Nunn, President and CEO of the Open Group. Welcome to Toolkit Tuesday, where we highlight the various components and leading experts of the Architects Toolkit, a collated portfolio of the most pertinent technology standards for enterprise architects. During the series, I'll be calling on a number of recognised experts who will bring their particular insights on how to most effectively use the various tools in the Architects Toolkit. We'll have a mix of interviews, panel sessions and pre-recorded presentations along the way. While all standards of the Open Group are designed so they can be adopted independently of one another, the greatest value for an organisation can be derived when they're used in unison, for some of the parts should be greater than the whole. In the Architects Toolkit, we have collated a portfolio of the most pertinent ones for architects, together, all 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 guesswork out of the recruitment process, all backed up by our Open Badges programme. Chief of the Architects, when my eldest son was about three years old, he came home from a nursery school having learnt about the jobs that mummies and daddies did. He'd heard about train drivers, doctors, shopkeepers and teachers. And so he asked me when I came home what my job was. Without thinking I replied Chief Architect. He ran around the room excitedly proclaiming I was Chief of the Architects. Those extra two little words seemed at the time endearing and funny. Later on I realised there was real wisdom in that statement. I may have been the Chief Architect entitled but I definitely wasn't the biggest or strongest architect, just the leader of the team. It's a habit we develop. It's too easy to assume we need to be the most knowledgeable or to be the authority on every single architectural subject. Accountability may rest with us, but the captain of a sports team doesn't have to be the best player in all positions. Acknowledging this, I believe, leads to the best architectural team-built solutions. Hello everyone and welcome to the first Toolkit Tuesday of 2022. Wherever you are in the world I hope you're safe and keeping well and I hope that the year has started off well for you. Just a few housekeeping points before we get going. Those of you who are perhaps unfamiliar with the WebEx tool we're using today, please note that to ask questions of our speaker today, please use the Q&A channel. That's the Q&A channel and to find that if it's not on your screen already, go into the bottom right hand corner of your screen and click on the three dots that are there and Q&A will appear as one option, click on that and that will open it. So please use that for questions for our speaker, that's where I'll be looking for the questions. And please use the chat channel to chat amongst yourselves. And one thing I'd really encourage you to do, we like to do is let us know where you're joining us from. This is very much a global event and it's great to see where you're all from. So use that to say hi and where you're from and anything else you want to communicate with your fellow attendees. So without further ado, our topic today is Agile Architecture and particularly the Open Agile Architecture standard of the Open Group. And to take us through a brief summary of that standard and the topic in general, no one better than my long-term colleague, Mr. Andrew Josie. Andrew is VP of Standards and Certification at the Open Group, overseeing all certification and testing programs that we do. He also manages the standards process for us and since joining the company in 1996, Andrew has been closely involved with the standards development, certification and testing activities of the Open Group. He's led many standards development projects including specification and certification development for the TOGAF, ARCUMATE, POSIX and UNIX programs. He's a member of IEEE, USINIX, Floss UK and the Association of Enterprise Architects, the AEA. And today he's going to, as I say, take us through the Open Agile Architecture standard of the Open Group at a fairly high level given the time that we have available, but it's going to be a great session, I know. So without further ado, a warm welcome from the Open Group please for Andrew Josie. Welcome, Andrew. Okay, here we go. Hopefully everybody can see the right thing. Welcome all and thanks for joining me today. As Steve mentioned, I'm going to be talking today about Open Agile Architecture. That's a customer focused and product centered approach for architecting with agility. So it's obviously part of the architecture toolkit that we talk about at the Open Group specifically focused on architecting with agility. And at the end of the session, I'm also going to be introducing the Open Group's training and certification program in that area. So I'm going to talk you through a few topics and then we'll sort of wrap up with introducing the latest certification program we've introduced, which is on the topic of Open Agile Architecture. So these are the topics I'm going to cover in today's session. I hope they will take about 20 minutes and give us some time for some Q&A. We'll start by looking at what we mean by agile and what an agile enterprise is. We'll have a brief look at the standard itself and then we'll consider what role architecture plays in agile at scale and finish off, as I mentioned, with an introduction to the certification program. Let's start today by introducing agility and agile architecture as the context for this discussion about Open Agile Architecture. You see the first statement here, that's widely accepted as a given. I don't think anybody's going to disagree with that, that these days organizations need to demonstrate agility in order to remain competitive. But what we have been seeing is obviously this need for agility is often achieved at the expense of the benefits of enterprise architecture. So we've seen deployments out there that often take place without a strategic overview, without reducing complexity, without change analysis, without considering adaptability and so on. So that's what we want to address when we talk about agile architecture. So what do we mean formally by agile architecture? Here's a formal definition here is actually one that's taken from one of the Gartner hype cycle reports. And we mean architecture practices that embrace the principles and values of agile. So this is about achieving a balance between full agility and total planning. So it means that in this context, it means architecting using concepts such as minimum viable architecture, continuous architecture, intentional architecture and so on. And we'll look at a little bit of that as we go along in this brief presentation today. Before we jump in further, let's look at the standard itself, give you a bit of information what it is, where you can find it and so on. It's available in a number of formats, PDF, EPUB and available online. What I'm showing here on this slide is the online edition. You can access that directly if you go to pubs.opengroup.org slash architecture slash O-AA slash standard. And at the end of the session, I'll give you the location where you can download other formats and also find the URL if you've not been able to pick that up from the talk here. Let's look briefly at what the standard covers and its contents. This is one slide that really tries to give you the sort of the approach in a single slide of what we're trying to do here. So that's an approach to architect that scale with agility. It's directed at the experienced architect. It's not for beginners. It assumes a certain level of expertise. It provides professionals with architecture practices that embrace the principles and values of agile. So as we did with the definition of agile enterprise, that's exactly what we mean. So as we show in this figure, it's designed to support both digital transformation and agile transformation, hand-in-hands, so to speak, so you see the two hands going together there. What do we mean by digital enterprise and agile enterprise? Well, for a digital enterprise, we mean an enterprise that applies digital technology in a number of ways. So they could be applying digital technology to adapt or change the strategy of the enterprise, to adapt or change the product or service it markets, to adapt or change the experience it delivers to its customers, employees and so on, or to adapt or change its way of working. What do we mean by agile enterprise? An enterprise that senses change in its environment early and acts upon them decisively and rapidly. The standard itself is divided into two parts. The first is known as the OAA Core. You can think of this as the foundations as we show on this slide. So it's the foundations of the standard. It explains why an enterprise needs to conduct a dual digital and agile transformation. It explains what we mean by agile architecture development. It includes concepts such as intentional architecture, continuous architecture and how to add architect agile transformations. It also describes agile governance and has a set of 16 axioms for the practice of agile architecture. So they sort of laying down the guidelines, almost not quite the rules, but the principles, things that you should consider when you're adopting an agile architecture approach. Part two develops topics that were introduced in part one in greater detail. So it includes chapters on topics such as agile strategy, agile organization and software architecture. It includes content from a couple of different perspectives. So there's the perspectives of what the enterprise does, such as it introduces experience design, journey mapping and then the other perspective is what the enterprise is and it looks at product architecture and operations architecture as two examples. I want to move on now and talk about the characteristics of agile and the agile enterprise in the context of the open agile architecture standard. And by characteristics, I mean the properties and traits that you would see. So firstly, what do we mean by agile? Well, these are some quotes that I've taken from Forbes. Initially, they see that agile was seen as a set of practices relevant really for software development and I think everybody's familiar with the agile manifesto. And what we've seen is agile emerge more into a global movement that's gone beyond software into areas such as architecture as we're considering here at the open group. And that's really been driven by the realization that the only way for organizations to cope with today's marketplace is by becoming more agile. So really this is about enabling organizations to master continuous change and permitting them to flourish in a world that's increasingly volatile as we've seen sort of events that unfold such as the pandemic, something that we didn't expect and obviously a lot of enterprises have had to adapt very quickly and the more sort of agile enterprises have been more successful of that than perhaps others. So this has led to the concept of the agile enterprise. So in order to become agile, the enterprise has to make a few changes. You know, it has to shift from siloed work to into the interdisciplinary collaboration because what we found is that digital technology is the biggest impact when it's leveraged by cross-functional teams. It must empower decentralized decision making, enabling the enterprise to act faster. That's what we meant, making faster decisions, addressing issues and changes in the market. That's what we call in the standard business agility. That's what we call in the section all about what it means to be, to have business agility. In order to succeed as an agile enterprise, it has to often address the organizational and soft aspects. So we see organizational structures becoming flattened. We see autonomous cross-functional teams, often named feature teams or squads. We see cross-functional teams, team roles emerging. So you see communities of practice also known as chapters or guilds. We see techniques such as the inverse Conway manoeuvre being adopted to set up organizational structures. So these are all topics that we cover in the standard itself. What do we mean about accountability and management systems for an agile organization? Well, accountability in an agile organization is not about controlling people. It's about a two-way exchange where you agree to deliver something to another person. So in an agile organization, employees are accountable to their peers, their manager, their clients. Managers are accountable to their teams, the board of directors and so on. The management system basically cascades goals down at all levels of the organization and promotes a constructive dialogue. And the reward system recognizes individual performance while promoting collaboration. Let's now look at the role of architecture in helping us succeed with agile-led scale deployments. As I mentioned in the synopsis for this talk, you know, we talk a lot about big upfront design and things that need to change. And we'll look at that in a bit of detail now. So an important concept to understand when you're looking at agile architecture is the concept of emergence. In short, this is something that appears when a complex system operates. And in general, when we're dealing with architecture, we are dealing with complex systems. Simplifying it a bit, an example of an undesirable outcome is the pollution that results from running your cars. What we're trying to do with architecture is to develop systems that deliver predictable and desirable outcomes. To mitigate undesirable complexity growth, what agile architecting does is recommend using three levers. And the following three levers, there's modularity to facilitate team autonomy, increased resilience, standardization to facilitate product or operating model reconfiguration, and architecting for a built-in responsiveness to change. So that's, you know, if you can build in future-proofing your solutions, then you can be more responsive to change. One thing about emergence and favoring emergence doesn't mean it's impossible to steer the evolution of the enterprise. And there are techniques that we recommend in the standard such as setting up guardrails rather than mandates that help in that respect. So as I mentioned, although big upfront design is incompatible with agile ways of working, there are times when some intentional architecture is needed and valuable. For example, if you were setting up a business that wanted to support a fast international expansion, there's an example from the standard itself, questions that should be addressed by architecture would be along the lines of what activities you should keep centralized or decentralized, what scope and setup should local country operations have, etc. So as noted here, although intentional architecture, when part of agile architecture should focus on, so as noted here, though, intentional architecture should focus on the essence of a system. And what we see in agile architecture is a leaner approach generally over sort of traditional architecture. So we're combining intentionality and emergence. So in agile architecture, as I mentioned, intentional architecture should be simple, focused and compact, because it's likely to evolve. So it's talking about evolvability, which I mentioned on the next slide. So investing in too detailed a model would be wasteful. So there's a lot of the just enough architecture and we recommend that it be guided by guardrails imposed by governance rather than hard mandates. What do we mean by evolvability? So that's the ability for architecture to be changed or evolved over time. Over time, there are reasons for this such as the fast pace of change in the industry that you might be in. And in the standard, we provide a number of techniques and number of best practices that can be used to ensure revolvability. For example, as I've mentioned a couple of times already use of guardrails rather than mandates, but also things like continuous architecture, which facilitates incremental changes to the product or platform architectures. Architecture refactoring, that refers to architecture restructuring that occurs when architecture evolves. So these are some of the best practices that we include in the standard for how to adapt your architecture techniques to best support agile. Final topic I want to cover today is the open group training and certification program for open agile architecture practitioner. And I've got a few slides on this and we'll just talk through on this first slide what the target audience is for this practitioner certification. So basically it's for any role involved in digital transformation at an architectural level. So it's quite open in that respect. That includes people who consider themselves agile, business managers, digital managers, enterprise, architects, etc. The balloon there we have the sort of topic areas that we cover and I'll come back to that a little bit when we look briefly at the syllabus. These are the benefits of this certification program. It provides a standard approach for digital transformation. It provides best practices for digital transformation and digital products. Big emphasis on digital here with agility as we mentioned the two going hand in hand. It also provides an understanding of different types of agile architecture approaches and when you might apply them because there's more than one one approach that you can take with all these things. These are the takeaways for individuals as we see them so that you would come away with an understanding of the need for architecture with agility. The ability to apply best practices and we try to have a focus on the application of the standard in the course. So it's not just learning facts. It's learning how also to apply things and the ability to deliver agile architecture. As we mentioned in support of digital transformation and also to learn the common language between EA's and Agilis. So one thing that we do in the open group is obviously value highly is the common language. The common tax on them is this is sort of common way of speaking and getting the benefits from the standards by having been able to talk with your peers and colleagues in that common language. This is the course outline the syllabus. What we've done is to take 12 units and that take a slice across the standard so we're not following the structure of the standard which if you look at it really is some as I mentioned there's the foundation and there's an expansion of it. Probably it's more that's more like something you will dip in as a reference into the standard for referencing particular topics. What we've done there is to slice across that into a syllabus that will actually take you on a learning progression to give you all the best practices and the skills hopefully you'll need to take away to apply the standard in its best form. The Open Agile Architecture Practitioner exam is delivered by Pearson View. It is a closed book and as this is a practitioner level the past mark is set quite high at 70%. Training will be available from the open group accredited trainers. We've just recently launched the program and we expect to bring on our first accredited trainers shortly. We also have self-study materials available from the open group and its learning management systems. You can go to our shop and you can look up just look up for self for study materials and you can locate where we offer an online course. And as I mentioned at the start, lastly, if you want to download a copy of the standard, you can do so by visiting the open group library. Just tap in either O-AA is probably the simplest thing or Open Agile Architecture and it will give you a match of all the documents. So that's really what I wanted to wrap up today in today's session and obviously we'll be happy to take questions for the remaining time with Steve. It's obviously been a very brief introduction, a very brief skim over the top of a lot of topics. Not really much time to go into the detail that each of them deserve but hopefully you'll get the time to go and download the standard and take a look in more detail. Andrew, thanks very much for that run through. There's so much more you could have said and hopefully people will take the time to go and find out more by looking at the links that you've presented in your slides and we'll come back to that one more time. But let's get to some questions in the limited time that we have available. The first one that's come in here, is there a minimum experience requirement for certification? There isn't a minimum experience although we do as we say sort of we do recognize it's more for the experienced architect. Partly if you pick up the standard it assumes you have quite a bit of knowledge and sort of doesn't go down into it. It's not assumed it's written for somebody who's never thought about architecture before. It talk about a lot of techniques and there's a lot of references so it assumes you're going to go off and read up. It's not sort of designed as a this is your first introduction to agile architecture. It's sort of assuming you're more for the experienced professional should we say. Although there is nothing to stop anybody taking the course or anything there's no prerequisites to coming into the program. Thanks Andrew. So next question. What is the journey map for those who have Togaf 9 Foundation certification? And how does the Open Agile Architecture Standard and the certification program fit with the Togaf Standard, the Arcumate Standard and DP BOC? That's a question we get asked often. So what's the answer to that please Andrew? First of all how does it how does the Open Agile Architecture Standard relate to other standards like Togaf, Arcumate and DP BOC you mentioned? Well that's an easy one and really it's all about it's complementary. So it's as I mentioned during the talk it's one part of what is what is known as the Architect Toolkit. So which is you know our portfolio of best practices. You know the best practices for Agile EA delivery and EA supporting the Agile Enterprise. It's very complementary to the Togaf Standard. The two can be used together or separately very much down to the architect's choice. In fact I had one colleague tell me earlier I asked him this question. He said well consider you're a doctor and you would learn about lots of different ways to treat your patients. So really if you're an architect it's just part of the ways that you might treat. Let's consider your stakeholders, your patients in this example. And it really depends on the situation in the enterprise which techniques are best to use. You know it fits well basically with the Togaf Standard. You can use it with or without the Togaf Standard. But often it's best to use it together with the Togaf Standard. Together they make a powerful combination. Absolutely. About the Togaf Certification. Well again this certification is complementary. Obviously with Togaf Certification at the moment we have stepwise progression. So you can come in at foundation and you can go up to the higher level. With this one you're currently going straight in at the higher level. But watch this space is what I would say. Without giving too much away there will be some new additional options for certifications around digital and agile in 2022. I can't say too much more than that because we've not announced anything but we're working on a few things. And do you basically have to make a choice between the big upfront design approach and the more agile approach of the open architecture standard? Is it one or the other or what factors help you decide which you use? Again that's really about achieving the balance. So you've really got to look at your problem in terms of where the balance is. For some problems you do need to do a lot of big upfront design. We're thinking particularly where there's a lot of regulations in the industry that you might be working in. So that might be appropriate. Other times it's you can use a combination. It's really finding that balance between upfront planning and full agility. And that's really where the architect's job is to come in, is to actually use their experience to make that judgment. And what we're trying to do obviously with the toolkit is provide you with all the tools, the best practices. And the advice to help you make the judgment of whereabouts in the continuum of possible applications of the techniques to apply them. That's right. The skill is in knowing how to apply them right, obviously. And as we're reminded each time by one of our experts here at Toolkit Tuesday, Terry Blevins, it's all about delivering value. So architect for value, whatever's going to deliver value to your organization and your stakeholders is what you need to be doing to stay relevant and make yourself and the architecture team within your organization valuable. So one more thing Andrew, a reminder, where can people get hold of the open agile architecture standard? Well the simplest place to go is to go to the open group homepage, go along the top right and you'll see the open group library there and just click into that and then just type open agile architecture or O-AA, either of those should find it. Fantastic. And then that will give you places where to read it online or to download the various formats. Great. Thanks Andrew. And a very warm round of applause again for Andrew Josie. Thank you very much Andrew. So that's it for Toolkit Tuesday this week. In two weeks time, we do these every two weeks, but in two weeks time the open group is hosting one of its quarterly virtual events. So I encourage you all to visit that, join us at that event. You can find out more information about that on our website. And we'd love to have you with us. A number of topics being covered there, architecture being one of them, but there are many others too. So I encourage you to take a look at that and hopefully you'll be able to join us. So the next Toolkit Tuesday though will be on February the 8th and we will have a guest speaker at that event. So something special and I hope you can join us at that. So on February the 8th, the next Toolkit Tuesday. Meanwhile, thank you for joining us today. Thank you for your questions and your attention. Thank you to Andrew Josie, our main speaker, and keep well wherever you are and see you next time. I'm Steve Dunn. Thank you for watching Toolkit Tuesday.