TOGAF or Zachman?

Enterprise architecture (EA) frameworks are the invisible blueprints behind every digital transformation. Among the most cited are TOGAF (The Open Group Architecture Framework) and the Zachman Framework. They are not interchangeable: one is a handbook, the other a taxonomy. Both have influenced decades of IT and business alignment. The question is: which should CIOs, enterprise architects, and digital leaders rely on today?

Two Origins, two Philosophies

Zachman - The Periodic table of Enterprise Architecture

The Zachman Framework was published, in 1987, by John Zachman at IBM. His goal was not to define a method, but to create a taxonomy: a consistent way to describe every aspect of an enterprise.

John Zachman

The framework is a 6×6 matrix: six interrogatives (what, how, where, who, when, why) crossed with six stakeholder perspectives (from planner to enterprise in operation). The result is a set of 36 cells, each corresponding to a different view of the organisation. For example, the combination of What + Owner yields the conceptual data model, while Why + Planner captures the organisation’s mission.

Zachman is deliberately non-prescriptive. It does not tell you how to populate the cells, in what order, or with which method. Its strength is completeness and neutrality. It ensures that all essential perspectives exist and can be traced across rows and columns. That is why it has been compared to the periodic table of elements: it guarantees coverage and order, but it does not provide the chemical formulas to create compounds.

Zachman's Matrix

TOGAF - The Architect’s Handbook

TOGAF (The Open Group Architecture Framework) was introduced in 1995 by The Open Group, a global consortium of technology players. Unlike Zachman, TOGAF was conceived not just as a way to classify knowledge, but as a complete method for designing, evolving, and governing enterprise architectures.

At its core lies the Architecture Development Method (ADM): a cycle that takes organisations from preliminary setup to long-term change management. Each phase of the ADM produces deliverables: from capability maps and application portfolios to technology roadmaps and governance reports. These outputs are structured by a content metamodel and stored in an architecture repository, ensuring traceability, consistency, and reuse.

The strength of TOGAF lies in its governance. It defines architecture boards, compliance reviews, and an Enterprise Continuum that encourages organisations to reuse reference architectures and industry standards. This is why TOGAF has become the most widely adopted EA framework worldwide, supported by a global certification ecosystem. In large enterprises, it provides the credibility, auditability, and rigour needed for regulatory compliance.

TOGAF’s richness is often seen as both a strength and a challenge. Without tailoring, it may generate extensive documentation and slower delivery. The 10th Edition of TOGAF (2022) addressed this by emphasising modularity and agility, with guides on agile practices, business architecture, and security. Many practitioners now treat TOGAF less as a strict rulebook and more as a flexible toolbox, keeping its governance principles while applying ADM iteratively alongside agile delivery and cloud migration.

In short, TOGAF is the architect’s handbook: it provides methods, governance, and deliverables to guide complex transformation over years. It remains highly relevant wherever compliance, cross-portfolio governance, or large-scale change is at stake.

The nature of each framework

TOGAF and Zachman approach enterprise architecture from different angles:

• Zachman provides an ontology: a structured way to classify artefacts. It asks “What artefacts must exist?” but not “How should they be produced?”.
• TOGAF provides a methodology: a step-by-step process to define, produce, and govern those artefacts. It asks “How do we go from vision to implementation?”.

When combined, Zachman ensures coverage, and TOGAF ensures governance and delivery.

Strengths and limits compared

Strenghts and Limits compared

Modern relevance of both frameworks

Since their creation, the enterprise IT landscape has changed dramatically: cloud computing, agile methods, DevOps, AI-driven decision-making, data governance, and digital sovereignty. Do frameworks from the 1980s and 1990s still hold?

Why TOGAF Remains Relevant

TOGAF’s 10th Edition (2022) was explicitly designed to modernise its role. It introduced modularity by splitting the framework into Fundamental Content and Series Guides, allowing organisations to start small and expand with context-specific guidance such as agile integration, security, or business architecture. It also provided clearer direction on agility, showing how the ADM can be applied iteratively and avoiding the “waterfall” stereotype often associated with earlier versions. Finally, TOGAF reinforced its integration with business strategy, putting greater emphasis on capabilities, value streams, and outcomes rather than solely IT assets.

For large organisations, TOGAF remains valuable because it addresses governance, compliance, and auditability, concerns that have only intensified with regulations such as GDPR, NIS2, and DORA.

Why Zachman still matters?

Zachman may appear abstract, but its strength lies in its timelessness. The six interrogatives (what, how, where, who, when, and why) remain fundamental to understanding any enterprise system. Its universality makes it a useful teaching tool in universities, a scoping tool in consulting engagements, and a foundation for many derivative frameworks.

In contexts where heavy methodologies can feel disproportionate, such as municipalities, SMEs, or early-stage projects, Zachman provides a simple lens to ensure coverage without prescribing delivery methods. Its influence also persists in adjacent domains like data governance, security frameworks, and knowledge management, where its taxonomy continues to be reused and adapted.

Putting Them Together

TOGAF and Zachman are not rivals. They solve different problems:

• TOGAF provides the methodology, governance, and deliverables for enterprise transformation.
• Zachman provides the taxonomy and coverage to ensure all perspectives are addressed.

In practice, organisations use Zachman to define what artefacts and views must exist, and TOGAF to define how they should be built and governed. Tools like Boldo operationalise both: Zachman’s cells become living maps of data, processes, and applications, while TOGAF’s deliverables become visual roadmaps and dashboards that executives can understand.

The Boldo Perspective

For CIOs and enterprise architects, the challenge is not only what framework to choose, but how to make it work in practice. Boldo bridges both worlds:

• Converts Zachman’s cells into living maps (applications, processes, data, infrastructure).
• Translates TOGAF’s deliverables (roadmaps, capability models, migration plans) into visual dashboards understood by executives.
• Avoids the paralysis of over-engineering, delivering simplicity without sacrificing rigour.

Organisation governance

Conclusion

TOGAF and Zachman are not competitors but complements.

• TOGAF brings structure, governance, and is an internationally recognised method to steer multi-year enterprise transformations.
• Zachman brings clarity, taxonomy, and universality, whether for scoping, teaching, or ensuring completeness.

Together: they provide both completeness and governance. With Boldo they become practical, visual, and collaborative, fit for the realities of today’s digital transformation.

Just as chemists need both the periodic table and laboratory methods, enterprise architects benefit from both Zachman’s ontology and TOGAF’s methodology. The question is less “Which one?” and more “How can we integrate both and make them usable in practice?”.

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