Enterprise Continuum and ADM in TOGAF

Question

The documentation states that:

The Enterprise Continuum classes of assets may influence architectures, but are not directly used during the ADM architecture development.

My understanding is ADM creates and reuses building blocks from the Architecture repository and Enterprise Continuum is just a view of the Architecture repository and hence the building blocks are inherent in the Enterprise Continuum.

So how is it that the Enterprise Continuum is not directly related to ADM architecture development?

Answer 1

I think that there is a misleading wording in the TOGAF document. Per the document, "Enterprise Continuum" could mean two things with different scope:

1. The whole continuum which is partitioned into three distinct Continua:

The simplest way of thinking of the Enterprise Continuum is as a view of the repository of all the architecture assets. It can contain Architecture Descriptions, models, building blocks, patterns, architecture viewpoints, and other artifacts...

2. One of the three Continua in #1:

The Enterprise Continuum classifies contextual assets used to develop architectures, such as policies, standards, strategic initiatives, organizational structures, and enterprise-level capabilities.

First one is most people's understanding which classifies all the architecture assets in the Architecture Repository, and second one is the "not directly used" in your question.

In this case it's kind of confusing that Enterprise Continuum (#1) contains Enterprise Continuum (#2) (and also the other two of the three Continua).

Answer 2

The Architecture Continuum is a useful tool to discover commonality and eliminate unnecessary redundancy. It can exists even if you follow TOGAF or other standards. It is a View of the Architecture repository where by we store the deliverable and artifacts. So in order to start ADM cycle we don't need to have a Architecture repository in place, we can start from zero and create one.

When we apply ADM guidelines and techniques to execute ADM, we can make use of Architecture continuum reference model[s] but we are not directly depended on it at any ADM life cycle.