Discussion of concerns with stakeholders is an important part of the Architecture Development Method (ADM) of The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF).

You identify the stakeholders and their concerns in the Architecture Vision phase (Phase A) of the TOGAF ADM. The identified concerns help to determine the models that you will produce of the target architected system. These models form a major part of the architecture description that you deliver. You develop them in the Business Architecture, Information Systems Architectures, and Technology Architecture phases (Phases B, C, and D), and you refine them in those phases through discussion of concerns with the stakeholders.

There are areas of concern that are specific to SOA that you should explore with the relevant stakeholders. This section identifies typical areas of concern for SOA, together with the stakeholders that have concerns in those areas, and models that you can develop to help you discuss the concerns with the stakeholders.

Stakeholders

The Stakeholder Management section of Part III of TOGAF (Version 9) identifies five broad categories of stakeholder, with a number of groups in each category:

• Corporate functions: CxO, Enterprise Security, Program Management Office, QA/Standards Groups, Procurement, and HR;
• End-User Organization - Executives, Line Management, Business Domain Experts, and Data Owners;
• Project Organization - Executives, Line Management, Business Process/Functional Experts, Product Specialists, and Technical Specialists;
• System Operations - IT Service Management, Service Desk, Application Management, Infrastructure Management, and Data/Voice Communications; and
• External - Suppliers, and Regulatory Bodies.

These classes and groups are relevant for SOA, as for other architectural styles. In an organization that has adopted SOA, there will usually be SOA-specific stakeholders in some of these groups:

• Service Operation Managers in the System Operations - Application Management group;
• Service Librarians in the System Operations - Application Management group;
• SOA Solution Designers, Developers and Testers in the Project Organization - Technical Specialists group;
• Service Designers, Developers and Testers in the Project Organization - Technical Specialists group; and
• SOA Infrastructure Product Specialists in the Project Organization - Product Specialists group.

Concerns and Models

The table shows typical areas of concern for these stakeholders in a SOA development, together with models that you can use to develop views so that you can discuss the concerns with the stakeholders. The first column shows areas of concern. The second column shows stakeholders that are likely to have concerns in these areas. The third column shows the relevant models, and the phases of TOGAF in which you would develop the models and discuss the concerns. (Solution and service lifecycle and portfolio management is addressed by the governance framework, which is reviewed in the Preliminary Phase. This is indicated by “P” in the table.)

Note that:

• Organizations differ. It is your responsibility to identify the appropriate stakeholders in your enterprise. In many cases, you will encounter stakeholders that do not fit these categories.
• The stakeholders that you identify may have areas of concern for SOA other than those shown.
• Your stakeholders will have areas of concern not related to SOA. (See the Stakeholder Management section of TOGAF for a general analysis.)
• It is not sufficient just to identify areas of concern. You must explore these areas with the stakeholders to find out what their concerns are.

There are outline descriptions of all of the models that appear in the table, except for the SOA Governance Model, in the section on Using TOGAF for Enterprise SOA. SOA Governance is discussed in Introduction to SOA Governance and related sections.