Before you can develop an architecture you need to agree what an architecture even is, what an enterprise is, and what the TOGAF Standard actually gives you. Get these foundations wrong and every later phase inherits the confusion — teams argue about scope, deliverables and terminology instead of building.

This topic is the vocabulary the rest of TOGAF is written in. On the Foundation exam it is pure recall; in practice it is what lets a room of stakeholders mean the same thing by 'architecture'.

TOGAF gives architecture two complementary definitions: (1) the formal description of a system, or a detailed plan of the system at component level to guide its implementation; and (2) the structure of components, their inter-relationships, and the principles and guidelines governing their design and evolution over time.

An enterprise is any collection of organisations that has a common set of goals — it can be a whole corporation, a single division, a government agency, or a chain of partners. The scope of 'the enterprise' is a decision you make, not a fixed boundary.

TOGAF subdivides enterprise architecture into four interrelated domains, remembered as BDAT:

Business — strategy, governance, organisation, and key business processes. Data — the structure of the organisation's logical and physical data assets and data-management resources. Application — a blueprint for the applications to be deployed, their interactions, and their relationship to core business processes. Technology — the hardware, software and network infrastructure that supports the deployment of business, data and application services.

Worked example: a bank digitising loan approvals defines the approval process (Business), the customer & loan data model (Data), the loan-origination apps and their APIs (Application), and the cloud/network it all runs on (Technology). Data + Application are developed together as the Information Systems architectures.

TOGAF is a framework and method, not a fixed architecture — it gives you a repeatable way to develop your architecture. The 10th Edition is organised at the top level into two parts:

Fundamental Content — the enduring core (Introduction & Core Concepts, the ADM, ADM Techniques, Applying the ADM, Architecture Content, and Enterprise Architecture Capability & Governance). Series Guides — topic- and industry-specific guidance that supports applying the fundamentals (e.g. the ADM, Business Architecture, Security, Digital).

This replaced the older 9.1 'six components' packaging. Because it is a framework, it is meant to be tailored — adopt what adds value and adapt terminology to fit the enterprise.

The BDAT domains map directly onto the ADM phases — Business is Phase B, Information Systems (Data + Application) is Phase C, Technology is Phase D. The definition of architecture underpins every deliverable (Topic TGF‑C4), and the idea of a tailorable framework is what the Preliminary Phase operationalises when it sets up your architecture capability.