I see The Open Group now has a landing page called the “Portfolio of Digital Open Standards”, offering a collection of standards developed by The Open Group, which aims to help organisations as they transform and become digital.
The Portfolio includes The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF) Standard, IT4IT™ Standard, ArchiMate® Standard, Open Agile Architecture Standard and the Digital Practitioner Body of Knowledge. Additionally, you can find a set of Digital Principles to support digital transformation.
This guidance will help transform business and operational models to deliver digital products using digital platforms.
Take a look at the Open Group Portfolio of Digital Open Standards
Are you familiar with these standards? If not, find out more below.
TOGAF® Standard
The TOGAF Standard is a widely used enterprise architecture framework that helps organisations align IT with business strategy. It provides a structured approach to designing, planning, implementing, and managing enterprise architectures.
You may not be sure how to use TOGAF. It may appear an overhead if you’re a startup but if can provide you some starting principles and ways of defining business capabilities and technology roadmaps. Established organisations will see benefit from TOGAF to create structured and efficient architecture and guide IT investment, reducing risk and realising benefits.
IT4IT™ Standard
The IT4IT™ Standard, Version 3.0.1, offers a comprehensive framework for managing digital products throughout their lifecycle. This version emphasizes a value network approach, focusing on seven key value streams that represent the essential activities in managing digital products.
Core Concepts of IT4IT Version 3.0.1:
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Value Network: A construct that defines the relationships across value-creating functions delivering value. It includes primary activities such as planning, production, consumption, fulfillment, and support, as well as supporting activities like Finance, HR, Governance, and Supplier Management.
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Value Streams: The seven essential IT4IT Value Streams describe key value-creating activities within the Value Network where net value is added to the Digital Product as it progresses through its lifecycle.
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Functional Groups: The IT4IT Reference Architecture uses grouping constructs to organise functional components and data objects, providing context for the functionalities organisations must deliver. These groups are structured into five high-level categories: Plan, Build, Deliver, Run, and Supporting Functions.
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Digital Product Backbone: A central concept that focuses on the lifecycle management of digital products, ensuring that all aspects of product development, delivery, and support are integrated and aligned with business objectives.
Application of IT4IT Standard Across Organisational Stages:
Implementing IT4IT’s structured approach from the outset can help startups or transforming organisations to efficiently manage their digital product lifecycles, ensuring alignment with business goals and facilitating scalable growth.
ArchiMate® Standard
ArchiMate is a modeling language for enterprise architecture, helping organisations visualize their business, application, and technology layers in a structured way.
Modelling is modelling but ArchiMate can assist in mapping out business processes and technology interactions, enabling better decision-making from the start and in time provide a standardized way to model, analyze, and optimize enterprise-wide architecture, ensuring long-term sustainability and adaptability.
Open Agile Architecture™ Standard
The Open Agile Architecture Standard provides guidance on aligning enterprise architecture with agile ways of working, enabling rapid innovation and digital transformation.
Do agile well, be adaptable, scale and maintain architecture and delivery agility.
Digital Practitioner Body of Knowledge (DPBoK™)
DPBoK provides guidance for individuals and organisations on digital transformation, covering capabilities, maturity levels, and best practices for digital business operations.
This is a good a foundation for building digital-first business models with structured knowledge on digital capabilities and for organisations undergoing transformation can provide the guidance for continuous innovation, digital operations, and organisational change management.
Why These Standards Matter
These standards exist to provide proven methodologies, frameworks, and best practices for organisations navigating digital transformation. Without them, businesses risk inefficiencies, misalignment between IT and business goals, increased technical debt, and costly trial-and-error approaches.
Trying to figure out enterprise architecture, IT management, or agile practices from scratch can lead to fragmented processes, duplicated efforts, and expensive mistakes. Leveraging these well-established standards helps organisations of all sizes build sustainable, scalable, and future-proof digital capabilities. By adopting these frameworks early, companies can streamline operations, improve decision-making, and accelerate innovation while avoiding common pitfalls in digital transformation.
Making sense of it
Need some help putting this all together in a way that will drive your transformation and digital goals?
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24+ years experience in solving business problems and maximising opportunities through technology in a variety of industries, public and private sector internationally. I founded architectFWD™ to provide knowledge and trusted advice in the areas of strategy, technology, cloud and digital to enable organisations to become Digital Leaders.