Introduction
The attempted assassination of Former President Donald Trump during a presidential campaign event in Butler, Pennsylvania earlier this year triggered concerns about the ability of the US Secret Service (USSS) to reliably fulfill its protective mission. A US House of Representatives task force published the “INTERIM STAFF REPORT: INVESTIGATING THE STUNNING SECURITY FAILURES ON JULY 13, 2024 IN BUTLER, PENNSYLVANIA” on October 21 of the same year. This case study begins with the report findings, introduces TOGAF and ArchiMate, and speculates on how the USSS could apply technology to address them. It demonstrates how the enterprise and solutions architects can apply the TOGAF and ArchiMate standards to the conception, planning and implementation of complex, interlinked business and technology change.
The Findings
Directly from pages 7-9 in the congressional report:
The TOGAF Architecture Development Method (ADM) and the ArchiMate Language
Per the TOGAF Standard:
The TOGAF ADM describes a method for developing and managing the lifecycle of an Enterprise Architecture, and forms the core of the TOGAF Standard.
It integrates elements of the TOGAF Standard, as well as other available architectural assets, to meet the business needs of an organization.
Here are the phases of the ADM. They are arranged in a logical order, but may be executed or iterated upon to support all manner of organizational transformation and solution delivery approaches, including agile methods.
The ArchiMate Enterprise Architecture modeling language complements the TOGAF ADM by enabling architects to visualize the motivations and strategy of enterprises, as well as their business, application, and technology structure and behavior. Here is the full framework of the ArchiMate language, which has a subject-verb-object grammar like the English language, with active structure elements, e.g., application components, performing behaviors on each other and passive structures, e.g., data objects.
Here is the relationship between the layers of the ArchiMate language and the TOGAF ADM:
The remainder of this study briefly describes each ADM phase, which are represented by the yellow circles in the diagrams above, and provides an example of how the ArchiMate language could be used to apply the TOGAF ADM to help address the issues highlighted by the congressional report.
The ADM is a conceptual framework rather than a prescription. It is designed to be customized for each enterprise and initiative, and incorporates the use of rapid iteration within and between phases necessary for enterprise agility. For example, Phases B and C might be revisited after architects working on Phase D discover that available technology cannot support the information systems architecture developed in Phase C, which is in turn required by business operations specified in Phase B. These iterations often happen very rapidly, e.g., within the two-week sprints often used to manage agile solution delivery.
Applying the ADM and ArchiMate Modeling
Preliminary Phase
In this phase, EA teams prepare to deliver an enterprise architecture as required by the organization they serve. This case study assumes that USSS leadership has asked its enterprise architecture team to focus on addressing Finding 1, which states that there was inadequate planning and coordination prior to the July 13 event. In this phase, the required architecture capability is defined and established. The outputs of this phase include, among several others, the scope of organizations that are impacted by the architecture capability, and a catalog of principles. The diagram below uses the ArchiMate Motivation aspect to model:
- The USSS organizational units, per this official org chart, as stakeholders that could be impacted by an EA effort to address the first finding.
- Finding 1 as an assessment. We focus here on this finding, since it is central to the other findings that are critical of USSS performance.
- Drivers of change that motivate the request for a new architecture.
- Principles that will guide the architecture development efforts.
- Positive and negative influence relationships between the stakeholders, drivers, and principles.
Requirements Management
In this phase, architects collect and make available requirements that the architecture must fulfill. This phase therefore interacts with Phases A-H below. The diagram below builds on the first diagram to depict some architecture requirements and how they are influenced by principles.
Phase A: Architecture Vision
During this phase, architects engage with stakeholders to develop an architectural overview of the strategic intent of the organization. Based on that, they develop a Statement of Architecture Work that specifies what they will deliver during this ADM cycle. They secure approval for this statement from the architecture governance function, often called an Architecture Review Board.
In this case, architects collaborate with other stakeholders to envision a unified secure electronic collaboration capability for USSS and local law enforcement (LLE) personnel. Many vision diagrams are conceptual and free-form, and designed to be compelling rather than rigorous. However, ArchiMate diagrams can add specificity and build clearer consensus when they accompany more informal material. The diagram below outlines an Event Management capability, and provides a framework for subsequent phases.
Phase B: Business Architecture
Here, architects specify the business structure and behavior required to realize the vision, and identify the gaps between the baseline and target states. The diagram below surveys the key processes required, the responsibility for executing them, and the product they will use.
Phase C: Information Systems Architecture
Here, architects specify the structure and behavior of applications, and the structure of data required to realize the vision and target business architecture and identify gaps. The diagram below shows a customized collaboration platform integrated with a geographic information system (GIS), a custom site analyzer, and LLE radio communications.
Phase D: Technology Architecture
Here, architects specify the structure and behavior of the technology, i.e., the IT and physical infrastructure required to support the applications and data identified in the Phase C. They identify the gaps that separate the baseline and target technology states. Since in this case, the collaboration platform is specified as cloud-native, the new infrastructure required enables its custom enhancements. The diagram below shows that the custom LLE Radio Integration Layer relies on both a commercial cloud platform, and a device called a Radio-Digital Voice Bridge. This technology allows each radio frequency monitored by the bridge to appear as a participant in live meetings on the collaboration platform.
Phase E: Opportunities and Solutions
Here, architects define solutions that correspond to the architectures generated in previous phases, and generate an initial Architecture Roadmap. They determine whether the architecture should be implemented all at once or incrementally. For incremental approaches, they identify transition architectures that deliver value while progressing towards the Target Architecture. In this scenario, the USSS chooses Microsoft 365 for Government for the collaboration platform, and Microsoft Azure for US Government as the Commercial Cloud Platform. The diagram below depicts a two-stage solution rollout.
Phase F: Migration Planning
Here, architects collaborate with leaders such as program, project, and engineering managers to develop a detailed plan for implementing the architecture, including specific packages of work, their projected costs, and the business value they will deliver. The diagram below shows the first implementation stage of with key high-level responsibilities assigned.
Phase G: Implementation Governance
Here, architects oversee the implementation to ensure conformance with the target architecture. They guide the development of delivery capabilities, and review deliverables. The diagram below shows how the first phase of implementation conforms to three IT Standards.
Phase H: Architecture Change Management
In this phase, architects respond to changes in requirements, understanding of technology capabilities, and other circumstances that warrant re-examination or revision of target and transition architectures. This is where the ADM interacts with agile practices. Updates to requirements and approaches based on external factors, the results of investigations, and stakeholder reactions to demos are among the potential inputs to this phase. The diagram below highlights modifications to both implementation phases due to the discovery and evaluation of newly released commercial software modules.
Summary
The TOGAF and ArchiMate standards complement each other to help enterprise and solutions architects lead complex change that spans the business, data, application and technology domains. TOGAF provides a comprehensive approach, while ArchiMate-based tooling enables architects to visualize and manipulate architectures through diagrams that are both rigorous and, when labeled and arranged well, are comprehensible to a wide range of stakeholders. The diagrams in this case study were created with the Archi free and open-source tool.
Conclusion
The inspiration for this case study came from the realization that the knowledge and customized application of the TOGAF ADM and the contextualized application of ArchiMate were apparently not in the Secret Service’s planning toolkit. But they should be going forward, but only by trainers and consultants who bow down to context while weaving in such best practices. There are no out-of-the-box frameworks that can help anyone and certainly not the Secret Service. This case study can also be an excellent illustration to the Department of Government Efficiency that begins its work next year regarding the value of architecture.
Authored by Iver Band, EA Principals Senior Instructor and ArchiMate Expert