Dear Members of The Open Group Architecture Forum


I would like to thank every person/organization who has voted for me to be Chair of the Architecture Forum. I think your support means many more organizations than I had even imagined resonate with my vision for rapidly improving the Architecture Forum, including its handling of the TOGAF standard evolution, our flagship product. In addition, it is critical to raise the global prestige of the Architecture Forum and increase enthusiastic participation in it. One way to get such increased and committed engagement is to make interaction more modern and efficient. In addition, it is essential for the Chair to set trackable, high value targets and provide creative incentives for even more members to contribute some of their ideas.

I’m committed to rapidly and collaboratively come up with a plan to make the TOGAF Standard more agile, adaptable, integrated, consistent, customizable, and acknowledged as the “must have” training and certification. I also look forward to helping the Forum define and rollout an Applied Level of TOGAF Certification this year, if I’m given the opportunity.

All I’ve just stated have been things spoken about for years, but we just are not getting where we need to be fast enough. It is time to accelerate and bring in more people in the process. I strongly believe we can do this and, for those not yet having voted for me, to do so at this critical juncture. Together we can make a huge difference. 

I have been a successful Chief/Lead Enterprise Architect and consultant in a few large enterprises over the past 15 years in both the public and private sector. Plus, I have trained over 6000 professionals in architecture, including in over 60 graduate courses I have taught over the past dozen years. I cover a wide range of EA frameworks in these courses, as well as EA modeling, as I use numerous leading EA tools. I have also been a major contributor to numerous Architecture and ArchiMate publications over the year, including being co-author of the soon to be published Business Architecture Study Guide (for the Business Architecture Credential).

I very much appreciate that The Open Group leadership has granted me this great opportunity to thank folks who have already voted for me and reach out to others to reiterate my firm commitment to help the Architecture Forum in ways I’m sure most members will appreciate as our successes are incrementally announced in clear and compelling ways, practicing leading architecture practices in our own activities for the Forum.

Voting Closes on the 26th of February 2019.

Link to login page for voting: http://bit.ly/2tlgoAk 

Link to members page: https://www.opengroup.org/our-members

Kind Regards,

Steve Else, PhD.

Chief Architect, Principal Instructor & Founder of EA Principals