The field of architecture in the digital world uses a plethora of terms to refer to different kinds of architects, and recognizes a confusing variety of competences that these architects are required to have. Different service providers use different terms for similar architects and even if they use the same term, they may mean something different. This makes it hard for customers to know what competences an architect can be expected to have.

This book combines competence profi les of the NGI Platform for IT Professionals, The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF), as well as a number of Dutch IT service providers in a comprehensive framework. Using this framework, the book shows that notwithstanding a large variety in terminology, there is convergence towards a common set of competence profi les. In other words, when looking beyond terminological differences by using the framework, one sees that organizations recognize similar types of architects, and that similar architects in different organizations have similar competence profi les. The framework presented in this book thus provides an instrument to position architecture services as offered by IT service providers and as used by their customers.

The framework and the competence profi les presented in this book are the main results of special interest group 'Professionalisation' of the Netherlands Architecture Forum for the Digital World (NAF). Members of this group, as well as students of the universities of Twente and Nijmegen have contributed to the research on which this book is based.

About the authors
Prof. Dr. Roel Wieringa and Dr. Pascal van Eck are Full Professor and Assistant Professor of the Information Systems Group of the University of Twente, The Netherlands. Claudia Steghuis M.Sc. is Senior Consultant Enterprise Architecture at Capgemini.
Prof. Dr. Erik Proper is Principal Consultant Enterprise Architecture at Capgemini and Professor of Information Systems at the Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands.