If you're looking for a structure architecture tech governace framework for your team, TOGAF and BIAN may help. This articlle help you to have 101 understanding on them both
TOGAF and BIAN answer different questions. I find the simplest explaination is how vs what.
TOGAF helps an organization decide how to develop and govern enterprise architecture. BIAN gives a bank reference content for what banking capabilities and service domains it may need as pre-defined set of domains.
TOGAF is the how
The TOGAF Standard, 10th Edition provides the Architecture Development Method, architecture content, and guidance for enterprise architecture capability and governance. In practical terms, it helps an architecture team:
- Create and agree on an architecture vision;
- Define principles that guide decisions;
- Move through business, data, application, and technology concerns;
- Plan migration from the current state to the target state;
- Govern implementation and architecture change;
- Establish the roles and review structures needed to maintain the architecture.
The method is iterative and tailorable. It gives the work an order, but it does not require every organization to run every activity in exactly the same structure way.
Consider a clearly fictional institution called Bank A. Bank A wants to add a digital personal loan. Its architecture team can use TOGAF to frame the work. The vision explains which customers and business goals matter. The business architecture describes the loan journey and responsibilities. The data and application views show the information and systems involved. The technology view covers the platform needed to run them. Migration planning turns the target into sequenced delivery work.
Bank A can also define principles such as tracing material transactions end to end and applying consistent controls across channels. An Architecture Review Board can then evaluate major decisions against those principles. If a team proposes a new authentication mechanism or a change to the loan flow, the review asks whether it fits the agreed architecture and risk boundaries.
That is the value of TOGAF: not a ready-made banking design, but a disciplined way to create, review, and change one.
BIAN is the what
The BIAN Service Landscape 14.0 is a banking reference structure that categorizes and organizes Service Domains. It includes business capabilities, scenarios, objects, and Service Domain definitions. I treat this as a banking vocabulary and decomposition aid, not a product blueprint.
Bank A does not have to begin its loan discussion with an empty whiteboard. It can inspect relevant BIAN concepts around customer information, authentication, current accounts, lending, payments, and credit risk. Those concepts help the team ask whether responsibilities are separated clearly and whether different systems use the same language.
The reference content still needs adaptation. A BIAN Service Domain is not automatically a deployable microservice, a team boundary, or a vendor component. Bank A must decide how its products, regulations, existing systems, and operating model map to that content.
That is the value of BIAN: banking-specific reference material for deciding what capabilities and interactions the architecture should consider.
How the 2 fit together
For Bank A's personal loan, I would use the two in this order and tailoring them to fix my context
First, use TOGAF to establish the architecture work: scope, stakeholders, principles, current and target states, governance, and migration decisions. The business request enters a review process that makes ownership and trade-offs visible.
Second, use BIAN to test the banking content. The team can map the loan lifecycle against relevant Service Domains, examine the responsibilities around customer data and credit risk, and use shared terms when discussing interactions.
This gives reviewers one place to see whether a responsibility is missing, duplicated, or assigned to the wrong boundary.
Third, make implementation decisions. The team chooses its APIs, data ownership, deployment boundaries, controls, and integration behavior. Neither framework makes those decisions automatically. TOGAF governs the reasoning; BIAN informs the banking decomposition.
The combination can reduce blank-page work and expose missing responsibilities. It does not prove that delivery will be faster, integration will be easy, or the resulting system will be higher quality. Those outcomes depend on the bank's execution, the fit of the reference material, and how much adaptation the existing landscape requires.
So next time when you ask "Should we use TOGAF or BIAN?" Let break it to 2 questions: "How will we build and govern this architecture?" and "What banking capabilities should the architecture support?" TOGAF helps with the first, BIAN helps with the second