Past Book Review (March 1, 2009): "IT Architecture Toolkit"
Past book review (i.e. posted prior to starting this blog) for IT Architecture Toolkit, by Jane A. Carbone, Prentice Hall, 2004, reposted here:
Over the past year, this reviewer has spent some time catching up on some of the more recently available texts on enterprise architecture, and quite simply this one by Carbone is one of the best. It is a testimony to the effectiveness of this book that this author is able to bring together in just over 200 pages what other authors are not able to do in two or three times this volume: get to the heart of what enterprise architecture is really all about, provide clear no-nonsense examples of how to reflect the needs of the enterprise in its software systems, and guide the reader along a cumbersome-free step-by-step process that focuses on results.
While Carbone does not view the enterprise as holisticly as T.S. Graves in his recently-penned "Real Enterprise-Architecture" (see my review for that book), this book is much more practical. The author explains in her preface that there were two factors that motivated her to write this book: "the need to plan how data is collected, flows through the organization, and is transformed into information the business can access, is vital" even though there was a time when her opinions and passion about business information "was not always popular", and she has had her "own religious experience…having been honed (some would say charred) on the altar of architecture" and "having learned many lessons the hard way, [she] is anxious to help [the reader] benefit from those lessons".
The "enterprise architecture toolkit" presented here is much simpler than the Zachman Framework, focusing on the upper left-hand rows and provides methods for filling in the cells, and unlike that framework addresses strategies for implementing the target architecture. Carbone is persistent in her communication throughout this book that enterprise architecture is comprised as the business and IT functions working together, unlike some books of this genre which present IT architecture as enterprise architecture, although this reviewer does find it interesting that her "enterprise architecture toolkit" got renamed for the title of the book.
Chapters 2 through 5 focus on the "toolkit business framework" portion of the overall toolkit: the current state of the business and an analysis of that state, and the target state of the business and identification of gaps and opportunities for that state. Chapters 6 through 9 focus on the "toolkit IT framework" portion of the overall toolkit: current and target state architecture, IT inventory, and standards. Chapters 10 through 13 focus on the "toolkit implementation framework" portion of the overall toolkit: projects, metrics, buy-in, compliance, and people.
Essentially, this last aspect of the toolkit places a focus on strategies designed to address and mitigate what the author views as often-repeated mistakes that contribute to solution failure: "attempts to implement too much, too quickly", "inability or lack of willingness to tie implementation to business success", "underestimation of resistance to change", "no commitment and/or buy-in from the entire organization", "lack of supporting enterprise-wide processes", and "insufficient focus on the people issues".
Nine (very lightweight) appendixes, A through I, follow the overall presentation of the toolkit. A recent client of mine indicated very fervently that "the business doesn't know what they need, IT knows what they need"; this book provides an antithesis to that philosophy.