Past Book Review (September 14, 2008):"Real Enterprise Architecture"
Past book review (i.e. posted prior to starting this blog) for Real Enterprise Architecture: Beyond IT to the Whole Enterprise, by Tom S. Graves, Tetradian Books, 2008, reposted here:
As Graves mentions in his introduction, he wrote "Real Enterprise-Architecture" because as of early-2007 there were no books that "covered the full scope" of enterprise architecture – just plenty of books "about the minutiae of the field" in which he works. Graves explains that while "IT is significant, it's only one small part" of real enterprise architecture, the definition of which he provides as "the integration of everything the enterprise is and does".
While there are a number of frameworks that address this space, such as Zachman, FEAF, TOGAF, and ARIS, Grave argues that these address IT architecture, not enterprise architecture, and that a simpler framework is needed for the latter. The author presents the project life cycle framework composed of purpose (direction), people, preparation (knowledge), process (tasks), and performance (metrics), similar to the Architectural Design Method (ADM) provided by TOGAF save the special emphasis on IT. And within each of these points in the cycle, efficient, reliable, elegant, appropriate, and integrated views are presented.
Each of the remaining chapters of the book addresses a single cell of the resultant 5×5 matrix. The author presents the principles behind each cell well, but the discussions for each of the five cycle points as applied to each cell are a bit brief. Each chapter also contains a one or two paragraph look into specific consulting scenarios in which the author has worked, and it is recommended that such firsthand experience be elaborated upon in subsequent works.
Two chapters that especially caught my interest are "Architecture is a Feeling" and "The Politics of Purpose". In the former, the author stresses that "what we're doing here is not a marketing exercise…what we aim to identify are the real values of the organization-as-community, the principles and values that the enterprise, collectively, does use in its day-to-day decision making". Graves presents a past values analysis experience, and when asked from where "official" client values of "service excellence", "service innovation", and "professionalism" etc came, the reply was that the marketing department simply made them up, summarizing rather well why management was uncertain about corporate direction.
In the latter, Graves presents one of his experiences in change management, and he follows this presentation with a discussion of how stakeholder issues change with each phase of the change cycle. For example, in the initiating phase: "We don't have time for this stuff!" and "We don't know what we're doing!". In the sustaining phase: "This stuff is @#%#@!" and "This stuff isn't working!". And in the redesigning and rethinking phase: "They won't give up the power!".
The author presents this framework as a "just enough, just in time" approach to enterprise architecture, and while he shares his opinion that useful results will appear within a matter of days, filling in the detail will take significantly longer albeit it is best addressed in an iterative manner. While it does not seem like the author is in alignment with the industry definition of agile with a capital "A", he does argue that agile development works, and credit must be granted where it is due for his attempt at explaining this philosophy.
This book is really what I consider to be an expanded white paper due to its brevity (about 100 pages) and soft selling of Tetradian Consulting (as well as hard references throughout to resources available on the internet from other consulting firms), but in my opinion Graves does add value to the enterprise architecture space, and "Real Enterprise-Architecture" is currently freely downloadable on the Tetradian website.