Customer Reviews

Constructing Blueprints for Enterprise IT Architectures

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The author made a valiant effort to explain how to impelement an enterprise information architecture, but falls short.

I'll start with what I like about ths book: using a blueprint approach is appealing because I place a high value on design patterns, with which this approach is consistent. The fact that the author bases his approach on the Zachman framework is another strong point. And it is apparent that Mr. Boar knows his subject.

That said, this book has a lot of shortcomings: it is inconsistent in detail - some places there is too much detail, and other places the lack of sufficient detail requires either a leap of faith or shows that the author just hasn't carefully thought the details through. The writing style is muddled. Unlike other reviewers I have not read any of the author's other books, so I cannot comment on whether or not this is atypical. To me reading this book was a chore. There is more emphasis on the author's approach than there is on actually implementing an architecture. This, in my opinion, detracts from the book.

For a well-written description of the Zachman Framework and how to implement it I recommend Melissa Cook's Building Enterprise Information Architecture. For copious detail that is given is a consistent and accurate manner I recommend Spewak and Hill's Enterprise Architecture Planning. Either of these books will provide a more complete. clearly-written approach to implementing an enterprise IT architecture.

I loathe giving a bad review of a book by an author whose prior works are [in my opinion] classics that have greatly influenced my thinking and professional growth. However,this book is a disappointment.

The "blueprints" given in this book are not as coherent nor are they described with the same sparkling prose for which Mr. Boar is known. I found his descriptions muddled, and his presentations redundant because the same diagrams are used over and over, which I personally found to be irritating.

Also, there are no fresh ideas in the approach - the blueprints are clearly based on the Zachman Framework. Since I am a strong proponent of this framework and approach to IT architecture I agree with the ideas and concepts behind the book. There are better, more articulate descriptions of the Zachman Framework in Enterprise Architucture Planning by Spewak and Hill, and Data Stores, Data Warehousing, and the Zachman Framework by Inmon, Zachman and Geiger.

My disappointment with this book may be because of one or more of the following reasons: Mr. Boar was pressured by the publisher to produce another book and this is the result, or [possibly] because he has wandered into areas where he is somewhat out of his element. The world of IT strategy, in which he is an acknowledged expert and fresh thinker, is not the same world as architecture. His wonderful analogies using the works of Sun Tzu and Niccolo Machiavelli to reinforce his approach to strategy in his prior books do not play well in the architecture domain, which is the focus of this book.

My recommendation is to sidestep this book if you are interested in IT architecture and consider, instead, one or both of the ones I recommended above. On the other hand, if you have an interest in IT strategy or aligning IT to business, any of Mr. Boar's books on strategic planning or IT alignment are insightful and important reading.

I write only about work done by my firm for AT&T that Mr. Boar has published without our permission or attribution. I personally handed him a copy of some of the pages in this book after he represented himself as an AT&T employee and asked "May I have a copy?" He never disclosed his alternate employment as an author or asked permission to publish our work. He may have done so without full disclosure to AT&T, his employer at the time.

This book brings together Business and Technology concerns in a way that was rarely spoken about before. Now that the book is 11 years old it can seem somewhat dated, but there are many important ideas that illustrate how to create blueprints that can be used as a communication across all stakeholders of IT. I refer to this book even now as I determine how best to construct blueprints that will help IT migrate. One of the reasons I find this book so valuable is that all of the issues he criticizes IT for in creating IT architecture practices and communications are still prevalent today.
This book can be considered in conjunction with the following book I reviewed a while ago, see product link, as Next Generation Data Centers - clearly articulates IT transformation in practical terms. It did not contain enough information about blueprints, but the 2 together form a critical synergy.
Next Generation Datacenters in Financial Services: Driving Extreme Efficiency and Effective Cost Savings (Complete Technology Guides for Financial Services)

Bernard Boar has created a masterpiece when it comes to discussion on Enterprise Architecture Blueprints. He very nicely sets the context for the book and then wastes no time getting right into the discussion of frameworks and gets right into the blueprints. He extensively discusses notation so that the reader isn't let to guess what is meant.

For the technical architect, the sections on configuration management are robust, and rightfully so as the blueprint is known to be used as the transformation guide to the enterprise. His book does a great job of discussing change, as well as the differences in time between the various versions of the blueprint. This is a topic that is glossed over or missed in some books, and often in the education programs found on the subject.

His book is absolutely loaded with diagrams and charts, and for this alone this book will become a valuable asset to your bookshelf and to your career. Mr. Boars concluding chapter adds some extra punch when he goes over some of the justification of creating blueprints. Often IT is faced with a shortage of time in this area, and this is great ammunition with those faced with this fight.

Boar has mastered how to illustrate complex relationships, and provides specific examples and templates that can be used. Will be helpful for any information systems architect or planner.

Whilst I understand the comments from Mike Tarrani & the sheer frustration that I have found from irregularities within the book. This method is very much in the right direction. Clearly Bernie has developed a method that, when implemented within an organisation, can provide consistency in a field that has always been inconsistent. This work needs to be further defined, agreed, but I don't see a better method, and to that end we have recently invested considerable effort to define a CASE tool to support the use of EAB in our company.