Customer Reviews

An Introduction to Enterprise Architecture

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book provides a cursory treatment of a deep subject. At barely 250 pages of main body text--and they are small pages at that, set in a generous type--there is no room to go into detail on much of anything. You will learn, perhaps, what a dataflow diagram or an IDEF0 frame is, but you will certainly not learn how to create or manipulate them, or much about how to use them, or their relative strengths and weaknesses, beyond the casual sentence or two about any given model in this book. And, look, I love diagrams, but it seems like every third illustration is this book is a reprint or an absolutely trivial variation on the author's "EA Cube" overview diagram. You can see it on the front cover--it's not exactly as complicated as the human nervous system. Once or twice would have done it for me. Shallow? I slosh through deeper puddles on a rainy day.

But the shining feature of this book is the "case study" of a company adopting the particular flavor of Enterprise Architecture that Scott Bernard is trying to sell, something called EA3. He follows this ficticious company through the entire course of the book, costing a substantial fraction of the already meager pagecount. What would you expect such a case study to entail, dear reader? Maybe some process diagrams, data entity schemas, architecture documents...you know, an ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE for the example company? Sadly, the joke is on us. None of this is forthcoming. The "case study" consists almost entirely of descriptions of meetings where everybody talks about the wonderful things they're going to do with this new enterprise architecture, followed by more meetings where everybody congatulates each other on the wonderful things they've just done thanks to enterprise architecture. Like the rest of the book, there is just no "there" there. Actual models? No room! Sample documents? No time! Any business school or MIS student who tried to hand in this pollyanna sales pitch as a "case study" would only get an F because the grade scale doesn't go to "G."

Perhaps the only value in this book is that, if read critically, it will teach you a great deal about why "Enterprise Architecture" has such a poor reputation in certain sectors of industry today. I really think that a lot of EA is about self-aggrandizement on the part of IT professionals, who think the entire business should revolve around their pretty diagrams and three-ring binders. We in the IT community need to get our minds right: we are here to support and enable the business, not impede it or, worse, subordinate it to its tools. If something like Enterprise Architecture is good for business, then we need to find ways to do it that don't involve saying to the people we are supposed to be helping: "Wait! Stop what you're doing and redefine everything you do according to MY methodology!" Read the first five pages of the "case study" in this book to see the new CIO do EXACTLY THAT. He should have been laughed out of the boardroom.

Solid introduction to the field.

As is appropriate for a first book it outlines the theory. When I finish it however, I'm going to be looking for something that can lead me through the next step; identifying the challenges and techniques to confront them. That's not this book.

"Introduction to Enterprise Architecture" is a very good text for a student or experienced professional to start to understand this very complex topic. The more useful aspect of the book is how it shows you the required elements of any Enterprise Architecture, and how they fit together. That is the most important thing for any Enterprise Architect to learn. That is presented well in the book.

In addition, there is a good summary of many of the most referenced EA Frameworks.

The examples are good, especially, the appendices that walk you through the specific deliverable documents for several of the well known EA Frameworks. That alone, is well worth the price of the book.

This book is one of the earliest attempts to develop a generic Enterprise Architecture (EA) modeling framework, and maps therefrom to multiple other frameworks.

Strengths:
1. Terminology is better than texts presenting similar topics;
2. It includes illustrative case studies; and
3. All of the graphics (figures, tables, equation) are numerous and relevantly illustrative.

Weaknesses:
1. I disagree with some of the EA mappings (given, mapping is an inexact science);
2. Several of the graphics are repetitive;
3. Some of the examples seem partially misguided and misleading;
4. None of the graphics are included in a summary cross-reference table.
5. Some implementation-specific details to the method presented are included; there is a shameless plug for a specific tool implementing the methodology.

I would've preferred the contents to preserve solution agnosticism (given, this is a personal preference), or at least a mention of where the plugged tool could be found.

I recommend this text for an undergraduate student or a Junior EA. I do not consider this as an all-inclusive reference for a Senior EA or Certified EA.

I bought this as part of CMU's introduction to enterprise architecture. As a book by itelf it is very good and thorough.

There is a 3rd edition out which Amazon don't appear to sell. It was released in 2009 so an quite disappointed Amazon are still pushing version 2,

For anyone attempting to get a basic understanding of Enterprise Architecture, this is the "go to" book. Whether your job is DoDAF, TOGAF, FEAF or MODAF centric, this book will help you cut through the chase and understand EA at its core. Great reading!!!

Good reading material and intersting approach to EA. This text came in early in the game of EA and I recommend it!

Finally a book that introduces the emerging profession of Enterprise Architecture from scratch. Dr. Bernard provides an easy to read, and understand, book that does not require an in-depth background in IT or management. The book begins with two case studies that provide background on the importance of EA as well as how you determine whether or not an EA is right for your organization. The remaining chapters discuss the development, use, and future of EA.

Each chapter begins with a brief Overview followed by easily understood Learning Objectives. The end of each chapter has a short Summary and a variety of Questions and Exercises.

Overall: An excellent book for the classroom or the professional world. Guaranteed to finish reading with a solid foundation in Enterprise Architecture.

EA is the application of rigorous methods to the management of Enterprise IT. Rigorous methods require, well, rigor. As a new practitioner of EA you will quickly find that you must choose how you will document the enterprise, and how you will then document the documentation formats so they are repeatable. This is dull work, tedious, and error prone. Dr. Scott Bernard has done the work for you. It will save you weeks of thankless dull effort. The advantage of this work is not academic theory and fancy hocus pocus, it is not advancing some odd software approach designed to displace system engineering in EA practice, it is not endless words to make you sound smart to the CEO, but trench warfare level lists of real artifacts with documentation and examples for real practitioners. Thank you, Scott Bernard from a 20 year practitioner of the art of enterprise scale IT architecture and strategic planning.

(On balance I should also mention that the cube, while it is an improvement on the FEAF triangle Dr. bernard helped author, remains imperfect as a clarifying device. It is unclear what the third dimension represents- some muddiness remains in the conceptualization. The EA3 cube is not the icon of EA that the Zachman matrix is... yet. I await his next try for yet another improvement.)

Interessant book and base of the course for the certification of Enterprise Architect (Carnegie Mellon)