Collaborative Enterprise Architecture: Enriching EA with Lean, Agile, and Enterprise 2.0 practices

by Stefan Bente, Uwe Bombosch, Shailendra Langade

Ever-changing business needs have prompted large companies to rethink their enterprise IT. Today, businesses must allow interaction with their customers, partners, and employees at more touch points and at a depth never thought previously. At the same time, rapid advances in information technologies, like business digitization, cloud computing, and Web 2.0, demand fundamental changes in the enterprises’ management practices. These changes have a drastic effect not only on IT and business, but also on policies, processes, and people. Many companies therefore embark on enterprise-wide transformation initiatives. The role of Enterprise Architecture (EA) is to architect and supervise this transformational journey.Unfortunately, today’s EA is often a ponderous and detached exercise, with most of the EA initiatives failing to create visible impact. The enterprises need an EA that is agile and responsive to business dynamics. Collaborative Enterprise Architecture provides the innovative solutions today’s enterprises require, informed by real-world experiences and experts’ insights. This book, in its first part, provides a systematic compendium of the current best practices in EA, analyzes current ways of doing EA, and identifies its constraints and shortcomings. In the second part, it leaves the beaten tracks of EA by introducing Lean, Agile, and Enterprise 2.0 concepts to the traditional EA methods. This blended approach to EA focuses on practical aspects, with recommendations derived from real-world experiences. A truly thought provoking and pragmatic guide to manage EA, Collaborative Enterprise Architecture effectively merges the long-term oriented top-down approach with pragmatic bottom-up thinking, and that way offers real solutions to businesses undergoing enterprise-wide change.

Genres: Technology

328 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2012

Reviews

[Michael Finocchiaro · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an interesting book throwing around and defining lots of current jargon in the computer world but I thought it suffered a bit from lack of examples. I also thought it would talk far more about virtualization and hybrid cloud architectures than it did. There may be better works that focus on Agile and on Enterprise Architecture than this one.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had this book assigned as part of a Master's program, and I found it interesting. The authors do a good job of explaining what enterprise architecture (EA) is, how it provides value to the enterprise, and how Lean and Agile practices contribute to improving this value-adding process. It's very "meta" and mainly applies to executive management.

[Anjar Priandoyo · Rating 2 out of 5]

For an introduction, this book is OK, especially as is written in 2012 it also includes latest concept such as Lean and Agile.