Architecting the Future Enterprise

by Deborah J. Nightingale, Donna H. Rhodes

Two experts in enterprise architecting lay out a holistic approach to creating a blueprint for future enterprise transformation. Every enterprise evolves continuously, driven by changing needs or new opportunities. Most often this happens gradually, with small adjustments to strategy, organization, processes, or infrastructure. But sometimes enterprises need to go beyond minor fixes and transform themselves, in response to a disruptive event or dramatically changing circumstances—a merger, for example, or a new competitor. In this book, enterprise architecting experts Deborah Nightingale and Donna Rhodes offer a framework for enterprise transformation. Successful transformation, they believe, starts with a holistic approach, taking into consideration all facets of the enterprise and its environment rather than focusing solely on one factor—information technology, for example, or organizational structure. This is architecting the future enterprise : creating a blueprint for what the enterprise will look like after the transformation. Nightingale and Rhodes introduce the ARIES (Architecting Innovative Enterprise Strategy) framework, including a ten enterprise element model and an architecting process model, and show how to apply it, from start to finish. They explain how to create a holistic vision for the future enterprise and how to generate concepts and alternative architectures; they describe techniques for evaluating possible architectures, tools for implementation planning, and strategies for communicating with stakeholders. Nightingale and Rhodes offer real-world examples throughout, drawing on their work at MIT, with an extensive case study of enterprise transformation at a medical device manufacturer. An appendix offers two additional architecting projects. Seven Architecting Imperatives
• Make architecting the initial activity in transformation.
• Develop a comprehensive understanding of the enterprise landscape.
• Understand what stakeholders value and how that may change in the future.
• Use multiple perspectives to see the whole enterprise.
• Create an architecting team suited to the transformation challenges.
• Engage all levels of leadership in transformation.
• Architect for the enterprise's changing world.

200 pages, Hardcover

First published February 13, 2015

About the author

DEBORAH J. NIGHTINGALE is Professor of the Practice of Engineering Systems and Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT and director of MIT’s Center for Technology Policy and Industrial Development.

Reviews

[Jay French · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’ve read a number of books and manuals on enterprise architecture. Many provide help in creating architectures from a high level down to a low level. “Architecting the Future Enterprise” is like most of the books I’ve read on architecture, but the aim was a little higher. The book spends a lot of time on documenting the company and its needs at a very high level. Think mission/vision/values, but deeper drill-downs on those kinds of topics. The book covers the architecting process from this high level down through scenario planning and architecture documentation, not to the deep technical level but more to the story level. This certainly isn’t the process you would use to architect, say your cloud computing environment, but you would use it to architect at a higher level.

Like most architecture processes, doing everything that is recommended generates huge amounts of documentation, and would take massive time investments, including time from high level executives. When I read these books, I look for suggestions on economizing and timeboxing the processes. I didn’t get that here. That’s why you pay consultants to manage these processes, I guess, including the authors I suspect. I liked how the authors described the process and the kinds of issues that need to be analyzed and documented. This certainly could be a useful book for those going through an architecture exercise at work, to help you think through your process and to avoid missing something that you might need.

[George Anderson]

great book deserves attention