The Practice of Enterprise Architecture: A Modern Approach to Business and IT Alignment

by Svyatoslav Kotusev

Enterprise architecture (EA) is a set of descriptions relevant to both business and IT intended to bridge the communication gap between business and IT stakeholders in organizations, facilitate information systems planning and improve business and IT alignment. Due to complex historical reasons, the notion of enterprise architecture was always surrounded by endless speculations, dangerous myths, non-existing best practices, unfulfilled promises, expensive failures and grave disappointments. Traditionally the entire discourse around enterprise architecture was dominated by shallow advice and faddish approaches (e.g. well-known EA frameworks) infinitely distant from the practical realities, but nonetheless aggressively promoted by commercially motivated consultancies and gurus. At the same time, realistic and trustworthy information on enterprise architecture is still incredibly hard to find in any available sources.

Based on an extensive study of the actual industry best practices and existing EA literature, this book provides a unique, systematic, end-to-end description of various aspects of an EA practice integrated into a consistent logical picture. In particular, this book offers clear, research-based, conceptually sound and practically actionable answers to the key questions related to enterprise architecture:

* What is the meaning of enterprise architecture and an EA practice?
* What processes constitute established EA practices and how do they work?
* What EA artifacts are used in successful EA practices and how?
* What is the best way to structure architecture roles and functions?
* What software tools and modeling languages are necessary for enterprise architecture?
* How to initiate an EA practice in organizations from scratch and evolve it?
* Where do current EA best practices originate from?

This book is organized in a highly structured, sequential manner and does not require any prior knowledge of enterprise architecture. The book is intended for a broad audience of people interested in enterprise architecture including practicing and aspiring architects, architecture managers, academic EA researchers, EA lecturers and students in universities.

Genres: Business, Architecture, Computer Science, Software, Nonfiction, Engineering

570 pages, Kindle Edition

Published January 15, 2021

About the author

Svyatoslav Kotusev is an independent researcher, educator and consultant. Since 2013, he has been studying enterprise architecture practices in organizations. He is an author of the book "The Practice of Enterprise Architecture: A Modern Approach to Business and IT Alignment" (now in its second edition), the book "Enterprise Architects: The Agents of Digital Transformation", more than 50 articles and other materials on enterprise architecture that appeared in various academic journals and conferences, industry magazines and online outlets (visit https://kotusev.com for more information). Svyatoslav received his PhD in information systems from RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia. Prior to his research career, he held various software development and architecture positions in the industry. He can be reached at kotusev@kotusev.com.

Reviews

[Alessandro Berardi · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book does a good job at presenting what Enterprise Architecture really is in the practical reality of businesses and organisations when compared to formal frameworks. However, there are no real practical examples, which takes away from the applicability of the book’s contents. There are also some gross generalisations, such as presenting non-technical business executives as completely disconnected from technical language and details, which, in my experience, does not always hold true. The book is both dense with value and at times repetitive and verbose. Overall, I found it to be a dry read. The chapter summaries and numerous diagrams are useful for consolidating the valuable strategic and practical takeaways.

[Paul Anderson · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author describes 24 artifacts used in Enterprise Architecture, usefully grouped into 6 categories. These are introduced in chapters 9-14, which I found to be the most useful part of the book. The author is convinced that industry frameworks for enterprise architecture are disconnected from reality and regularly warns the reader to avoid them, but he does provide a useful history of these frameworks in Appendix A. The ultimate purpose of enterprise architecture is to improve communication and collaboration between business and IT, so architects should use the artifacts best suited to achieve that goal within their organization.

[Eric Jager · Rating 3 out of 5]

All in all a great read with helpful insights coming directly from the EA-community.
However, calling other architecure-based planning methodologies “faddish and flawed” over and over again, up until the point where it gets majorly annoying is an absolute stain on an otherwise great and educational book.

[Marc · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good Overview of practical EA

The author offers a different and practical way of enterprise architecture, that is a breadth of fresh air compared to established frameworks and their teachings.

It obviously is not a silver bullet that magically establishes EA in your org. but also does not claim to be such.

[Ole Bagneux · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very rare book on Enterprise Architecture, in the sense that it is actually applicable and makes enterprise architecture simple and pragmatic. I posted a long review of the book on my medium profile:

https://medium.com/analysts-corner/en...

[Daniel Park · Rating 4 out of 5]

For anyone either with and interest in, getting started in enterprise architecture it gives a good frame of reference that is based on what people are actually doing. It can be a little slow to read through at times but the content is quite good and very informative.

[Barry · Rating 2 out of 5]

Needlessly repetitive to the point of frustration.

I had the opportunity to join an EA team and identified many of the criticisms presented in this book, however beyond highlighting artefacts and their relationships (repeatedly) I don't think this 'changes the landscape' where EA is going

[Fernando Guerrero · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very detailed explanation of all EA process and docs. Needs more real life examples