Books

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Simple Architectures for Complex Enterprises

Dismantle the overwhelming complexity in your IT projects with strategies and real-world examples from a leading expert on enterprise architecture. This guide describes best practices for creating an efficient IT organization that consistently delivers on time, on budget, and in line with business needs. IT systems have become too complex – and too expensive. Complexity can create delays, cost overruns, and outcomes that do not meet business requirements. The resulting losses can impact your entire company. This guide demonstrates that, contrary to popular belief, complex problems demand simple solutions. The author believes that 50 percent of the complexity of a typical IT project can and should be eliminated – and he shows you how to do it. You’ll learn a model for understanding complexity, the three tenets of complexity control, and how to apply specific techniques such as checking architectures for validity. Find out how the author’s methodology could have saved a real-world IT project that went off track, and ways to implement his solutions in a variety of situations.

fruITion: Creating the Ultimate Corporate Strategy for Information Technology

Called ‘part entertaining novel and part enlightening textbook’ by reviewers, FruITion is about Ian the CIO. How will Ian as the CIO react when the management team explores a very different relationship with IT? The strategy that emerges has major implications for the CIO and everyone in the IT department. The book is followed up with two other books, RecrEAtion and DefrICtion. Chris Potts has developed a unique approach to enterprise architecture and portfolio management, called Enterprise Investment.

Active Knowledge Modeling of Enterprises

Enterprise Modeling has been defined as the art of externalizing enterprise knowledge, i.e., representing the core knowledge of the enterprise. Although useful in product design and systems development, for modeling and model-based approaches to have a more profound effect, a shift in modeling approaches and methodologies is necessary. Modeling should become as natural as drawing, sketching and scribbling, and should provide powerful services for capturing work-centric, work-supporting and generative knowledge, for preserving context and ensuring reuse. A solution is the application of Active Knowledge Modeling (AKM). The AKM technology is about discovering, externalizing, expressing, representing, sharing, exploring, configuring, activating, growing and managing enterprise knowledge. An AKM solution is about exploiting the Web as a knowledge engineering medium, and developing knowledge-model-based families of platforms, model-configured workplaces and services. This book was written by the inventors of AKM arising out of their cooperation with both scientists and industrial practitioners over a long period of time, and the authors give examples, directions, methods and services to enable new ways of working, exploiting the AKM approach to enable effective c-business, enterprise design and development, and lifecycle management. Industry managers and design engineers will become aware of the manifold possibilities of, and added values in, IT-supported distributed design processes, and researchers for collaborative design environments will find lots of stimulation and many examples for future developments.

Enterprise Architecture: Creating Value by Informed Governance

Twenty years after the first publications and books on enterprise architecture, the domain is evolving from a technology-driven towards a more business-driven approach, thus empowering decision makers to adapt and transform an enterprise in order to keep up with changing business needs. At the same time the discipline of enterprise architecting has matured, leading to a better understanding of the profession of an enterprise architect. With this book, the authors – consultants with CapGemini – aim to provide an overview of enterprise architecture including the process of creating, applying and maintaining it, thus taking into account the perspectives of CxOs, business managers, enterprise architects, solution architects, designers and engineers. They explore the results that are produced as part of an enterprise architecture, the process by which these are produced, and the role the architect plays in this process.As such, they do not describe a specific method for developing an enterprise (IT) architecture, nor do they define a specific modeling language for enterprise architecture, rather they offer the reader a fundamental way of thinking about enterprise architecture, which will enable him to select and apply the right approach, architecture framework and tools that meet the objective and context of the architecture work at hand. This approach is emphasized by discussion statements at the end of each chapter, sparking thoughts about benefits, shortcomings, and future research directions. Covering both theoretical foundations and practical use, and written in close collaboration between industry professionals and academic lecturers, “Enterprise Architecture” thus offers an ideal introduction for students in areas like business information systems or management science, as well as guidance and background for professionals seeking a more thorough understanding of their field of work.