Books

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The Fifth Discipline: The art and practice of the learning organization: Second edition

Peter Senge, founder and director of the Society for Organisational Learning and senior lecturer at MIT, has found the means of creating a ‘learning organisation’. In The Fifth Discipline, he draws the blueprints for an organisation where people expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nutured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are contually learning together. The Fifth Discipline fuses these features together into a coherent body of theory and practice, making the whole of an organisation more effective than the sum of its parts.

Beyond Alignment: Applying Systems Thinking in Architecting Enterprises

This book is a comprehensive reader about how enterprises can apply systems thinking in their enterprise architecture practice, for business transformation and for strategic execution. The book’s contributors find that systems thinking is a valuable way of thinking about the viable enterprise and how to architect it. Edited by John Gøtze and Anders Jensen-Waud, the book features contributions from 32 international experts in the fields of systems thinking and enterprise architecture. Contributors: Adrian Campell, Alex Conn, Dennis Sherwood, Don deGuerre, Erik Perjons, Gene Bellinger, Harold Bud Lawson, Ilia Bider, Jack Ring, James Lapalme, James Martin, Jan Dietz, Jan Hoogervorst, Janne J. Korhonen, John Morecroft, Leo Laverdure, Linda Clod Præstholm, Mesbah Khan, Mikkel Stokbro Holst, Namkyu Park, Olov Östberg, Olusola O. Oduntan, Patrick Hoverstadt, Per Johannisson, Per-Arne Persson, Peter Sjølin, Rasmus Fischer Frost, Sally Bean, Tom Graves, and Tue Westmark Steensen.

Architecture Principles: The Cornerstones of Enterprise Architecture

Enterprises, from small to large, evolve continuously. As a result, their structures are transformed and extended continuously. Without some means of control, such changes are bound to lead to an overly complex, uncoordinated and heterogeneous environment that is hard to manage and hard to adapt to future changes. Enterprise architecture principles provide a means to direct transformations of enterprises. As a consequence, architecture principles should be seen as the cornerstones of any architecture. In this book, Greefhorst and Proper focus on the role of architecture principles. They provide both a theoretical and a practical perspective on architecture principles. The theoretical perspective involves a brief survey of the general concept of principle as well as an analysis of different flavors of principles. Architecture principles are regarded as a specific class of normative principles that direct the design of an enterprise, from the definition of its business to its supporting IT. The practical perspective on architecture principles is concerned with an approach to the formulation of architecture principles, as well as their actual use in organizations. To illustrate their use in practice, several real-life cases are discussed, an application of architecture principles in TOGAF is included, and a catalogue of example architecture principles is provided. With this broad coverage, the authors target students and researchers specializing in enterprise architecture or business information systems, as well as practitioners who want to understand the foundations underlying their practical daily work.

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

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, todays 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 todays 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. This title covers the latest emerging technologies affecting business practice, including digitization, cloud computing, agile software development, and Web 2.0. It focuses on the practical implementation of EAM rather than theory, with recommendations based on real-world case studies. It addresses changing business demands and practices, including Enterprise 2.0 , open source, global sourcing, and more. It takes an innovative approach to EAM, merging standard top-down and pragmatic, bottom-up strategies, offering real solutions to businesses undergoing enterprise-wide changes.

Intersection: How Enterprise Design Bridges the Gap Between Business, Technology, and People

Many organizations struggle with the dynamics and the complexity of today’s social ecosystems connecting everyone and everything, everywhere and all the time. Facing challenges at the intersection of business models, technical developments and human needs, enterprises must overcome the siloed thinking and isolated efforts of the past, and instead address relationships to people holistically. In Intersection, Milan Guenther introduces a Strategic Design approach that aligns the overarching efforts of Branding, Enterprise Architecture and Experience Design on common course to shape tomorrow’s enterprises. This book gives designers, entrepreneurs, innovators and leaders a holistic model and a comprehensive vocabulary to tackle such challenges. The Enterprise Design framework cuts through the complexity of Strategic Design work, explains how to navigate key aspects and bridge diverging viewpoints. In 9 examples, the author looks at the way companies like Apple, SAP, BBVA, and Jeppesen (a Boeing Company) apply design thinking and practice to shape their enterprises. Moving from strategy to conceptual design and concrete results, Intersection shows what is relevant at which point, and what expertise to involve.

Right Sourcing: Enabling Collaboration

Right Sourcing – Enabling Collaboration puts forward the proposal that the modern enterprise must fundamentally rethink its ‘sourcing equation’ to become or remain viable. By presenting perspectives on sourcing from 21 different contributors, the editors hope to enable and inspire readers to make better-informed decisions.