Feedback: Source of good ideas and methods
Your application to the specific case of requirements generation appears to be novel, and good.
William Hooper
London Business School graduate
Member, itSMF UK (IT Service Management Forum) Council member & Director of the Computing Suppliers’ Federation 1997-2005 Associate, City & Guilds of London Institute.
Oareborough Management Consulting, UK
Feedback: The train of thought
I really like your train of thought, Michael, from SOA to BA. And yes your latest book on Business Architecture is excellent!
Anirban Basu
Consulting IT Specialist at IBM
The Open Group Certified Master IT Specialist
São Paulo Area, Brazil
Review: Great guide for designing service oriented business organizations
This book primarily focused on integration of Service Orientation concepts with Business Process and Business Architecture disciplines so enterprise business values can be enhanced and improved.
The book evaluates business process discipline from many aspects.
Value Chain and Value Stream concepts are compared with Value Networks
and determined that former are too rigid and unhelpful in designing and
evolving an enterprise efficient and capable enough to re-engineer or
reorient itself, in a timely manner, towards changing customer needs or
market conditions.
Therefore, Value Networks, better aligned with Service Orientation,
should replace value stream and value chains while planning for future
Enterprise Model(s).
The book provides in-depth comparisons of known Enterprise Business Architecture (EBA) definitions and descriptions. Business functionality, Business Informational models and related aspects considered critical components of EBA. It is stressed that same factors drive organizations towards service orientation more effectively.
The book also thoroughly examines Business Architecture Discipline and its Eco-system. It includes analyzing ‘aspects’ of Business Architecture from outside-in and inside-out views perspectives as well as the many roles Business domains play within Business Architecture itself. This valuable work helps establish boundaries and scope for Business Architect’s role and Business Architecture itself while identifying their relationships with Business Service Orientation concepts.
The main focus of book is integration of Service Orientation concepts with Business Architecture leading towards what I’d call Service Orientation of Business Architecture. The book introduces and describes different service oriented methodologies, related patterns and analyzes their impacts, as well as viability, on business operations, its eco-system as well as corporate culture. The book also provides excellent examples and detailed analysis of Service Orientated Business Architecture’s collaboration with Value Networks along the way.
This book provides great value for different individuals. Experienced Business Managers and Strategists can learn the techniques and examples provided in this book to: a) improve and/or reengineer their existing OR design new service oriented practices, processes and policies, b) evaluate impact of their new service oriented ideas on business operations, customers, reputation, corporate culture and values, and c) employ acquired knowledge to design and manage new service oriented corporate as well as organizational culture.
Executives both in private and public sector can use this book to improve business agility, business structure, reputation, customer confidence (and win back). From a pure business architecture point of view, it boils down to positioning and structuring the business functions and roles to preemptively (or reactively) satisfy dynamic service trends in ever fluid business environments.
Ideally, the target audience to benefit most from this book range from mid level practitioners to business executives desiring to improve or design effective business structures responsive to satisfying dynamic customer or market expectations. However, many others can also benefit by enhancing their knowledge in BPM, Business Architecture and Service Orientation space as well.
Badar E. Munir
Member of Society of Industry Leaders
Chief Architect,
i3 Technologies, Inc.
Feedback: An Exploration of Business Architecture and Design
The title of this book is quite appropriate since it is essentially a compendium of what Michael Poulin knows as an experienced business architect, and it has much more depth and breadth of insight and knowledge than any non-architect manager could be expected to know.
I found the book informative, not for solutions or methods, but rather as a description of a wide range of problems, viewpoints, concepts, challenges and pitfalls to be encountered in the development of architectural approaches and design of a business.
Throughout the book is a thesis that the underlying framework of a business design should be a service oriented architecture. This is not a promotion of SOA as it is embraced by the information technology community, but a recognition that businesses have been designed with shared capabilities and have engaged outside services long before their processes were embedded in computer systems. While technology has changed the speed, efficiency and distribution of business operations, a service oriented business architecture remains the basic pattern for overall efficiency and agility of an enterprise. Information technology enhances the ability to efficiently, share and outsource capabilities.
So I recommend this book, not as an instruction manual, but as an exploration of business architecture and design issues that lead to, build on, and exploit a service oriented business architecture.
Fred Cummins,
Member/Editor of Object Management Group (OMG)
Business Systems Architect
Agile Enterprise Design, Ltd., USA
Feedback: Hard to read in US and frustrating to follow
I took another long look at Architects Know What Managers Don’t and while Michael Poulin has some interesting ideas around Business Architecture and the translation of business strategy to a business architecture, I find the flow of the topics to be choppy, hard to read and sometimes forcing the reader to jump back and forth in the book to understand the methodology he is recommending.
I’m certain that there are some great nuggets in this book for business architects, but as an enterprise architect I find the approach in book frustrating to follow. Maybe it is the difference in EU business practices and US business practices that causes the difficulties in understanding some of the ideas.
Anonym,
Enterprise Architect
USA
Feedback: An approach to business architecture
After many years of architecture practice and much research, I like to skim though books looking for sections that offer nuggets of knowledge and inspiration. Michael Poulin has interesting ideas around Business Architecture, most of which I agree with and have seen parts and variations in practice, however I found the book difficult to skim though since the style of much the book is to present different architecture views and debate their merit. It made it difficult to skim and to find a prescriptive approach for achieving the author’s vision of business architecture.
This book gives you depth analysis, Michael Poulin’s thoughts and vast experience on Business Architecture: the role in the business and the translation of business strategy to business architecture. It also offers examples of applying TOGAF, SMART requirements and ITIL to architecture in general and SOA specifically.
The author also notes in the beginning of the book that consultants and trainers cannot use the methods in the book for their business without an additional license. Since I am a consultant, had I found a prescriptive approach in the book I liked, I would not be able to use it without paying the author another fee according to the license page. For this reason I give the book three stars instead of four.
Eric Roch,Principle (Connected Solutions – Mobile | Cloud | SOA/Integration)
Perficient, Ltd., USA
Feedback: Part of the new wave in architecture
Architecture used to be just about systems and networks, a technical view on managing infrastructure. Michael Poulin’s book is a great lesson on the new wave in architecture, the switch in focus towards understanding the business model and using that to manage your IT estate in a more effective way. I really enjoyed reading the book and its certainly full of things I’ll be applying in my job.
Steve G. Jones,
Director of Strategy for Big Data and Analytics at Capgemini, UK
Co-author of OASIS Reference Model for SOA standard
HOW to ARCHITECT for DEVELOPERS 