Chess and the Art of Enterprise Architecture

Overall a good read with some useful insights, especially about the failure of traditional "big bang" EA approaches. I would recommend it, but I'd like to see a new edition which could easily improve some areas.It's really good on pragmatic advice "from the trenches", which is often lacking in these types of book, so for that alone it's worth a read.A couple of stars deducted (maybe a bit harshly, I think 3.5 stars might be more fair) because:- the author's non-native English, coupled with quite a few examples of poor editing (typos, some grammatical errors) can make it hard to read in places. It's never impossible to follow, but there are places where some tighter editing would really improve the book. It reads as "translated to English" in many places.- the author's definitions of many parts of cloud computing are strange, eg "examples of IaaS are Azure or AWS", from p175 footnote. I think this may really be another example of the language / grammar problem, because the author clearly understands how cloud use can simplify or complicate things, but again it dilutes the impact of the book. There are a few other instances like this in the rest of the book, though this one was the most obvious to me (having spent the last 4 years working on Azure hosted systems).- the end of the book, describing specific suggested approaches, feels a bit thin compared to the start of the book which describes current state of the industry. Eg the PSA chapter. I got more from the book's "this is why X fails" than from its later "I suggest this" parts.3 stars seems a bit like damning with faint praise, but I'd still recommend this, esp given the price compared to other books in the field.

Really appreciated reading this book on my journey into Enterprise Architecture. It covers aspects that more technical oriented books won't be looking at, in an easy language that will please most readers.Real life experience is shared by the author, simplifying the understanding factor and giving great insight on what matters in the domain.

I'm reading about different ways of managing projects and this has a few interesting ideas such as not bothering with the roadmap approach for architecture maps. He explains why it doesn't work and suggests other ways to look at the problem.

Speaking as an EA with 32 years of experience I believe that some of the conclusions are highly questionable and much of the rest is motherhood and apple pie

A little gem in which the author condenses and shares decades of experience. Anyone working in architecture should have copies of this on their shelves to hand out to stakeholders so that they understand what architecture is about. Students could read this and pick up invaluable insights although without years of experience the subtleties may elude them. They should still obtain a copy as they will want to re-read it after having worked in the field for a while. The flavour of the language used is distinctive and makes it a pleasure to read as does the author's occasional diversions into whatever else he was thinking about when rendering his ideas onto paper.

This book captures the challenges faced by Enterprise Architecture in a clearly articulated and entertaining style based on pragmatic experience from the author. It is easily the best book I have read on the topic. The author easily moves from the challenges of dynamic business environments to structured IT environments and the potential friction between them. It may not have all the answers but explains very clearly why there are problems in this area and gives good guidance on how to navigate around them and avoid the pitfalls of the past. It is easily understandable for a non technical audience and I would strongly recommend it for any one in IT or Business Change management.