Tom Graves / Tetradian

Everyday Enterprise Architecture, the latest book in my Tetradian Enterprise Architecture series, is now available on Amazon:

• ‘Everyday Enterprise Architecture‘ on Amazon.com
• ‘Everyday Enterprise Architecture‘ on Amazon.co.uk

Note that Amazon have an unfortunate habit of listing print-on-demand books as ‘out of stock’: all that it means is that it takes at most one extra day for delivery.

The publisher-blurb is as follows:

All of architecture comes down to one simple idea: things work better when they work together, with clarity, with elegance, on purpose. Yet how do we express that ‘one idea’ in practice, within our organisations? With what results, and for what business-value? This book describes the down-to-earth detail of everyday enterprise architecture, to show what architects actually do to deliver value fast, across the entire enterprise.

Working step by step through a real ten-day architecture-project, this book explores the activities that underpin sensemaking, strategy, structures and solutions in the real-time turmoil of an enterprise-architect’s everyday work.

Topics covered include:

• • how to use enterprise-architecture to tackle executive-level business-problems
  • how to develop an agile architecture practice that can keep pace with the real-time pressures of the real business world
  • how to identify the business-reasons and business-value for each activity
  • how to thrive on the inherent uncertainties of the architecture process
  • how to use context-space maps to guide sensemaking and solution-design
  • how to apply architecture ideas and activities to describe what actually happens in a real enterprise-architecture project
  • how to enhance architectural skills, judgement and awareness, for continuous improvement across the enterprise and in the architecture itself

If you want your enterprise to flourish and prosper in the midst of relentless change, this is one book you’ll definitely need.

The book describes the actual thinking-processes and business-activities that typify real architecture-work at an enterprise-wide scope and scale. The structure of the book is a walk-through of a simultaneous pair of architecture projects, using an agile-style adaptation of the well-known TOGAF Architectural Development Method. Both of the projects need to be delivered in parallel, and fully completed within a ten-day period. One of the parallel projects focusses on ‘the architecture of architecture’; the other – adapted from real whole-of-enterprise architecture-consultancy assignments – tackles a serious business-strategy problem for a fictional bank.

The book also introduces a new sensemaking technique for enterprise-architectures, known as ‘context-space mapping’. The technique draws on systems-theory and complexity-theory to enable a much richer view of the architecture context, yet still deliver actionable results in tune with the timescales of the real business world.

The book-cover includes an illustration from the Dover Collection, indicating the kind of stress under which most enterprise-architects work! The aim is that the book should help to ease some of the overload, and make it easier to describe to others what it is that enterprise-architects actually do.

At present you can also download the full ebook version for free from the Tetradian Books website; note that this offer will only be available for a few more days, after which the the full ebook will be replaced by a  ’sample’ edition, containing contents and sample-chapters only.

Message from the Amazon is a recent post by one of my favourite writers on corporate social responsibility, Christine Arena. It includes a summary of the ‘oil wars’ occurring at present around purported oil-reserves in the Amazon basin, the work of groups such as the Pachamama Alliance, and in particular the worldview of indigenous peoples such as the Achuar, Shuar and Kichwa:

The Achuar, Shuar, and Kichwa peoples have one thing that oil companies don’t: ancient wisdom. If effectively leveraged, it is hypothesized that such wisdom could translate to a groundswell of public support for the ‘save the rainforest’ cause. Ancient wisdom could potentially build bridges of mutual understanding between indigenous communities and mainstream Western culture. Ultimately, it could help win the ongoing “Amazon oil war” in a way that benefits all humanity.

With one key exception, I would agree entirely with the article. Its description of the Achuar worldview also aligns exactly with my own experience and understanding of the Australian aboriginal context and its concept of the Dreaming.  One of the most interesting points, for example, was about the Achuar’s view of the respective roles of men and women:

“Achuar women’s role is to say when,” says Lien. “They tell men when they’ve cut down enough trees, hunted enough animals, taken enough from the earth. And the men listen.”

To me that makes perfect sense – when it’s in balance. I’ve seen similar descriptions in other indigenous societies, such as the Plains Indians (Sioux et al, I think?) structures for dealing with major decisions: the male Elders (and only the men) discuss the issues, each from a single perspective, after which the Grandmothers (collectively, without discussion) make the decision – and their decision is final. But that’s where the exception comes, because Arena blows it completely here by adding the fatuous remark:

Imagine if Western women wielded that kind of power.

I’m sorry, but I get really annoyed at the underlying implications in that kind of comment, and the selective myopia that drives them. (Very much a ‘Green’ perspective, in Spiral Dynamics terms, rather than the ‘Yellow/Gold’ that’s actually needed here.) The point is that Western women already do wield that kind of power – and that’s exactly the problem, because at present they use that power just as irresponsibly as do Western men. If not more so…

For example, take a look at who really drives Western consumerism. Yes, no doubt at all that we could point a finger or two at ‘men and their toys’: but just note also which sex spends more of their time in the shopping-malls and flicking endlessly through the TV shopping-channels? It’s common to claim that men earn more than women (which in fact they generally don’t in Western societies, as is shown in any real like-with-like comparison), but rather more important is that fact that Western women spend far more than men – something like twice as much as men, in fact. (The huge transfer of wealth from men to women somewhere between earning and spending somehow fails to be noticed in most current feminist studies of economics… strange, that…) So who has the real purchasing power? – and the equally-real responsibilities that go with it? That’s a serious question, which needs a serious answer – which, rather noticeably, we don’t get in that quote above.

Now add into that mix the probable source of that fatuous comment, the all-too-convenient ‘essentialist’ myths that arose with the modern variants of feminism. All of these summarise to a single vain, vapid, self-serving, self-congratulatory assertion that women are somehow inherently ‘better’ and ‘wiser’ than men, that “men are the problem, women are the solution”. If we go further back, to a rather more honest and intellectually-rigorous period in feminist history, one of the main concerns of the 1848 Seneca Falls women’s convention was a demand for acknowledgement by all of each woman’s responsibility for her own life; yet present-day feminism seems far more concerned with evasion of any form of responsibility for women, instead seeking to offload all responsibility onto others via what one rather more aware feminist commentator (Naomi Wolf, I think?) described as “a religion of Other-blame”. And blame itself is a key form of social violence. If we want to resolve these serious world-level issues, we need to be a lot more honest than that.

The physics definition of ‘power’ is the ability to do work; most social definitions of ‘power’ – including those of most modern feminism – are closer to ‘the ability to avoid work’. Therein lie some huge problems for individuals, families, communities, organisations, nations and the world as a whole; it also doesn’t help that most of the so-called ‘rights’ discourse lies on the wrong side of that balance. What we need here is not convenient gender-blame or Other-blame, but some real honesty and real responsibility. That’s the real ‘message from the Amazon’ – and it’s one we all need to learn, and fast.

Delighted to say that Lightning Source have done it again with my new book Doing Enterprise Architecture: a one-week turn-round from sending in the PDF source-files to delivery of the first fifty copies on my doorstep. Very impressive.

And the print-version is now available on both Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk – those two links point direct to the respective Amazon detail-page. For other online retailers, or your local friendly independent bookstore – like the ever-helpful Red Lion Books in Colchester – use the ISBN book-number: 978-1-906681-18-0

I’ll also have copies to hand out at the TOGAF conference in central London next week – see you there, perhaps?

Please pass the word on for me, if you would? Many thanks!