Tom Graves / Tetradian

At Dave Snowden’s request, I’ve re-edited my new book Everyday Enterprise Architecture: sensemaking, strategy, structures and solutions to clarify the differences between the Cynefin framework and my own work as described here. That update is now complete, and the amended master-files went off to Lightning Source early this afternoon, so that printed copies should be available via Amazon and the like by somewhen next week (around May 12, I think).

Apologies all round for this unfortunate glitch in the book-launch, but I hope you’ll be pleased with the end-result.

You can download the updated PDF from:

• http://tetradianbooks.com/2010/05/everydayea-ebook/

At the moment the link on that page points to the full e-book, not the sample version. I’ll replace it with the sample when I deliver the commercial master-copy to the retailers, but the full version will probably be up there for the next week or so – nominally until 22 May 2010 – so  grab the full version while you can!

And the updated version is also available, with the others in the series, in the private ‘Review’ section at:

• http://tetradianbooks.com/2008/12/review-books (email me for the page-access password if you don’t already have it)

For more on the book itself:

Main theme of this book is the actual details of what we do in enterprise-architecture work, particularly the thinking-processes, the review and reflection, and the practicalities of dealing with clients and other stakeholders in live real-time real-world practice. I’ve structured the book around a realistic ten-day architecture-project, based on real assignments over the past few years.

(Note for various folks at TOGAF Rome: the working-title of this book was Enterprise-architecture in real-time, so that’s what you’ll see in the notes for the conference, and in the sample PDF file if you took a copy.)

Comments and reviews would be much appreciated!

And another book off to press: Everyday Enterprise Architecture: sensemaking, strategy, structures and solutions. The master-files went off to Lightning Source on Friday, but I didn’t have time to update the Tetradian Books website until this morning.

(Note for various folks at TOGAF Rome: the working-title of this book was Enterprise-architecture in real-time, so that’s what you’ll see in the notes for the conference, and in the sample PDF file if you took a copy. Just before release to press I realised that the ‘real-time’ term was potentially confusing, hence switched over to the ‘everyday’ term to emphasise that the text goes through the process day-by-day as well as step-by-step.)

Main theme of this book is the actual details of what we do in enterprise-architecture work, particularly the thinking-processes, the review and reflection, and the practicalities of dealing with clients and other stakeholders in live real-time real-world practice. I’ve structured the book around a realistic ten-day architecture-project, based on real assignments over the past few years.

The sample-version PDF is at:

• http://tetradianbooks.com/2010/05/everydayea-ebook/

At the moment the link on that page points to the full e-book, not the sample version. I’ll replace it with the sample when I deliver the commercial master-copy to the retailers, but the full version will probably be up there for the next week or so –  grab the full version while you can!

The complete e-book is now available with the others in the series, in the private ‘Review’ section at:

• http://tetradianbooks.com/2008/12/review-books (email me for the page-access password if you don’t already have it)

Physical copies should be available via Amazon, Borders and other online retailers – and your local friendly independent bookstore – from about May 8.

Comments and reviews would be much appreciated!

Update (3 May 2010): As can be seen in the ‘comments’ section to this post, Dave Snowden, the originator of the Cynefin framework, has made a number of objections, necessitating an urgent re-edit. Production for the book has been postponed until an updated master-file can be created, which should be ready later today. Will add a further update on that here, anyway.

Update (also 3 May 2010): Checking through the text, it looks like there will need to be approximately 40 changes to the text, and 26 diagrams to redraw. Most of the text-changes will be trivial, fortunately, so that shouldn’t take long, but redoing all those drawings will definitely take a while – I’d hoped to get it all done today, but it may overrun into tomorrow. My apologies on that, and also apologies for the problem anyway. More later.

Delighted to say that I’ve now completed the next book in my ‘Tetradian Enterprise Architecture’ series, Doing Enterprise Architecture: process and practice in the real enterprise, with the master-files now delivered to Lightning Source for printing.

The sample-version PDF is at:

• http://tetradianbooks.com/2009/03/doing-ea-ebook/

The complete e-book is now available with the others in the series, in the private ‘Review’ section at:

• http://tetradianbooks.com/2008/12/review-books (email me for the page-access password if you don’t already have it)

Physical copies should be available via Amazon, Borders and other online retailers – and your local friendly independent bookstore – from about April 21.

Comments and reviews much appreciated!

One of the more interesting distractions in running the Tetradian Books website is in looking up the Whois listings to see who’s downloading what. Right now the Visio function model stencil seems to be the most popular download, but there’s a fair bit of interest generally in all of the practical enterprise-architecture material. And it seems to be completely worldwide, too, though oddly it seems to come in waves. A couple of days ago it was almost all in India; a few days before that, there were a couple of downloads from mid-Africa; most days there’s usually someone from Australia, Britain or the Netherlands (no surprise there ). Today, though, it’s all from the US:

• unspecified, Des Moines, Iowa
• Central Intelligence Agency, twice (yup, my work has come to the attention of the CIA – but panic not, it was only the enterprise-architecture framework reference-sheets)
• Boeing Corporation, Chicago
• unspecified, via Sprint
• State of Oregon, Salem, Oregon

Whether it has any meaning for anyone is another guess entirely – but at least they’re interested enough to download and take a look.

Feels worthwhile, anyway.

(Reminder that this ‘last chance’ is only about the Enterprise Architecture series on the Tetradian Books website – not the Alternate Realities series such as Disciplines of Dowsing.)

Received the e-book publishing contract yesterday, and is dated to begin 10 November (Monday – i.e. tomorrow). To comply with that, I’ll be preparing stripped-down versions of the existing e-books during today, and will replace the existing complete ones at about 9am GMT tomorrow morning. So today is your last chance to download complete free versions of the following e-books:

• Real Enterprise Architecture: beyond IT to the whole enterprise
• Bridging the Silos: enterprise-architecture for IT-architects [incomplete draft]
• SEMPER and SCORE: enhancing enterprise effectiveness
• Power and Response-ability: the human side of systems

The links will still work: but they’ll point to PDF files of sample-chapters, not the whole content.

Full details of where and how to purchase the e-books to follow in a future post: but I believe the price will be around £25.00 per copy, the same as the respective printed books.

At present you’ll still be able to download complete free e-books in the other series (Alternate Realities, Social Challenges and General Books). From now on, though, all books in the business-oriented Enterprise Architecture series – such as the upcoming The Viable Enterprise: enterprise architecture and the service-oriented enterprise – will go straight to full-price e-book as well as printed book.

Some very good news from my side: I’ve had a preliminary offer by a well-known IT-industry publisher to market and sell the print and e-book editions of the books in my Tetradian Books ‘Enterprise Architecture’ series. The catch for you is that once the deal goes ahead, in the next week or so, you’ll no longer be able to download for free the whole book-content from the Tetradian Books website. There’ll continue to be sample-chapters on the site, but not the whole book.

Still awaiting confirmation, but this will probably affect all the following titles:

• Real Enterprise Architecture: beyond IT to the whole enterprise
• Bridging the Silos: enterprise-architecture for IT architects (yes, I know it still isn’t complete, but it’s almost ready now, and will go on release as soon as it is)
• SEMPER and SCORE: enhancing enterprise effectiveness
• Power and Response-ability: the human side of systems

(It won’t affect any of the other books, such as the new Disciplines of Dowsing – it’s just the enterprise-architecture series.)

So if you want a free PDF of any of those books above, better download it quick: this next few days may be the last chance you get.

Prepared a handout on The Disciplines of Dowsing for the book-launch at the British Society of Dowsers conference this weekend, and realised it would probably be of more general use as well. You’ll find it up on the Tetradian Books website, at http://tetradianbooks.com/2008/09/disciplines-ref/ – free download in PDF format, as usual.

It’s a two-page (i.e. single-sheet) summary of the four ‘disciplines’ – Artist, Mystic, Scientist, Magician – as a useful ‘cheat-sheet’ for reference whilst working. The different perspectives and keyphrases that apply to each mode or discipline are listed under the following headings:

• mode’s role is…
• mode manages…
• mode responds to the context through…
• has decision-sequence of…
• use this mode when…
• you’re in this mode when…
• rules include…
• warning-signs of dubious discipline include…
• bridge to other modes with…

As with the book itself, the aim is to help boost the effective quality of work in dowsing and other subjective skills.

Share and enjoy, folks?

Continuing the fixups from my mildly embarrassing blunder with e-book downloads on Tetradian Books – looks like I didn’t get it right that time either.

Looks like it may have been a case of Read The Fine Manual… oops. Definitely embarrassing.

So I dearly hope that this time, having read the proper instructions for the Drain Hole download-manager, and put in the proper embedded codes rather than an assumed URL, it might now actually work. Let me know, if you would?

Many thanks – and apologies, too.

—

Addendum, 16 July: finally discovered that the read-access permissions were set to default to Administrator-only. Have now reset this to ‘Anyone’, so should now at last work – please please please? I’ve tested it in a whole bunch of different ways, and the only one that doesn’t seem to work, on some systems only, is direct (left-click) view in Internet Explorer. If in doubt, use ‘right click and save’.

Apologies again for the blunders – oh well.

Just discovered, courtesy of a much-appreciated comment from John Gøtze, that my e-book download-links in Tetradian Books weren’t working properly. Or rather, they were, but only for ‘right click and save’, not for simple click, which is what I’d written.

(I’m using a WordPress plug-in called Drain Hole to manage downloads – looks like ‘Black Hole’ might have been more accurate. Oh well, it’s fixed now, in text-form at least.)

Apologies to all who may have attempted to download prior to this. Try again – and again, do let me know if anything doesn’t work!