Todd Biske: Outside the Box

I recently completed reading the book Troux Enterprise Architecture Solutions by Richard Reese. First, the disclosure: this book was provided to me by Packt Publishing for the explicit purpose of this review. In addition, Packt is also the publisher of my own book, SOA Governance. I have no relationship with Troux, however, I have had discussions with various sales staff from Troux over the course of my career. This post is a review of the book, not a review of Troux.

First off, the book is well-written. I never felt like I was slogging through inordinate amounts of text, the chapters were of an appropriate length, and the level of detail was consistent throughout the book. Not including the index, it’s just shy of 200 pages and was a very easy read.

As a book on Enterprise Architecture, I found chapters 1-5 and 11 to be the most valuable. These chapters focused on managing the IT portfolio, creating strategic alignment, optimizing the application portfolio, IT governance, managing the EA practice (roles & responsibilities), and generating value. If you are new to Enterprise Architecture and need some ideas on how an EA program can contribute value to your organization, read these chapters. Chapters 6-10 are more focused on describing aspects of the Troux platform, with lesser emphasis on the practice of Enterprise Architecture. These chapters discuss architecture modeling, transformation platform, metadata management, visualization, and TOGAF support. Finally, chapter 12 is a summary, but I have to call out that it had one odd section on EA and cloud computing. This seemed out of place, and frankly, unnecessary. It felt like someone said, “Cloud Computing is the hot topic today, you have to say something about it.”

In terms of covering the Troux platform, it is important to know that this is not a how-to book. It is an overview of the platform. The right audience for this book are people that are looking to establish or mature their EA program and people that are considering investing in EA or Strategic IT Planning technology. For a $40 investment, this book provides excellent insight into the Troux platform. When you consider the time and money spent in vendor selections, this book is a very small price to pay to give you a great idea of what Troux can do, without any sales pressure. Having participated in many different product evaluations over the course of my career, I’m surprised more companies have not taken the approach of writing a very easy to read book targeted at the people that are considering asking for budget dollars or performing evaluations. Getting back to the content of the chapters, from my perspective, I preferred the more EA practice focused chapters with mentions of how Troux fits in over the chapters that were more focused on the platform (6-11), but my area of interest is the practice of EA. For someone who has concerns about whether Troux itself will work with the architecture methodology or be able to share information with other systems, such as a CMS/CMDB, these chapters cover those topics. It is good that the author covered both areas, as not all readers will have the same objectives for the book.

Summing it up, would I recommend this book? Yes. While the target audience is a bit narrow, for that audience, I think the book is quite valuable. Its appeal is not limited to people solely interested in the the Troux platform or EA technologies, as I think it has value for people interested in either establishing or maturing their EA practice. Some of the other books I’ve read on EA tend to be very academic in nature, this book doesn’t fall into that category. Instead, the coverage on the practice of EA was very pragmatic, even if though it does portray a very mature, structured IT organization. If you’re trying to determine whether EA or strategic IT planning technology is right for your organization, I would definitely read this book before jumping into vendor discussions, evaluations, and POCs.

One Response to “Book Review: Troux Enterprise Architecture Solutions”