Complex Enterprise Architecture: A New Adaptive Systems Approach

McDowal’s new book on enterprise architecture is a important contribution to the literature in this space. Most books on enterprise architecture are based around methods that treat the field as an extension to analysis and design methods that were developed in the 1970s and 1980s to build single software systems. Most of these methods require extensive planning and documentation and are not amenable to evolve an enterprise architecture fast enough to keep pace with the needs of a business.While there are a few enterprise architecture books that show that the authors understand that an enterprise architecture is a complex adaptive system that behaves in fundamentally different ways than a single large software system, this is the first book to take this as its starting point for discussion. Basically, once a complex adaptive system stops changing it is dead, so the goal of enterprise architecture has to shift from trying to prevent all changes to an architecture that have not been carefully controlled to instead trying to channel changes to maximize their benefits and minimize the downsides.This is also a very practical book because it attempts to take the first steps toward retooling enterprise architecture to work in a DevSecOps and Continuous Delivery environment. There is much more research to be done in these area of continuous architectural compliance and cybersecurity threat modeling, but the ideas put forth here serve as an excellent starting point.

Enterprise architecture suffers from a long history of failing to get the job done. Many have abandoned enterprise architecture as an expense with no return. A common phrase in engineering circles - “overcome by events” - is emblematic of this failure. Architects keep trying to apply architecture frameworks and top-down decomposition to the enterprise, and those are both bad ideas. The enterprise moves too quickly to allow this level of engineering rigor. So, what are we to do? This book describes the problem from historical and technical perspectives. More importantly, it offers an alternative that is both sensible and workable. The author offers step-by-step guidance for enterprise architecture that addresses business goals, as it should. The book is an easy read and avoids technical jargon that might limit readership to academics and theorists. Any enterprise that is hoping to participate in the digital revolution would do well to follow McDowall’s suggestions, which are revolutionary to enterprise architecture. Disclosure: The author and I have been co-workers for several years. Reading the book was like having a conversation with him. I think you’ll experience the same sensation. Nonetheless, this book is spot on and an easy read. Most importantly, the approach works, as we have demonstrated in real-world application.

Enterprise Architecture (EA) is the most important element (after Business Models) for the digital transformation of enterprises. EA is strong like steel to the extent that the subsequent system is built and maintained in absolute adherence to the dictates of EA, but simultaneously, EA is also liminal i.e. completely abstract to the extent that it is the primary carrier of the burden of any changes that are wrought by the interaction between the constituent subsystems as also the environment. This book identifies how EA can manifest both of these paradoxical characteristics by being a goal-directed complex adaptive system.Unlike real-life systems, architects define these goals by deriving them from the overarching business goals. EA is developed and implemented in pursuance of these goals and its success is measured in terms of the progress towards attainment of these very goals. Thus, enterprise architecture is not an effort towards a static state of being but of becoming—it is an on-going process.EA imparts the semblance of structural stability that uniquely defines and identifies a system, but simultaneously it is also the primary manifestation of the degree of flexibility and adaptability of this very system. Read this book to understand how to reconcile and realize both of these manifestations via the EA goals.