I can’t deny it I was shocked when I received my copy of this book. It’s a big soft back book 30 x 21 cms but only 120 pages.
And the claims on the back cover “This books covers every detail”, that’s a big claim I thought. It goes on “Professional resources and underlying technology are provided in detail.” But, they are big pages, perhaps there’s a lot of small print, I thought. You can’t imagine my disappointment when I discovered that the first 67 pages look like screen prints of three Powerpoint presentations! My first reaction was how much did I pay for this? At $5 it would have been too much!
The three presentations you’ll get for your money are Establishing Federated IT Architectures, 36 slides with bullet point notes and pointers to the second half of the book. A tutorial on the Zachman Framework, 13 slides with practically no notes. And a 10 slide Executive Overview that wouldn’t fool Mickey Mouse. To add insult to injury the slides aren’t even color, wouldn’t scan well so if you wanted to use them you’d have to recreate your own version (ready for use?); if you’re that desperate give up now you’ll never make an EA. What’s more they don’t even have a consistent style!
The second part of the “Handbook” appears to be five or six first year papers on architecture, none of which are more than superficial and some of which; you guessed it are mostly bullet points, widely spaced in large font with no consistent style, doesn’t inspire confidence.
D for content, F for price and A for stating the obvious.
Handley, Jeff 2008, Enterprise Architecture Best Practice Handbook
ISBN who cares!
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