recommended reading

Enterprise Architecture – as I see it – is a broad discipline. Architects busy themselves with the question “how should my enterprise be organized?” Answering that question and helping the enterprise to actually achieve its goals requires many different skills from architects. Some of these can be learned, others cannot. Over the years, I’ve read quite a few books that are directly or indirectly related to the field of enterprise architecture. In this post I give an overview book that inspired me the most.

Using “back of the napkin” with TOGAF and ArchiMate

Having recently read all of Dan Roam’s books (Back of the napkin, Unfolding the napkin, and Blah Blah Blah) I started drawing stuff whenever I could. I’m not naturally gifted at drawing (my kids tend to do a better job), but it was a whole lot of fun getting used to it again. I even got myself a nice “Wörther profil mechanical pencil” with very soft leads (6B) and carry that around all the time.

Having used my sketches in meetings, for helping my own thinking process, and helping clients solve problems I started wondering: how does this tie in with my enterprise architecture work? That is, how does it tie in with my two favorite open frameworks: TOGAF and ArchiMate? In this post, I’m exploring some ideas. I’ve included some drawings I made in the process (and following Dan’s rule nr 4 I didn’t clean ‘m up using PowerPoint). If you have any feedback at all: drop me a note and lets push this idea forward.