Patterns for Performance and Operability: Building and Testing Enterprise Software Review

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Patterns for Performance and Operability: Building and Testing Enterprise Software ReviewI've been in IT for almost 20 years now and just about all of the books are pie in the sky theory and cut and paste methodologies that don't work in an actual deployment.
(Why didn't I give this book 5 stars? I would've like some "anatomy of a failure" type lessons learned. But I would've given it 4 1/2 stars if possible.)
This book eschews the theory and talks about what needs to be done to put a service into a production environment and keep it up and running. If you're looking for some great guidelines as to what needs to be done to get a product up and running, this is the book.
As a software test professional, I make a plea to my testing colleagues to get this book. There needs to be more focus on the non-functional aspects of putting a service into an operational state and so little testing is done these days with that in mind.
For developers, it provides a good list of tips for making a system much more responsive with regards to status and reporting in a production environment. Great reminders for Devs to build a system that works in the environment to which it will be deployed.
Get it!Patterns for Performance and Operability: Building and Testing Enterprise Software OverviewStructured to follow the software life cycle, Patterns for Performance and Operability provides advice and examples-based instructions at every phase. You can read it from start to finish or go directly to those chapters that interest you the most. Whatever approach you choose, you will learn:
How to:
Define and document comprehensive non-functional requirements for any software system
Define scope and logistics for non-functional test activities
Execute non-functional tests and report results clearly and effectively
Patterns for defensive software designs in common software scenarios that promote operability and availability
Implement the right level of reporting, monitoring, and trending for highly available production software systems
Patterns for:
Software designs that support simpler and more efficient operation in a production environment
Software design that support high-performance and scalability
Strategies and Techniques for:
Techniques for managing and troubleshooting during a production crisis
Strategies for resisting project pressure to compromise on quality or completeness of non-functional activities in the software cycle

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Convergent Architecture: Building Model Driven J2EE Systems with UML Review

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Convergent Architecture: Building Model Driven J2EE Systems with UML ReviewWhen I started this book, I was looking forward to an explanation of how to use the Convergent Architecture to create a J2EE application. What I found was a vague, confusing, and repetitive discussion that often reads as if it was in a tragic accident with a thesaurus. The idea behind the Convergent Architecture is not that complicated. We need to create a model driven architecture above UML that can link design and actual code development. Too often in this book the Convergent Architecture is not explained in terms of what it is but rather how it is like designing cathedrals, diesel engines, or jet planes. The author tells us that using the Convergent Architecture can reduce time up to 70% and that these numbers are endorsed by neutral parties but he gives us no information about these neutral parties. And he doesn't tell us what the 70% is actually compared to making these numbers useless for doing any evaluation. The book promises to be a "step-by-step" guide but instead reads like a corporate white paper designed to sell a product. And there is a product in here that the author is selling. He is the founding director of the company that makes a product that takes up the last two chapters of the book. The only part of the book that is "step-by-step" is the tutorial on how to use the author's product. Overall, I was very disappointed in a book that I looked forward to reading.Convergent Architecture: Building Model Driven J2EE Systems with UML OverviewThe only complete technical guide to building integrated business systems using the convergent architecture approachIn his groundbreaking Business Engineering with Object Technology (0-471-04521-7), David Taylor introduced the concept of convergent architecture (CA), a framework for building the business design directly into the software systems that support it. Now, in this important follow-up to that 1995 classic, expert Richard Hubert provides systems developers and architects with their first complete blueprint for building integrated CA business systems using the hottest technologies, including Enterprise JavaBeans, XML, UML, Rational Rose, and others. Following a detailed introduction to the elements of CA, he walks readers through the entire CA design and implementation process, using examples in Java and EJB to illustrate key points.Companion Website provides hands-on tutorials, links to related tool sites, and updates to the CA methodology.

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Applied Software Product Line Engineering Review

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Applied Software Product Line Engineering ReviewThe authors of this book represent an all-star lineup of the best of the best in the Software Product Line Engineering (SPLE) field. They do a great job of providing a snapshot of the current SPLE best practices in the industry today.
Each chapter is written by a different author, or team of authors. This leads to some different perspectives on SPLE. This works for this type of book, but it does provide a conflict in the points of view taken in certain chapters. If you have experience with SPLE this shouldn't be an issue because you will already understand what those different views are, but for someone with little or no experience this could cause confusion. I found none of the points of view wrong, just different. Different domains require, and provide for, different approaches.
I recommend this book to those that are experienced as a guide to the evolution of the topics covered, and to the beginner I would use it as a road map of topics you should learn more about in order to get the full understanding behind each chapter. Each chapter provides an excellent reference section.
I would suggest also reading the following books. They provide more information about the material covered in some of the chapters.
"Software Product Lines: Practices and Patterns" is mentioned several places in the book. It is key to getting a more in-depth look at the 29 practice areas and the patterns that help to apply them.
"Designing Software Product Lines with UML: From Use Cases to Pattern-Based Software Architectures" goes in-depth into the use of Product Line UML based Software engineering (PLUS). UML and PLUS are mentioned several places in the book. PLUS is what I use when I build a software product line. I have created a UML stereotype in SPARX EA which you can download. Just google "UML STATIC MODELING IN PRODUCT LINE ENGINEERING (PLE) with SPARX EA".
The table of contents is below.
ORGANIZATIONAL AND MANAGERIAL ISSUES
Software Product Line Engineering: Overview and Future Directions
A Roadmap for Software Product Line Adoption
New Methods behind a New Generation of Software Product Line Successes
Evaluating Product Family Development Using the Balanced Scorecard Approach
Product Management for Software Product Lines: An Overview
METHODOLOGIES AND PROCESSES
A Systems Product Line Approach
Adoption of Software Product Lines to Develop Autonomic Pervasive Systems
Development of a Software Product Line for Validation
Environments
Building a Family of Compilers
Formal Verification and Software Product Lines
TECHNICAL ISSUES
Multiple-View Requirements Models for Software Product Line Engineering
Managing Flexibility and Variability: A Road to Competitive Advantage
Feature Oriented Analysis and Design for Dynamically
Reconfigurable Product Lines
Separating Application and Security Concerns in Modeling
Software Product Lines
Architecture as Language
INDUSTRY EXPERIENCES AND CASE STUDIES
Management and Financial Controls of a Software Product Line Adoption
Efficient Scoping with CaVE: A Case Study
Model-Driven, Aspect-Oriented Product Line Engineering: An Industrial Case Study
Evaluation of Design Options in Embedded Automotive Product Lines
Product Line in the Business Process Management Domain
I found the material covered to all be of great value. There are a lot of great case studies through out the book beyond the section of chapters that cover case studies. They help to take the practices covered from theory to reality.
My biggest pain point with this book is the index. It is just down right sad. I am not going to ding the book for something technical the editors missed. I have been very tempted to grab an electronic version to make up for its weakness', although I have not seen one for sale.
All in all if you are involved with Software Product Line Engineering at all, this is a mandatory read. Software Product Line Engineering is an evolving field and this book brings us up to date on the evolution of the field.
Applied Software Product Line Engineering OverviewOver the last decade, software product line engineering (SPLE) has emerged as one of the most promising software development paradigms for increasing productivity in IT-related industries. Detailing the various aspects of SPLE implementation in different domains, Applied Software Product Line Engineering documents best practices with regard to system development. Expert contributors from academia and industry come together and focus on core asset development, product development, and management, addressing the process, technical, and organizational issues needed to meet the growing demand for information. They detail the adoption and diffusion of SPLE as a primary software development paradigm and also address technical and managerial issues in software product line engineering. Providing an authoritative perspective of the latest research and practice in SLPE, the text:Presents in-depth discussions and many industry / case studies Covers applications in various domains including automotive, business process management, and defenseOrganized according to the organizational, process, and technical aspects of software product lines within an organizationProvides the expertise of a distinguished panel of global contributorsEver-increasing global competition coupled with a fragile world economy means that the pressure is on for software engineers and software process improvement professionals to find ways to meet the needs of expanding markets-with greater efficiency and effectiveness. This book arms readers with the insight needed to harness the power of SPLE to increase productivity, reduce time to market, and to handle the growing diversity in the quickly evolving global marketplace.

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Architecting Software Intensive Systems: A Practitioners Guide Review

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Architecting Software Intensive Systems: A Practitioners Guide ReviewThis book does an excellent job of introducing the reader to the soft skills needed to succeed as a software architect.
The book starts by covering the architectural lifecycle. It discusses chaos, dissemination, adaptation, harvest, and sunset. It also discusses external influences that affect the lifecycle such as stakeholders, business models, marketplace, technological environment, and organizational structure.
The book continues on by putting software architecture into context. It shows how it's related to enterprise architecture, system architecture, and detailed software design and the constraints that they place on each other.
The author covers how to interact with stakeholders and manage the architectural drivers that each group of stakeholders places on the architecture. It covers high-level functionality, quality attribute requirements, technical constraints, and business constraints.
This section also covers architectural structures which include structure and perspective, structures and systematic properties, styles and patterns of reasoning framework tactics and quality attributes. The work of an architect is covered in this section and documenting the architectural design which covers UML, technical writing guidance, and document structures.
Section 2 covers the Architectural Centric Design Method (ACDM). The author goes into great detail covering all eight stages. They include Discovering the Architectural Drivers, Establishing Project Scope, Create/Refine the Architecture, Evaluate the Architecture Design, The Go/No -- Go Decision, Experimentation, Production Planning, and Production.
The last section covers transitioning design practices, processes, and methods as well as other design considerations including legacy, designed by selection, and maintenance. The author then covers using the ACDM with software development frameworks which include Waterfall, Extreme Programming, SCRUM, Team Software Process, and RUP and CMMI.
I highly recommend this book to anyone considering getting into software architecture. The book is for architecting software intensive systems but many of the practices found in the book can be applied to building applications. An example of what I mean by applications is Web applications, RIAs, or thick client applications that are not delivered as bundled software releases or any system that is not hardware intensive.
The author does a great job pulling in industry-standard processes that are already in place for example SEI's ATAM and how to apply tactics to quality attributes. This is one of the best architecture books that cover the soft skills necessary to achieve success.Architecting Software Intensive Systems: A Practitioners Guide OverviewArchitectural design is a crucial first step in developing complex software intensive systems. Early design decisions establish the structures necessary for achieving broad systemic properties. However, today's organizations lack synergy between software their development processes and technological methodologies. Providing a thorough treatment of the latest theory and best practices, Architecting Software Intensive Systems: A Practitioner's Guide explains:How and when to design architecturesHow to weave architecture design processes into existing development processesWhat to do with architecture design artifacts once createdThe first section establishes key concepts in architectural design for software intensive systems, including architectural drivers, structures, and fundamental guidance for architectural design. The book goes on to describe the industry tested Architecture Centric Design Method. Each stage of the method is explained and the book provides all of the supporting templates and checklists. The last section discusses practical matters, including how to adopt disciplined architectural design practices into existing organizational development processes. With the principled understanding of design provided by this book, architects can temper their visceral instinct to react and be better prepared to address a broader range of design problems regardless of business context or their domain experience.

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Beautiful Architecture: Leading Thinkers Reveal the Hidden Beauty in Software Design Review

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Beautiful Architecture: Leading Thinkers Reveal the Hidden Beauty in Software Design ReviewThe book suffers from a "too many cooks" problem; it is a very timely book but lacks cohesion across chapters. I agree with the other reviewer that it has way too many pages about nothing. This is simply a good example of where each chapter is written by an "authority" on architecture but the chapters are disjointed and lack a consistent message. I loved the title, and idea behind the book, but it overpromises and underdelivers. But there are some redeeming features.
However, three chapters are excellent and make up for about a third of the forty dollars that I spent on this book. First, the preface and its discussion of architectural principles and properties is one of the best discussions of those topics. I have not seen that elsewhere. Chapter 1 ("what is architecture") and chapter 2 (a contrast between a system with a messy architecture with another with a thoughtfully designed one) are excellent. Unfortunately, all this interesting content stops on page 43 and very little worth the time reading the remaining 374 pages!
I hope that the publisher would come out with a shrunk down 72 pager condensed version of this book that is more like the substance I've come to expect from O'Rielly books.
This book is best checked out at your local library. I would instead recommend buying Jan Bosch's older but still unbeatable "Design and Use of Software Architectures" book.Beautiful Architecture: Leading Thinkers Reveal the Hidden Beauty in Software Design Overview
What are the ingredients of robust, elegant, flexible, and maintainable software architecture? Beautiful Architecture answers this question through a collection of intriguing essays from more than a dozen of today's leading software designers and architects. In each essay, contributors present a notable software architecture, and analyze what makes it innovative and ideal for its purpose. Some of the engineers in this book reveal how they developed a specific project, including decisions they faced and tradeoffs they made. Others take a step back to investigate how certain architectural aspects have influenced computing as a whole. With this book, you'll discover:



How Facebook's architecture is the basis for a data-centric application ecosystem
The effect of Xen's well-designed architecture on the way operating systems evolve
How community processes within the KDE project help software architectures evolve from rough sketches to beautiful systems
How creeping featurism has helped GNU Emacs gain unanticipated functionality
The magic behind the Jikes RVM self-optimizable, self-hosting runtime
Design choices and building blocks that made Tandem the choice platform in high-availability environments for over two decades
Differences and similarities between object-oriented and functional architectural views
How architectures can affect the software's evolution and the developers' engagement

Go behind the scenes to learn what it takes to design elegant software architecture, and how it can shape the way you approach your own projects, with Beautiful Architecture.


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Lean Architecture: for Agile Software Development Review

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Lean Architecture: for Agile Software Development ReviewWhen I was a C++ programmer in the early 90's Coplien's Advanced C++ Programming Styles and Idioms was a source of interview material when looking for programmers. It's a good bet that this book may fill the same role for those looking to see if candidates for architect roles understand what it means to be an architect in a Lean or Agile Organization. This book dispels the myth that Agile and Architecture don't go together and explains the balance between Agile architecture and too much Big Up Front Design. This book emphasizes the importance of frequent collaboration between stakeholders in defining a good architecture and helps you to understand the importance of architecture to the success of agile projects. With code examples throughout, this book emphasizes that architecture and coding must go together. After describing some general principles of how architecture can add value to an agile project, the authors explain the Data Context, Interaction (DCI) architecture, which provides an framework for building lean architectures. My one minor complaint is that the transition between the general discussions of lean architecture and the focused discussion of DCI was a bit abrupt. But this was a minor distraction from an enjoyable and informative read. Rich with citations, places to go for more information, and historical context, this book will be useful for anyone who is struggling with how to build systems that need to support complicated user interactions (which could describe most non-trivial systems).Lean Architecture: for Agile Software Development OverviewMore and more Agile projects are seeking architectural roots as they struggle with complexity and scale - and they're seeking lightweight ways to do it
Still seeking? In this book the authors help you to find your own path
Taking cues from Lean development, they can help steer your project toward practices with longstanding track records
Up-front architecture? Sure. You can deliver an architecture as code that compiles and that concretely guides development without bogging it down in a mass of documents and guesses about the implementation
Documentation? Even a whiteboard diagram, or a CRC card, is documentation: the goal isn't to avoid documentation, but to document just the right things in just the right amount
Process? This all works within the frameworks of Scrum, XP, and other Agile approaches


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Software Architecture: Foundations, Theory, and Practice Review

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Software Architecture: Foundations, Theory, and Practice ReviewSoftware Architecture: Foundations, Theory, and Practice is a landmark text that will become an essental introduction to the discipline of software systems architecture. If you are a student, tester, manager, methodologist, developer, or simply an architect, and want a holistic understanding of what real software architects think software architecture is and why it matters, this is the place to start.
I bought this after Roy Fielding (of REST and HTTP fame) mentioned it on the rest-discuss mailing list. Roy is one of the industry's top architects, and I wasn't disappointed. The book is timely - architecture is coming to be accepted as an important activity, especially for distributed, and large scale systems. What many people don't realize is that drawing pictures, writing documents no-one reads, meta-modeling, and pontificating on "concerns" are not software architecture. Software architecture is about introducing constraints via principled, objective design to achieve particular system properties. Architecture is difficult and exhausting work, but done well can offer immense value to users and stakeholders. This book, along with Rozanski and Woods' "Software Systems Architecture: Working With Stakeholders Using Viewpoints and Perspectives" makes that explicit.
The book is unapologetic about software architecture's standing in the industry. SAFTAP positions architecture as the primary design activity for software - not development, not requirements analysis, not testing, not methodology, but architecture. That will make for interesting debate.
My single criticism of this book is that it does not do enough to treat user experience (Ux) and informatics as architecturally significant, but not enough to take away a star. I'm hoping a future edition will rectify that.
Some noteworthy chapters in the book (there are 17 chapters in all):
* The Big Idea: explains what architecture is and why it matters. The building metaphor (often heavily criticised in the industry, see the excellent "Software is not Bricks" by Raganwald) is dealt with calmly and then put to one side.
* Architecture in Context: explains how architecture fits into the overall lifecycle and process of software systems.
* Connectors: this is one of my favourite chapters. The concept of a connector is vital to a software system, but is rarely if ever discussed in programming or engineering texts.
* Modeling: probably not what you think. This chapter emphasizes communication, clarity and disambiguation over notations and diagrams.
* Implementation: programmers hate the quip "implementation detail", but in truth many things in a system are just that and it does not mean they are unimportant. This chapter covers those details and why they matter.
* Deployment and Mobility: good architects understand that a systems have a life well beyond initial delivery, which is where most developers, managers and stakeholders tend to focus attention. This was one of favorite sections as the running system simply doesn't get enough attention in most projects today.
* Applied architecture and Styles: covers some examples of architectural styles, notably REST and SOA, which are certainly the best known architectures in my part of the industry.
* Designing for non-functional properties: many non-functional concerns don't start to matter until the system is deployed and there isn't always agreement among technical specialists over what's truly important. If you are technical specialist this should help you articulate the cost/benefit of looking at the "unfeatures" of a system.
* Security and Trust: software is increasingly distributed, and increasingly a super-system of components interacting over the Internet and Mobile Networks. So it's good to see a text that makes security a first order concern and not just a non-functional ones.
* Domain Specific Software Engineering: I'm trained as an industrial designer where the notion of common modular components with standard interfaces acting as a platform for product development is a known Good Thing in domains such as the automotive and consumer electronics industries. This chapter gives a good overview of modular design focusing on the software product lines approach. The example given is from Philips, but it could as easily have been from Toyota.
* People, Roles and Teams: software architecture, like other architecture disciplines, has a strong social dimension. This chapter explains how the architect role fits into an organisation and where they can add value and exert influence.Software Architecture: Foundations, Theory, and Practice OverviewSoftware architecture is foundational to the development of large, practical software-intensive applications. This brand-new text covers all facets of software architecture and how it serves as the intellectual centerpiece of software development and evolution. Critically, this text focuses on supporting creation of real implemented systems. Hence the text details not only modeling techniques, but design, implementation, deployment, and system adaptation -- as well as a host of other topics -- putting the elements in context and comparing and contrasting them with one another. Rather than focusing on one method, notation, tool, or process, this new text/reference widely surveys software architecture techniques, enabling the instructor and practitioner to choose the right tool for the job at hand. Software Architecture is intended for upper-division undergraduate and graduate courses in software architecture, software design, component-based software engineering, and distributed systems; the text may also be used in introductory as well as advanced software engineering courses.

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Documenting Software Architectures: Views and Beyond (2nd Edition) Review

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Documenting Software Architectures: Views and Beyond (2nd Edition) ReviewSoftware architecture really is unlike any other aspect of its design. The architecture has deeper meaning and larger scale than any other aspect, and can't be discussed in the same ways.
This book opens that discussion. Among the "architecture" books I've read lately, this is the only one to offer concrete advice on describing, presenting, and analyzing archtiectural features of a system. It identifies a number of documentation types and variations. It also identifies a number of different readers - developers, future architects, users, etc. - and addresses their different documentation needs.
The authors use a little UML, but not a lot. For one thing, standard UML works at too low a level for architectural discussion. Classes, and even hierarchies of class inheritance are such fine-grained entities that architecture gernerally won't address them. Instead, the authors offer a number of diagramming styles of their own. For once, I agree with the need for non-standard notation.
Even so, I think they under-utilize the existing standards in favor of their own terminology and notation. They could have used a UML profile for lots of the discussion. It would have had to be a new profile, however, not just a force-fit of the real-time profile. They also under-used the existing architecture standards (IEEE/ANSI, DoD, NASA, and more) in favor of their own discussion. Maybe their approach can be used in any of those frameworks, but that should have been more explicit.
I see only one major flaw in this book, the assumption that a software system's architecture describes the program delivered to a customer. That's way too narrow. A large system includes things like test harnesses, debug instrumentation, application-specific QA tools, and user documentation of many kinds. Those can be major undertakings of their own. They are intimately tied to the delivered software, and may constrain the actual product.
On the postivie side, this book offer an extensive real-world case study. That probably doubles the book's value, by putting a concrete face on the otherwise abstract discussion.
There are two ways to use this book: you can agree with it, or think about it and disagree with it. If you really think about it, though, you get it's full value whether you agree or not.
In other words, you can't lose by reading this book.Documenting Software Architectures: Views and Beyond (2nd Edition) Overview"This new edition is brighter, shinier, more complete, more pragmatic, more focused than the previous one, and I wouldn't have thought it possible to improve on the original. As the field of software architecture has grown over these past decades, there is much more to be said, much more that we know, and much more that we can reflect upon of what's worked and what hasn't—and the authors here do all that, and more." —From the Foreword by Grady Booch, IBM Fellow

Software architecture—the conceptual glue that holds every phase of a project together for its many stakeholders—is widely recognized as a critical element in modern software development. Practitioners have increasingly discovered that close attention to a software system's architecture pays valuable dividends. Without an architecture that is appropriate for the problem being solved, a project will stumble along or, most likely, fail. Even with a superb architecture, if that architecture is not well understood or well communicated the project is unlikely to succeed.
Documenting Software Architectures, Second Edition, provides the most complete and current guidance, independent of language or notation, on how to capture an architecture in a commonly understandable form. Drawing on their extensive experience, the authors first help you decide what information to document, and then, with guidelines and examples (in various notations, including UML), show you how to express an architecture so that others can successfully build, use, and maintain a system from it. The book features rules for sound documentation, the goals and strategies of documentation, architectural views and styles, documentation for software interfaces and software behavior, and templates for capturing and organizing information to generate a coherent package. New and improved in this second edition:


Coverage of architectural styles such as service-oriented architectures, multi-tier architectures, and data models
Guidance for documentation in an Agile development environment
Deeper treatment of documentation of rationale, reflecting best industrial practices
Improved templates, reflecting years of use and feedback, and more documentation layout options
A new, comprehensive example (available online), featuring documentation of a Web-based service-oriented system
Reference guides for three important architecture documentation languages: UML, AADL, and SySML


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FEAC Certified Enterprise Architect CEA Study Guide (Certification Press) Review

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FEAC Certified Enterprise Architect CEA Study Guide (Certification Press) ReviewThe Authors of this book have done a tremendous service to the Enterprise Architecture profession. The book is plainly written and supported with clear examples of viewpoints and models. This book is also unique from other publications on the topic of EA as there is a complete case study that supports the teaching and study material. The case study helps the reader not only to follow the logic and rational on how the viewpoints and models are developed, but how they are utilized. The discussions on culture and EA provide for a more complete understanding of the role of Chief Enterprise Architect in any organization.
The writing team of Rao, Reedy and Bellman provides a very well rounded perspective with experience and leadership in government, industry and academia. This holistic perspective coupled with complete discussions on the relationship between varying frameworks makes this a must have book on EA. A terrific desk reference.
FEAC Certified Enterprise Architect CEA Study Guide (Certification Press) Overview
The best fully integrated study system available
Filled with practice questions, examples, and illustrations, FEAC Certified Enterprise Architect CEA Study Guide covers what you need to know—and shows you how to prepare—for this challenging exam.
100% complete coverage of all official objectives for the FEAC CEA exam
Modeling techniques for enterprise architecture implementations
Enterprise architecture case study: Richard M. Nixon Airport
Simulated exam questions that match the format, tone, topics, and difficulty of the real exam


Covers all the exam topics, including:Enterprise Architecute Concepts * Planning, Implementating, and Disseminating the EA * Maintaining, Governing, and Using the EA * All Viewpoint * Strategic/Capability Viewpoint * Porject Viewpoint * Operational Viewpoint * Systems Viewpoint * Services Viewpoint * Data and Information Viewpoint * Technology and Standards Viewpoint * EA in Government, Defense, and the Commercial Sector * EA Tools and Repositories

CD-ROM includes:
CEA-oriented practicums
Practice exams for the FEAC FEAF and DoDAF programs and a list of study questions
Major documentation for the FEAF and DoDAF programs
E-book for studying on the go


Prakash Rao, MS, CEA, is chief architect at Metadata Management Corporation. He teaches Enterprise Architecture at the FEAC Institute.

Ann Reedy, Ph.D., worked on the development and editing of the early version of the DoD Architecture Framework at MITRE and teaches DoD Architecture Framework for the FEAC Institute.

Beryl Bellman, Ph.D., is co-founder and academic director of the FEAC Institute and a tenured full professor of Communication Studies at California State University at Los Angeles. He has more than 25 years' consulting experience in the EA field.


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Just Enough Software Architecture: A Risk-Driven Approach Review

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Just Enough Software Architecture: A Risk-Driven Approach ReviewThis a broad and deep book on all things software architecture except the architecting process (for process, one recommended read is "Process Software Architecting" by Eeles/Cripps). Several readerships will benefit from "Just Enough Software Architecture":
- As an experienced IT architect, I do not necessarily agree with everything in the book (this does not come as a surprise, as architects have opinions). That said, I certainly learned a lot that I can apply immediately on my projects and some of the more provocative statements challenge me to leave my comfort zone (or at least consider doing so).
- Junior architects can use the book both as a tutorial and as a reference when/while growing in their profession.
- Developers with a "who needs architects" mindset (hopefully) will understand architects and modelers much better after having read this book, and appreciate the value of archtecture.
Things I liked in particular:
- Overall vision and message of pragmatism sent
- The risk-driven approach increases chances to get accepted both in agile development and in more traditional architecture communities
- There is a lot of practical advice e.g. in Chapters 10, 11 and 15
- The author is in command of a large body of relevant related work (both industra and academia) and puts them in perspective adequately
- Editorial quality: structure, figures, command of the English language (some words and expressions a bit be hard to comprehend for non-native speaker)
Some room for improvements (2nd edition?):
- Not all metaphors and analogies work internationally, e.g. not all IT people are sports fans that follow baseball or know what a rookie is
- The connection between parts 1 and 2 could be a bit stronger, even if loose coupling generally is a good thing; e.g., some more backward references
In summary, I'd say Just Enough Software Architecture is a highly recommended read for every architect in touch with development reality and every developer with a desire to build complex systems that will stand the test of time.Just Enough Software Architecture: A Risk-Driven Approach OverviewThis is a practical guide for software developers, and different than other software architecture books. Here's why:
It teaches risk-driven architecting. There is no need for meticulous designs when risks are small, nor any excuse for sloppy designs when risks threaten your success. This book describes a way to do just enough architecture. It avoids the one-size-fits-all process tar pit with advice on how to tune your design effort based on the risks you face.
It democratizes architecture. This book seeks to make architecture relevant to all software developers. Developers need to understand how to use constraints as guiderails that ensure desired outcomes, and how seemingly small changes can affect a system's properties.
It cultivates declarative knowledge. There is a difference between being able to hit a ball and knowing why you are able to hit it, what psychologists refer to as procedural knowledge versus declarative knowledge. This book will make you more aware of what you have been doing and provide names for the concepts.
It emphasizes the engineering. This book focuses on the technical parts of software development and what developers do to ensure the system works not job titles or processes. It shows you how to build models and analyze architectures so that you can make principled design tradeoffs. It describes the techniques software designers use to reason about medium to large sized problems and points out where you can learn specialized techniques in more detail.
It provides practical advice. Software design decisions influence the architecture and vice versa. The approach in this book embraces drill-down/pop-up behavior by describing models that have various levels of abstraction, from architecture to data structure design.

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