Top 10 Enterprise Architecture Books

This Top 10 list has been inspired by Joel at the Kaizone, a  content portal for lean books, blog posts and some fantastic resources. To take a look at his full list of the top 100 lean & OpEx blogs, click here.

For a selection of case studies, White Papers, reports, presentations & more, why not take a look at our original BTOES Insights content, or our excellent premium contributor content? Or for some wider reading, take a look at the Top 10 Operational Excellence Books.

Enterprise Architecture at Work: Modelling, Communication and Analysis

By Marc Lankhorst

"Lankhorst and his co‑authors present ArchiMate® 3.0, enterprise modelling language that captures the complexity of architectural domains and their relations and allows the construction of integrated enterprise architecture models. They provide architects with concrete instruments that improve their architectural practice. As this is not enough, they additionally present techniques and heuristics for communicating with all relevant stakeholders about these architectures. Since an architecture model is useful not only for providing insight into the current or future situation but can also be used to evaluate the transition from ‘as‑is’ to ‘to‑be’, the authors also describe analysis methods for assessing both the qualitative impact of changes to an architecture and the quantitative aspects of architectures, such as performance and cost issues"

Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture

By Martin Fowler

"The practice of enterprise application development has benefited from the emergence of many new enabling technologies. Multi-tiered object-oriented platforms, such as Java and .NET, have become commonplace. These new tools and technologies are capable of building powerful applications, but they are not easily implemented. Common failures in enterprise applications often occur because their developers do not understand the architectural lessons that experienced object developers have learned."

Reference Architecture for the Telecommunications Industry: Transformation of Strategy, Organization, Processes, Data, and Applications

By Christian Czarnecki & Christian Dietze

"This book reflects the tremendous changes in the telecommunications industry in the course of the past few decades – shorter innovation cycles, stiffer competition and new communication products. It analyzes the transformation of processes, applications and network technologies that are now expected to take place under enormous time pressure. The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the TM Forum have provided reference solutions that are broadly recognized and used throughout the value chain of the telecommunications industry, and which can be considered the de facto standard."

Architecture and Patterns for IT Service Management, Resource Planning, and Governance: Making Shoes for the Cobbler's Children

By Charles T. Betz

"Information technology supports efficient operations, enterprise integration, and seamless value delivery, yet itself is too often inefficient, un-integrated, and of unclear value. This completely rewritten version of the bestselling Architecture and Patterns for IT Service Management, Resource Planning and Governance retains the original (and still unique) approach: apply the discipline of enterprise architecture to the business of large scale IT management itself."

Chess and the Art of Enterprise Architecture

By Gerben Wierda

"Enterprise Architecture is the discipline of managing the complexities of the Business-IT landscape. It has been around since the 1980's, when for the first time computers were connected in networks, and the already serious (and unsolved) problem of the complexity of computer programs for relatively simple business needs turned into the huge problem of large networks of them in complex business landscapes. In spite of many 'best practices' and 'frameworks' that have been introduced, Enterprise Architecture is not a great success. After thirty years, we still have the same problems."

Enterprise Architecture - the Eight Fundamental Factors: A practical guide to the factors that are common to all EA approaches and frameworks

By Elaine Evernden & Roger Evernden

"The fundamental factors described here are true for all enterprise architecture (EA) approaches. You will find them in The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF), the Zachman Framework, and in every other EA methodology or framework."

Enterprise Architecture: A Practitioner's Handbook

By Gopala Krishna Behara & Sameer S. Paradkar

"A bicycle shed is a building, but the Lincoln Cathedral is a piece of architecture. -Nicholaus Pevsner, architectural historian. Traditional building architecture and enterprise architecture use similar processes for developing their respective end products. The architect calls upon architecture's first principles and combines them with the experience of doing architecture in the real world. Experienced architects apply first principles and add practical experience to integrate fit, balance and compromise into the architectural process."

Architecture Principles: The Cornerstones of Enterprise Architecture

By Danny Greefhorst & Erik Proper

"Enterprises, from small to large, evolve continuously. As a result, their structures are transformed and extended continuously. Without some means of control, such changes are bound to lead to an overly complex, uncoordinated and heterogeneous environment that is hard to manage and hard to adapt to future changes. Enterprise architecture principles provide a means to direct transformations of enterprises. As a consequence, architecture principles should be seen as the cornerstones of any architecture"