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 Book Reviews

One From Many: Visa and the Rise of the Chaordic Organization
Dee Hock
ISBN 1576753328

Dee Hock, Founder and CEO Emeritus of Visa, not only recalls the intriguing events that led to the creation of Visa, but shares the roots of his personal journey that took him to that place and time. This book chronicles Hock's exploration of the nature of organizations that go well beyond anything that had been done to that point in time. As a byproduct, he helped save a credit card industry that was bleeding money across a sea of large and small financial institutions. The reviews inside the book and on the cover, along with a Forward by Peter Senge, ring praises upon Hock for sharing this riveting story.

Enterprise Unified Process
Ambler, Vizsdos and Nalbone
ISBN 0131914510

The Enterprise Unified Process (EUP) unites diverse disciplines, including development, enterprise architecture, operations, production and portfolio management, reuse and business process modeling, under an easy to follow framework. It was refreshing to find a book that recognizes the need to accommodate the installed base of existing software as part of the planning, development and deployment process. This is an excellent guide for any manager who wants to ensure that essential IT disciplines are addressed.

 The focus of EUP is to enhance the commonly accepted Rational Unified Process (RUP). The authors have added new disciplines to RUP that include business modeling, portfolio management, enterprise administration, reuse, enterprise architecture and process improvement. The introduction of business modeling into the overall process is essential to weave IT processes and disciplines into the most essential driver of any systems initiative - the business. The enterprise architecture discussion was also refreshing given that many organizations have forgone this discipline and have created redundant, stovepipe applications and data structures that significantly stifle business agility.

 The "Reuse" chapter raises the rarely deployed reuse strategy. It is critically important to not replicate business processes, models, systems, data structures, source code and interfaces. The costs and risks of trying to keep parallel assets synchronized have been written about extensively. This book promotes the idea that reuse is just another aspect of the enterprise unified process. It is also one of the few discussions about reuse that recognizes the value of harvesting existing assets.

 Also of note is the portfolio management discussion that focuses attention on the need to incorporate project management with application management. It should be noted, however, that portfolio management has much less focus on applications than the traditional industry definition as promoted by Gartner, Inc.

Finally, this book makes great use of tips, tool references and citations to books or papers that readers can use to expand on their understanding of a given topic. The last chapter of the book takes a realistic and honest look at deploying the enterprise unified process, including its possible retirement.

Dilbert and the Way of the Weasel
Scott Adams
ISBN 0-06-051805-7

Scott Adams is one of the great observers of human behavior. In his latest book, Adams offers advice on how to deal with weasels in all walks of life; particularly as it pertains to the world of business. This book builds on his last work  -The Dilbert Principle. Adams skewers everything from management theories to the help desk function. His comments on scientific theories as applied to management practices are particularly telling. For example, Adams discusses the Myers-Briggs practice of subdividing everyone into personally categories. This is supposedly so one can apply preconceived notions (my words, not his) to determine how people will react in various situations. Adams observes that the Myers-Briggs personality categories donït include weasel, moron, or flaming butt-hole. He then acknowledges that he rarely has problems with any other type of personality. Who can argue with this line of thinking?

Adams hits hard on corporate incompetence in a way that most people can relate to. His examples of corporate bumbling through shared experiences and email letter reprints are strikingly funny and so very true. If you are trying to make some sense of this crazy world in which we live, take some time out to read The Way of the Weasel. Adams cuts to the heart of a wide range of issues in a way that has to make you smile.

MDA Explained -The Model Driven Architecture: Practice and Promise
Anneke Kleppe, Jos Warmer, Wim Bast
ISBN 0-321-19442-X 

Model driven architecture (MDA) has been a long-time coming. The MDA concept, simply stated, is that systems should be modifiable at the model - not the source code  - level. This is not a new idea, but this book outlines Object Management Group (OMG) developed standards for MDA that IT organizations can actually rely on as they move forward with development plans and tool acquisitions. The MDA framework relies on the Unified Modeling Language (UML), which is generally accepted as a systems modeling paradigm and well supported by the tool community.

This book provides a basic overview of these and related concepts that is highly readable. It additionally provides a good explanation of how these concepts apply at the implementation level as well as at a conceptual level. One aspect the book conveys is how models can be modeled. This means that models can define modeling languages and modeling attributes at various levels of abstraction. While this may not mean much to the average practitioner, information architects and software vendors will find this highly useful. In addition to these high-level concepts, this book includes case study examples of detailed transformations from MDA to relational models, EJBs and Web-based components. I recommend this book to anyone not familiar with MDA and seeking to understand the future of software development. 

Birth of the Chaordic Age
Dee Hock
ISBN 1-576-75074-4

Dee Hock, Founder and CEO Emeritus of Visa International, weaves an intriguing tale as he darts between intense visions of the parallels between nature and organizations and the creation of the most successful financial institution in history. He takes us from his earliest days through his founding of Visa, all the while bringing us back to the questions that have haunted him about parallels between nature and organizational structures. Learn about Chaordic organizing principles, the visionary beyond them and their application to real world organizational challenges.

Modernizing Legacy Systems: Software Technologies, Engineering Processes, and Business Practices
Robert C. Seacord, Daniel Plakosh, Grace A. Lewis
ISBN 0321118847

Modernizing Legacy Systems: Software Technologies, Engineering Processes, and Business Practices provides an overview of basic analysis techniques and single path options for migrating COBOL applications to J2EE environments. The book offers an overview of the J2EE environment, yet surprisingly stays clear of .NET. It also offers background on middleware and related integration options. 

I found that the book does not address variations on legacy transformation scenarios (e.g., application consolidation, package deployment) or techniques for code slicing, program restructuring or data definition rationalization. These are fundamental interim and / or preparatory techniques for many legacy applications. There is limited discussion of project cost models, but not much insight into how to structure a project. There is also little mentioned about application metrics and the use of those metrics in planning and estimating a project.

The book does contain an overview on database types, but little ground is covered on cleanup, abstraction, rationalization and redesign of legacy data. The book states that "the marketplace is slowly evolving toward object-oriented database models." I found this interesting given that relational databases are still the de facto way to store corporate data, even for object oriented applications. 

The authors followed a case study throughout the book and addressed multiple hypotheses on how to approach the planning of such a case study. This offers useful insights into any organization pursuing an effort to move COBOL applications into a J2EE environment.

Tool discussions were limited to one or two tools per topic, and were embedded in the book itself as opposed to being located in an Appendix section. Unfortunately this limits the reader's impression of tool availability and will make tool and vendor updates to future editions more difficult. 

My overall impression is that the authors are academically oriented and take a somewhat singular view of the legacy transformation topic. They do, however, provide a good modernization strategy for many mainstream companies. I am also pleased that more authors are tackling this subject and would suggest this book to anyone seeking to migrate COBOL applications to new, distributed environments. Readers are, however, cautioned to consider more detailed information on the following topics; enterprise level analysis, application consolidation, package assessment deployment and integration, metric analysis, code improvement techniques, variations on case studies and a more expansive list of vendor and tool options.

The Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business as Usual
Rick Levine, Christopher Locke, Doc Searls, David Weinberger
ISBN 0-7382-0244-4

This book began as an Internet chat group and grew into guiding wisdom for a new virtual world. The authors share basic concepts that every business executive should understand and act upon. They cut through the rhetoric and tell it like it is. The challenge basic principles while shunning traditional corporate hierarchies. They understand the impact of the Internet. One reviewer called them troublemakers. And, best of all, people are listening.

By cutting through the confusing acronyms and technocratic garble that earmark most wireless technology discussions, Ian Hayes delivers solid advice for creating and refining a corporate wireless strategy. Hayes provides readily actionable advice to managers, executives and IT personnel who need to quickly come up to speed on the ins and outs of wireless technology. Most impressive is his use of case studies and concrete examples to communicate how wireless technology can be deployed within corporate environments. Hayes offers cost justification guidelines that include how to communicate and sell a wireless solution to executives. This book is highly readable and offers practical advice on how to move forward with a corporate wireless computing strategy. If you are confused by the endless jargon that seems to accompany every wireless conversation and need to cut to the chase, this book is highly recommended reading for you and your management team. 

Blown to Bits: How the New Economics of Transformation Transforms Strategy
Philip Evans, Thomas S. Wurster
ISBN 0-87584-877-X

The Encyclopedia Britannia, a 100-year-old company, fell apart in short period of time because the company did not understand how technology, communication and information flow was changing their world. The authors use this and other stories to explain the value of information flow and how it is changing basic economic and marketing principles. They provide insights into how the Internet is changing all of the rules � and why companies need to understand this. Are you with a company or an industry that is going to disappear or change in ways you never conceived? Read this book to find out.

This is a good book for managers working on transition strategies needed to turn a company into an e-business. The authors have a solid understanding of business process reengineering, information architectures, component-based development and systems management. They offer a nice synopsis on transition planning, including the recognition that IT will need to be reengineered before a company can fully deploy enterprise class, e-business environments. Their emphasis on infrastructure was particularly valuable. They could have spent a little more time on the ramifications that the e-business metamorphosis will have on management structures. It is very likely that companies making the transition to an e-business will need to apply sweeping changes to organizational infrastructures and this should not be underestimated. Overall, I recommend this book to anyone needing a good overview of what it takes to become an e-business. 

Chaos is a basic theme in nature, science and in organizations. Chaos, where order can be found in what appears to be random behavior, has tremendous implications on how we create and leverage organizations. If you want some excellent background reading on where Dee Hock is coming from in the Birth of the Chaordic Age, check out this book. Or if you just want to get a better understanding of the world in which we live, understanding chaos is a great start.

Adaptive Software Development: A Collaborative Approach to Managing Complex Systems
James A. Highsmith III
ISBN 0-932633-40-4

Highsmith applies Chaordic organizational disciplines to large-scale projects. He breaks away from the notion that a project can be neatly broken into little pieces, organized like a puzzle and laid out in a neat and predictable manner. Rather than the traditional task-driven thinking that has permeated project management for too long, Highsmith focuses on results-driven concepts. The book discusses collaboration and adaptability as overriding factors in managing complex projects. If you are deploying an e-business strategy across your enterprise, or tackling any other type of large, complex project challenge, this book is strongly recommended reading.

Self-organizing systems are all around us. Whether you are talking about a hurricane, a pot of soup, the economy or an organizational infrastructure. Lessons from Complexity can be applied broadly, particularly when brought back into the realm of organizational structures. One important aspect of this is that self-organizing systems are more adaptive. Ever wonder why corporate hierarchies segregate people rather than encourage collaboration, or why they hinder rather than enable communication, or why they break before they adapt? Self-organization and other fascinating insights into a variety of disciplines provides the reader with, as Waldrop puts it, a "vision of the whole".

Exploring Requirements: Quality Before Design
Donald C. Gause, Gerald M. Weinberg
ISBN 0-932633-13-7

Weinberg is one of the best authors in the computer field and this book is no exception. Exploring Requirements addresses the biggest weakness in specifying systems miscommunication between the developers and the people that want the system built. Internet and web-based developers are not immune to this problem and anyone in the field of IT that needs to build any type of system should take a look at this book.

A visual ride through the world of fractals . Briggs brings together nature, math, science and art to show us what chaos looks like from many perspectives. My interest here continues along the lines of how organizations really look like fractals if you expose their true nature and do not try to pretend that they are really hierarchies. You will enjoy this one  and can even put it out on your coffee table.

The release of this book is well timed given the demand for business-to-business (B2B) solutions across a range of industries. Part IV in particular offers a good look at supply chains, XML, RosettaNet, BizTalk,  XSLT and other B2B standards and facilities. One item deserving mention, however, is the disturbing overlap between Linthicum's first book, Enterprise Application Integration, and this one. In his preface, Linthicum states that "e-business depends on many of the same concepts and approaches that I outlined in his last book...". This is an understatement given the overlap in topics, content and graphics between this book and his last book. We still recommend this book to anyone needing a good education on B2B or on EAI. If you buy this book you do not need to buy his first book.

Paul Strassman is one of the great intellects in the field of information technology (IT). The Politics of Information Management provides an in depth look at every aspect of IT, including an extensive discussion on IT governance structures. This book is the definitive guide to understanding the good, the bad and the ugly about information management. IT and non-IT managers dealing with the management of information should use this book as a reference guide on wide ranging matters including infrastructure setup, policy development, customer coordination, cost management, data management and security. There is no better book on IT than this one.

Linthicum provides a good overview of enterprise application integration (EAI). He discusses non-invasive data, application, package and method-based  integration, which is highly valuable for the uninitiated reader. I do not fully concur with Linthicum's discussions on legacy data or description of  business processes, but the breadth and depth of topics covered compensate for these limitations. He offers a checklist of how to attack the EAI challenge, a comprehensive discussion on all aspects of EAI and a glossary of  terms. Unfortunately, evolving e-business requirements and related  architectures can quickly obsolete some of the technical content in this  book, which is likely why Linthicum produced a sequel entitled B2B  Application Integration. See our review page for more details on this book.

This book provides good insights into managing organizational change. Any executive team that thinks they can lock themselves up, build a new organizational hierarchy and then implement it from the top down should read this book. Of course those executives that do the most damage are likely to be the least likely to think they need advice on this topic. Bunker and Alban explore many ideas regarding topics such as participative design: a key element in building new organizations.

Implementing Directory Services
Archie Reed
ISBN 0-07-134408-X

Over the past decade, proliferation of distributed computing, networks, the Internet and Intranet, collaborative tools, local web sites and the mainframe computer has left us with an endless number of directory structures. Companies that are opening their systems up to suppliers, customers, employees, business partners and others are finding that challenges in everything from security to sign-on procedures. This may sound like a technical problem, but it is a major challenge that is sneaking up on everyone from the financial community to the telecommunications industry. With this as a backdrop, Archie Reed has delivered the definitive guide to understanding and addressing the challenge of directory services management. If your company, like most, relies on the Internet and a long list of distributed computing technologies, you can benefit from this book.

Most our reviews address the challenges of dealing with the complexities of moving enterprises further into the information age. From Chaos to Coherence addresses the human side of the equation. Childre and Cryer are from the Heartmath Institute and offer proven techniques for organizations undergoing radical changes in chaotic times. They offer tools to deal with real-time changes in companies and across industries. They also offer scientific underpinnings for their work  something the Heartmath people have been doing for a long time.

Death March: The Complete Software Developer's Guide to Surviving "Mission Impossible" Projects
Edward Yourdan
ISBN 0-13-748310-4

If you work in IT for any period of time, you have likely worked on a "death march" project. You knew the project was in trouble, but you had your orders and were not going to abandon your team or your collective vision. I have been on a death march project, watching managers get taken out, one by one, up the line. Yet we continued coding and testing like soldiers in a battle. Ed Yourdon discusses how to avoid getting into these situations and what to do it a death march project is thrust upon you.

Most people know that Bach was a musical genius and that M. C. Escher created art that drove you crazy when you tried to follow the recursive patterns into infinity. Kurt Godel was a German mathematician that found you could express the same strange loops mathematically as Escher could visually and Bach could musically. The author parallels the work of Bach, Escher and Godel and ties it back to concepts including order and chaos. It is not light reading, but if you like the Chaos and Complexity books and have some spare time on your hands you should take a look at this one.

Successful Software Process Improvement
Robert B. Grady
ISBN 0-13-626623-1

This book is a surprising choice for me to recommend because I am not a big believer in achieving success through the dissection of a process into controllable parts. I do, however, believe in being able to assess how well a software organization is doing through some type of measurement program and, based on the findings, attempt to improve the overall process. With much of the development going on today around the Internet, developers within these environments have little sense of process or quality control. Organizations pursuing IT and/or e-business projects on a large-scale would be well advised to look at this book for insights into how to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of their development and management of software.

Cognitive Patterns: Problem Solving Frameworks for Object Technology
Karen M. Gardner, Alexander Rush, Michael K. Christ, Robert Konitzer, Bobbin Teegarden
ISBN 0-521-64998-6

As the authors so eloquently put it, "As systems become more complex, the human limitations to comprehending system requirements become more evident." This book tackles the system specification process based on the processes that humans use to reason and think. Too much development today is done with too little understanding of the problem-solving models presented within this book. Developers may choose not to apply these techniques, but shame on them for not knowing that they exist.

Testing Computer Software
Cem Kaner, Jack Falk, Hung Quoc Nguyen
ISBN 1-85032-847-1

A former mentor said to me 25 years ago, "testing is an art and it shall remain an art." This book takes it beyond art and into the cold realm of common sense, checklists and structure. These guys are not big on lighthearted conversation, but they cut to the heart of testing when none of your colleagues wants to play by the rules. If you are involved in software testing, or are supposed to be, you need this book. If you know anyone responsible for testing, I would recommend  it to him or her.