A lot of ideas expressed in this book, while not odd, are certainly new. As such, it may be appropriate to shift the conventional wisdom of what Enterprise Architecture means and what it should do to give us a better way to get where large organizations need to go.

As we shall see, the value of an idea can only be realized after it has been executed, and prior to that it is only an idea, whether or not a plan exists to achieve it. This book, therefore, explains this latest philosophy of what Enterprise Architecture is from a successful experiment in a large financial services company, one of the top 10 in size in the United States. The philosophy employed was evaluated by a reputable research company to be radically different than what has been seen previously, but most importantly, its success at meeting its business objectives was irrefutable.

While this book deals with most every important architecture concept, there is one nonarchitectural aspect that is best mentioned here that is also found in the book, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap, by Jim Collins, which is the need for the right kind of like-minded individuals that can enable the successful implementation of any new strategy. The author, in his professional life, has spent endless hours identifying and recruiting personnel with the right attitude and skill set necessary to participate in the journey.

To borrow the analogy of the bus from Jim Collins, you need to get the right people on the bus and the wrong people off the bus before you decide where to take the bus. Specifically, the right people on the bus must have a sense of adventure, a good sense of humor, and more importantly, the people on the bus should want to be on the bus not because of where the bus is going as that can change, but instead each individual should want to be on the bus because of who else is on the bus.

Along this journey, the team had to overcome significant challenges from both business and IT, including radical budgetary swings and pressures, violent rip tides of internal politics, external interference from large vendors, and adversities from within. But once the right collection of individuals are assembled on the team, they automatically go out to accomplish what is best for their company, and the internal and external challenges become more like the weather for the bus to travel through.

Additional features of this journey included a sense of discovery as we learned new synergies among various architectural disciplines, as well as having attained a sense of accomplishment by making new ideas materialize. In the end, however, the journey itself is what everyone remembers most fondly, and the bonds of friendship that persist in its aftermath.

It is therefore no big surprise when Steve Jobs shared insights into his life explaining that his biggest reward was the experience of his personal journey. In kind, hopefully your journey through the pages of this book will be rewarding, as was the journey writing it.