Insight Book Review: RecrEAtion by Chris Potts

RecrEAtion: Realizing the Extraordinary Contribution of Your Enterprise Architects (Take It With You) is another very engaging book by Chris Potts.

It takes the same narrative style as his first book fruITion: Creating the Ultimate Corporate Strategy for Information Technology which makes it an easy read. (See also: blog post on FruITion).

The book takes us on the journey of Simon, an Enterprise Architect starting a new job with a multinational.

The journey takes us through the transformation of Simon from a stereotypical IT-based approach to Enterprise Architecture (EA), into viewing EA as a strategic business enabler. Through this journey, Chris Potts takes us along the development of his "EEAA - Establish-Explore-Activate-Apply" approach to EA. Key points are summarised at the end of every chapter (and provide a good overview of the book).

The most significant points for me were:

• The use of key measures (ratios) as performance indicators for the business.
• It is important to identify the hub of an enterprise's architecture.
• The parallels between building architecture and enterprise architecture, particularly that architecture is about structure and spaces.
• The importance of looking at architecture from the outside - from the customer's point of view.

One minor criticism I had about FruITion was that there was no mention of the role of innovation. This is addressed in RecrEAtion, with innovation seen as one of the most important considerations in investing in change.

For NFP organisations:

• Key measures are likely to include measures such as the revenue per member/supporter, revenue per staff member and percentage of the target audience engaged with the organisation.
• The CRM and website CMS are normally the hub of an NFP's enterprise architecture.
• The architecture needs to be defined in the terms of the major stakeholders - particularly the members/supporters.

Finally, RecrEAtion is a book for CEOs as much as it is for Enterprise Architects - as Chris Potts points out, it is after all CEOs who should be defining the architecture of their businesses.