We recently made available the download of our first book in the Architecture Journal book series. You can find the contents online here.

Here is the foreword -

Foreword to Dynamic Modeling: Aligning Business and IT

Businesses are always looking for a competitive advantage. In creating a dynamic and effective enterprise, the journey begins with architecture and design. In connecting the architecture of a winning business plan with the architecture of a well designed IT platform there is an imperative for aligning the enterprise.

This volume of the Architecture Chronicles on Dynamic Modeling: Aligning Business and IT looks at how you can use different architectures, from Open Business Standards to IT industry architectures, in a connected fashion to support a dynamic enterprise. This Series is about aligning business architecture and IT architecture through dynamic modeling.

The way we chose to present this Series was with a number of articles that can be read individually or together for a total view of the enterprise, from business architecture to IT architecture.

We start the Series with the customer and an article called the Northern Electronics Scenario, which looks at the real business process of shipping products from a warehouse to a customer. It's a business example you shouldn't need an MBA to understand, and in the article we explore how dynamic business requirements often develop. We go on to show how gathering business requirements can be made easier with Microsoft's InfoPath, taking us closer to an executable digital business plan. We introduce the concept of a Business Operations Health Model, which can be architecturally aligned to a Systems Health Model in order to help business communicate requirements more effectively to the IT Department.

The next stop in this Series is Communicating Business Operations Requirements to IT, where we begin with a deeper exploration into an Open Business Architectural Standard to appreciate better that type of an architecture, which we later map to IT architecture. One of the architectural design talks I give these days uses an analogy of 'If Business is from Mars, the IT is from Venus' but whether it's Mars and Venus, Ying and Yang, or Matter and Anti-Matter, the same business principal applies: the enterprise is a total relationship. The better everyone understands each other, the stronger and more agile a relationship they share as they grow and the enterprise with them.

The Series then moves on to Architectural Issues in Managing Web Services in Connected Systems, where we explore the basic architecture of Connected Systems and new concepts on Model-Based (IT) Management, which Microsoft's Dynamic Systems Initiative (DSI) more richly develops.

Returning to our customer shipping scenario with Web Service Solution Design, the next article in the Series explores how to design a shipping business Web service, from a Web service solution design to a Web service Health Model, to an actual solution design for our Northern Electronics scenario.

The Series then ventures to Web Service Health Modeling, Instrumentation and Monitoring, covering the basic architecture behind a Health Model, the workflow to diagnosing a Health Model, and how to apply these designs to the Northern Electronics Scenario. This article is a must read for anyone who wants better business management of Web services and Microsoft Management products.

Our journey through Dynamic Modeling: Aligning Business and IT ends with a discussion on Web Service Deployment, which is also a must read for anyone using Web services and Microsoft products.

In addition to all the articles, there is also a walk through demo that illustrates how to use this architectural thinking with several Microsoft products. The real code behind the demo and the InfoPath business worksheets are available on demand.

I hope you enjoy this Series and find practical use for your architectures. On behalf of the authors, we look forward to hearing from you and sharing your architectural vision.

Dave Welsh