Cloudy Review of ''37 Things One Architect Knows About IT Transformation''

A while ago, I purchased a book to expand my knowledge. The author is respected and the book has good reviews. So, I was excited, purchased the book and started reading it but couldn’t finish the book: the book is boring with an abundance of unnecessary information. So, my time, money, and motivation got (kind of) wasted. Unfortunately, this is not a rare experience and made me stay away from books for a long time.

But recently I’ve started the habit of reading 15 minutes/day. I read books about cloud computing. And I would like to share my review for each: frank, practical and readable in less than 10 minutes. Hopefully, this helps cloud enthusiasts to decide whether they should read the whole book, and the author to improve their book(s). Of course, this is just my personal opinion. Let’s start  the first part of Cloudy Review with this great book:

Title: “37 Things One Architect Knows About It Transformation” by Gregor Hohpe

Summary: Traditional companies need to go through Digital Transformation (DT), otherwise they won’t survive. It’s a painful but necessary experience. They need to adopt DevOps as well as “fail fast and learn fast” approaches to pivot their services accordingly. 

Pros: Broadens perspective about DT, and why traditional companies are doomed to failure. 

Cons: Very few actionable advice: 76% of the book describes why traditional companies fail without providing any help. Remaining 24% prescribes those two approaches (mentioned in summary) as solutions. That’s all.

Who should (not) read the book? Anyone who would like to know why DT is needed should read it. If you are looking for a guide to implement DT, probably this book is not the right option for you.

Any hack to read it faster? This talk is a great summary of why the author thinks DT is needed. Then, you can read the “Transformation” chapter of the book to learn about his advice.

I would like to thank Gregor Hohpe for writing the book. I’ll share this review with him and reflect on his feedback if he would like to add something. Meanwhile, I’m looking to read his next book “Cloud Strategy”. I hope he provides more actionable advice in there.

P.S. Author's response to this post:

"Hi, thanks for reading and posting about my book! I'd only have two clarifications: 1) Despite the cheeky and lengthy title, the two key words are "Architect" and "Transformation". Hence the first 2 of the book's 5 major sections are about architects (and architecture) and the last 2 two about transformation (and organizations). The linking element is "Communication". 2) The book's main focus is indeed on providing a different way of thinking more than giving concrete advice. While that's mainly by design (I assume you've read the "typical" architecture books already and ready for something new), one of the major additions in the evolution of the book titled "The Software Architect Elevator" is concrete guidance and examples. I hope you enjoy "Cloud Strategy" - it's also a mix of re-thinking existing assumptions and giving concrete do/don't advice."