Reviews of Information First

Reviewed by Change Management Monitor, April 2005

Here is a book that is specifically devoted to information architecture, custodianship and use. It places information architecture in the context of the efficient management of global business and examines in detail the need for improved structuring and management of information. Successive chapters deal with the key factors in information management, the 'what and why, when and how', issues of responsibility for collection, processing and maintenance of information, navigation, presentation to make the information accessible and encourage its use, and the continuous process of improvement, updating and housekeeping.

The book is written partly to persuade non-specialists of the importance of these functions and is therefore written in non-technical terms. It will also be useful to the specialist, perhaps particularly in carrying the message of what needs to be done, why and how to the decision makers.

Recommended. Change Management Monitor

Reviewed by Adrian Campbell, January 2004

Adrian Campbell is a principal consultant with Etude Consulting, a company specialising in ECommerce, OO and Component Based Design. He wrote:

Information is used in many ways - from databases, data warehouses, web sites, to business process models and balanced scorecards - adding up to an uncoordinated mixture of initiatives, so that most organisations do not really know what data they have or what information and knowledge it represents.

A few enlightened organisations are using the Zachman Framework to manage their information and models in an Enterprise Architecture. This provides a good start point for architecting information with a matrix of two dimensions, addressing levels of modelling related to different role based perspectives, and different aspects of a system from the perspective of the questions: what, how, where, who, when and why. But since the Zachman Framework has its origins in data, process and organisation modelling popularised by Information Engineering and other structured methodologies in the 70's and early 80's, it's often difficult to use it with modern object oriented modelling and component architectures.

'Information First' goes beyond the two dimensions of Zachman to eight dimensions or factors. It provides an underlying theory about managing and architecting information that allows organisations to build any kind of information architecture with whatever dimensions and meta-dimensions they require. Many large government organisations have already started building their own frameworks, for example C4ISR (Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance) used by the US Department of Defence (DOD) and the FEAF (Federal Enterprise Architecture Framework) used by the US Government.

'Information First' makes it much easier to see the benefits and pitfalls of the various Enterprise Architecture frameworks that are available by getting to grips with the underlying theory. The eight factors provide us with the language and semantics for defining our own information architecture framework, which in turn will facilitate interoperability between the diverse uses of data, information and knowledge in an organisation and unify all the other approaches.

Over the last twenty or so years organisations have spent millions of pounds on developing so-called information systems with mixed results. As it says in this book, it's time they started thinking about the 'Information First and Technology Second'.

Copyright © 2004 Adrian Campbell, All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.