This book is for business professionals interested in learning techniques for managing change in technology driven companies. It focuses on bridging business and I/T strategies through the Enterprise Architecture function. Unlike many books about I/T, it is not about building things. Rather, it is about what business people can do with what I/T produces.
The purpose of this guide is to provide guidance to organization’s in initiating, developing, using, and maintaining their enterprise architecture (EA) practice. This guide offers a set of Enterprise Architecture Good Practices that have proven their benefits to organizations and that addresses an end-to-end process to initiate, implement, and sustain an EA program, and describes the necessary roles and associated responsibilities for a successful EA program. Enterprise Architecture is a complete expression of the enterprise; a master plan which acts as a collaboration force between aspects of business planning such as goals, visions, strategies and governance principles; aspects of business operations such as business terms, organization structures, processes and data; aspects of automation such as information systems and databases; and the enabling technological infrastructure of the business such as computers, operating systems and networks.
This book explains how to connect tangible business value with IT decisions, and how to build an organization around that practice. It describes how to create an agile IT organization that implements governance in a nimble yet effective manner that, and that turns that into a strategic advantage. It explains how to connect enterprise architecture with business strategy, and how to reconcile the many different perspectives of architecture, including business architecture, data architecture, and software architecture. These are addressed at all levels, from the project to the CIO, and in terms of how IT should interact with the other parts of the organization.
Corporate executives are struggling with a new trend: people using online social technologies (blogs, social networking sites, YouTube, podcasts) to discuss products and companies, write their own news, and find their own deals. This groundswell is global, it s unstoppable, it affects every industry and it s utterly foreign to the powerful companies running things now. When consumers you ve never met are rating your company s products in public forums with which you have no experience or influence, your company is vulnerable. In Groundswell, Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff of Forrester, Inc. explain how to turn this threat into an opportunity.
The concept of ‘communities of practice’ (Lave and Wenger 1991, Wenger 1998) has become an influential one in education, management, and social sciences in recent years. This book consists of a series of studies by linguists and educational researchers, examining and developing aspects of the concept which have remained relatively unexplored. Framings provided by theories of language-in-use, literacy practices, and discourse extend the concept, bringing to light issues around conflict, power, and the significance of the broader social context which have been overlooked. Chapters assess the relationship between communities of practice and other theories including literacy studies, critical language studies, the ethnography of communication, socio-cultural activity theory, and sociological theories of risk. Domains of empirical research reported include schools, police stations, adult basic education, higher education, and multilingual settings. The book highlights the need to incorporate thinking around language-in-use, power and conflict, and social context into communities of practice.
Communities of practice has become an increasingly influential model of learning, organization and creativity, and is informing current debates about learning processes, managerial control of organizational knowledge, and general and vocational education. This benchmark text provides an accessible yet critical introduction to the theory and application of communities of practice and their use in a diverse range of managerial and professional contexts, from education to human resource development.The book charts the development of the idea of communities of practice and explores the key relationship between learning and identity among: newcomers and ‘old timers’; male and female workers; the low skilled and the high skilled professionals and managers; and adults and adolescents. Drawing on international empirical studies and adopting a multi-disciplinary approach, this book is useful reading for all students, researchers, practitioners and policy makers with an interest in work, employment, labour markets, learning, training or education.
