2007

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The Technology Garden: Cultivating Sustainable IT Business Alignment

Many IT deployments fall short of delivering value to the businesses that pay for them. On top of this, the combined forces of rapid business change and technology innovation frequently outpace the ability of IT organisations to make sense of their implications. With business activity and IT now so intimately intertwined, organizations urgently need a framework which allows them to align IT capabilities with business strategies and priorities in a way that is sustainable. A team of IT-expert authors with more than 80 years combined experience have interviewed dozens of CIOs, IT directors and other senior technical and business decision makes to find out what works and what doesn’t. The result is a handbook for organizations of all sizes that want to improve the value of their IT investments, thus enabling their IT capabilities to play a more pivotal business role. Written in plain English that does not descend into technical detail, The Technology Garden provides practical advice for organizations looking to achieve sustainable IT-business alignment. To do so, it defines: Six key principles – a distillation of best practice that readers can apply directly to the domain of IT-business alignment; A framework for their application – a pragmatic roadmap for the application of the principles; Adoption guidelines – a set of self-assessment checklists that readers can use to understand where they are on the IT-business alignment roadmap and how to progress. With groundbreaking research and proven approaches, this blueprint enables readers to understand what is at the heart of IT-business alignment. Combining IT research, analysis and real-world insight, The Technology Garden is the ultimate no-nonsense guide.

Everything is Miscellaneous

Human beings are information omnivores: we are constantly collecting, labeling, and organizing data. But today, the shift from the physical to the digital is mixing, burning, and ripping our lives apart. In the past, everything had its one place–the physical world demanded it–but now everything has its places: multiple categories, multiple shelves. Simply put, everything is suddenly miscellaneous. In Everything Is Miscellaneous, David Weinberger charts the new principles of digital order that are remaking business, education, politics, science, and culture. In his rollicking tour of the rise of the miscellaneous, he examines why the Dewey decimal system is stretched to the breaking point, how Rand McNally decides what information not to include in a physical map (and why Google Earth is winning that battle), how Staples stores emulate online shopping to increase sales, why your children’s teachers will stop having them memorize facts, and how the shift to digital music stands as the model for the future in virtually every industry. Finally, he shows how by “going miscellaneous,” anyone can reap rewards from the deluge of information in modern work and life. From A to Z, Everything Is Miscellaneous will completely reshape the way you think–and what you know–about the world.

The Design of Future Things

From best-selling author Donald A. Norman, the long-awaited sequel to The Design of Everyday Things: a critical look at the new dawn of “smart” technology, from smooth-talking GPS units to cantankerous refrigerators. Norman, a popular design consultant to car manufacturers, computer companies, and other industrial and design outfits, has seen the future and is worried. In this long-awaited follow-up to The Design of Everyday Things, he points out what’s going wrong with the wave of products just coming on the market and some that are on drawing boards everywhere–from “smart” cars and homes that seek to anticipate a user’s every need, to the latest automatic navigational systems. Norman builds on this critique to offer a consumer-oriented theory of natural human-machine interaction that can be put into practice by the engineers and industrial designers of tomorrow’s thinking machines. This is a consumer-oriented look at the perils and promise of the smart objects of the future, and a cautionary tale for designers of these objects–many of which are already in use or development.

CIO Best Practices: Enabling Strategic Value with Information Technology

If you are a CIO, or intend to become a CIO, or simply want to understand the strategic importance of IT for your entire enterprise, CIO Best Practices provides you with the best practice guidance on the key responsibilities of the CIO and its important role in modern organizations. This is the most definitive and important work you will find on achieving and exercising strategic IT leadership.

Lost In Translation

Do you speak business or IT? Perhaps you speak a little of both. In today’s connected world, where business and IT are fused, chances are that if you’re a business or IT executive, or someone working to transform a business, you speak a little of both. But what if there was a third language? A common language that was natural for both business and IT, straightforward enough to use, yet sophisticated enough to work in today’s connected world? What if such a language only comprised a handful of words? With such a language, the loss in translation between the business and IT would happen less, because both would be using the same language. With such a language, business outcomes and transformations would become much more achievable. This handbook describes what this language is – the language of Information Systems for the 21st century.

Rapid Transformation: A 90-day Plan for Fast and Effective Change

Profound organizational transformation takes years and, in most cases is unsuccessful, right? Not according to change expert Behnam Tabrizi. In Rapid Transformation: A 90-Day Plan for Fast and Effective Change , Tabrizi shows you how to accomplish successful transformational change in your firm in just 90 days. Based on ten years of research into more than 500 leading companies including 3M, IBM, GE, Nissan, Apple, Bay Networks, Verisign, HP and Best Buy this book demystifies fast, effective change and lays out a clear roadmap for achieving it. Tabrizi’s 90-day transformational model comprises three main phases, each lasting 30 days. The model enables you to analyze your company’s specific challenge, develop a new course of action, and carry out the plan. Moreover, you apply the model in parallel with the normal workings of your organization so you don’t have to put your company on hold for the sake of the change effort. With its detailed recipe and insightful stories from actual corporate reinventions, this book defies long-held assumptions about change and provides a practical and immediately actionable guide.