A Seat at the Table and The Art of Business Value: IT Leadership in the Age of Agility

by Mark Schwartz

A Seat at the Agile, Lean, and DevOps approaches are radical game-changers. They provide a fundamentally different way to think about how IT fits into the enterprise, how IT leaders lead, and how IT can harness technology to accomplish the objectives of the enterprise. But honest and open conversations are not taking place at the interface between management and Agile delivery teams. In A Seat at the Table, CIO Mark Schwartz explores the role of IT leadership as it is now and the role of IT leadership as it should be--an integral part of the value creation engine.

Asking two critical questions, how can IT harness Agility to achieve the best value for the enterprise and how can IT redefine its relationship with the enterprise to maximize this value, and in the process, earn that seat at the table, Schwartz shows that the only way to become an Agile IT leader in today's world is to be courageous--to throw off many of the attitudes and assumptions that have left CIOs struggling to gain a seat at the table, to proceed in bold strokes, and to lead the enterprise in seizing opportunities to create business value through technology.

The Art of Business Do you really understand what business value is? Information technology can and should deliver business value. But the Agile literature has paid scant attention to what business value means--and how to know whether or not you are delivering it. This problem becomes ever more critical as you push value delivery toward autonomous teams and away from requirements "tossed over the wall" by business stakeholders. An empowered team needs to understand its goal!

Playful and thought-provoking, The Art of Business Value explores what business value means, why it matters, and how it should affect your software development and delivery practices. More than any other IT delivery approach, DevOps (and Agile thinking in general) makes business value a central concern. This book examines the role of business value in software and makes a compelling case for why a clear understanding of business value will change the way you deliver software.

This book will make you think deeply about not only what it means to deliver value but also the relationship of the IT organization to the rest of the enterprise. It will give you the language to discuss value with the business, methods to cut through bureaucracy and strategies for incorporating Agile teams and culture into the enterprise. Most of all, this book will startle you into new ways of thinking about the cutting-edge of Agile practice and where it may lead.

Genres: Business, Technology

538 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 10, 2017

Reviews

[Angeline · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wish I'd bought these titles separately or at least known to read The Art of Business Value first. They just seem to flow better that way, and I'd prefer to rate them individually. I'd give A Seat at the Table 3 stars as I found it less useful for my purposes and a bit on the preachy side. It could have been much shorter as well, if only it were more focused. Despite the author's argument to the contrary, I still think Agile, in common practice, is quite cultish not despite its origins, but in many ways because of them.

Regardless, The Art of Business Value gets 4 stars for being well written and insightful, and for the useful discourse on valuation methods.

[Jose Sanchez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excelente mirada

Me encanto la manera en que se redescubre el valor de negocio, realmente se desmitifica.

Podemos encontrar una sensata mirada de cómo lograr mejores resultados