Business Value

War and Peace and IT cover — Image from Amazon.com

Have you ever read a book and said to yourself, “I want to lock my executives in a room and make them read this”?

Okay, maybe that is a bit of an exaggeration :-), but Mark Schwartz’s latest work is one that all levels of IT management should digest, especially executives. My copy is filled why highlights and I have pages of notes. It is near impossible to select a few points to focus on for a review, but…

Do you want to know why it is a fundamental mistake to treat IT like a contractor versus being an equal partner in business outcomes? Read this book.
Do you need ideas on how to align your company’s financial model with a truly agile development approach? Read this book.
Do you want to improve outcomes, reduce costs, and turn your employees into value-generating entrepreneurs? Read this book.

In the end… [Read more…] about Review: War and Peace and IT

Recently I was lucky enough to speak with Mik Kersten, author of a new “must read” book, Project to Product, and CEO of Tasktop.

Last year, when I completed reading his work, I put this review on Amazon with the title, “A Book that Demands a Decision”:

DevOps guru Gene Kim rightly introduced this book with, “Every decade there are a couple of books that genuinely change my worldview. … This is one such book.”

Mik Kersten provides ample evidence that the project and cost center orientation of so many software producing companies doesn’t fit the Age of Software, and suggests a way becoming product-centric via a focus on value flow. The book is a an appealing combination of real-world examples of those who got it right (and who didn’t) and practical explanations of what needs to be done to build measurable value networks.

Net effect for me? A mind that is racing on how best to distill it into something I can evangelize in my workplace. This isn’t a “single read” type of work, and extra kudos to Kersten for the useful glossary and extensive index.

Get the book. Your company’s future may depend on what it’ll bring to light.

I stand by those words. [Read more…] about A Conversation about Project to Product with Mik Kersten