Art of Business Value (eBook)

Mark Schwartz is an iconoclastic CIO and a playful crafter of ideas, an inveterate purveyor of lucubratory prose. He has been an IT leader in organizations small and large, public, private, and nonprofit. As the CIO of US Citizenship and Immigration Services, he provokes the federal government into adopting Agile and DevOps practices. He is pretty sure that when he was the CIO of Intrax Cultural Exchange he was the first person ever to use business intelligence and supply chain analytics to place au pairs with the right host families. Mark speaks frequently on innovation, bureaucratic implications of DevOps, and Agile processes in low-trust environments. With a computer science degree from Yale and an MBA from Wharton, Mark is either an expert on the business value of IT or just confused and much poorer.

CHAPTER 1: THE PROBLEMAgile and Lean practices are all about maximizing the businessvalue we deliver. Agile books tell us that business value is important,but none of them seem to tell us what business value is, thoughthey do scatter clues here and there. In this chapter, however, weexamine the clues and find that they come to nothing. Businessvalue is a mystery at the core of Agile practice.CHAPTER 2: THE MEANINGOur first step in solving the mystery is to consult the experts.Unfortunately, the experts just deepen the mystery for us. It turnsout that we need to cast a wider net to catch our elusive target.CHAPTER 3: THE CULTUREGood detective work involves observing people. We find that thereseems to be a connection between organizational culture andbusiness value. But to understand it, we have to immerse ourselvesin corporate culture, rather than reject it or stand apart from it.CHAPTER 4: THE RULESWhat could bureaucracy possibly have to do with business value?A lot, perhaps. Warning: this chapter contains graphic depictionsof bureaucracy being applied to agility. You may come away wantingto produce burndown charts in triplicate.CHAPTER 5: THE CIOSomeone has been forgotten in all this talk about business value.She makes a mysterious entrance, claiming to be following the sametrail of clues that we are. Or . . . could it be that she is responsible?CHAPTER 6: THE CLUEAha—the case (or the CAS) takes a turn. We skip lightly into thefourth dimension, take a look back, and all becomes clear. But you'llfind no spoilers here in the Table of Contents.CHAPTER 7: THE DELIVERYWe lock up the culprit and explain the tools we have used to solvethe mystery. You will begin to see business value as an art and walkaway with surprising new ideas on how to go about creating it.