The Alignment Effect: How to Get Real Business Value Out of Technology
Friday, June 18th, 2010
at
12:12 am
This is the eBook version of the printed book. If the print book includes a CD-ROM, this content is not included within the eBook version.The Alignment Effect offers managers a systematic blueprint for demanding real accountability and bottom-line business results from their IT investments. Using actual case studies, Faisal Hoque introduces Business Technology Management, a comprehensive approach to aligning technology with business objectives, increasing the efficiency of technology investments, and dramatically reducing the financial and operational risks associated with business and technical change. … More >>
The Alignment Effect: How to Get Real Business Value Out of Technology
Faisal Hoque’s book is a refreshing departure from the heavily academic, “thick” methodologies designed to help organizations change-be it for alignment or anything else. The author makes actionable recommendations for alignment around the way companies actually go through IT project lifecycles. I found his use of stories by people in the field helpful in making the connection between how misalignment occurs and how alignment can be accomplished. This book has something for everyone because it addresses the issues that confront the many organizational players who have a role in getting technology to work for the business. While it tends not to deep dive in any one area, it spares us the exhausting details that would otherwise hold up the reader from seeing the overall “effect” his recommendations can have on aligning technology projects with business goals.
Practical Advice for the Customer as Well as the Implementer….
In the last 15 years, I have been involved with 3 distinct IT implementations or migrations. During all three of these implementations, I acted as a customer of the planning and implementation teams. Facing yet another migration in another environment I sought to get a leg up on some current thinking outside my normal working conditions.
Reading this book as a “Customer,” I became aware of the true impact of a customization request. One of the characteristics of all of my experiences is that the simple communication of “cost to customize” vs process change is/has never been adequately discussed. Consequently, the implementations usually end up as a struggle between the budget centers. In The Alignment Effect, a clear rationale is presented for accommodation, and perhaps more importantly, testing of the implementation via an impact analysis. Here I found a clear and concise recipe for making good judgments and a practical way of evaluating them before an implementation is executed.
A second area I found informative is the attention given to futures. All too often, we implement and then the business changes and our existent process and information systems are not flexible enough to accommodate the change in the business environment. I have experienced several situations where the business had to conform to the infrastructure. In this “One size fits all, therefore one size fits none” society, business process and business models play second fiddle to “The way it is”. I read with enthusiasm the sections on Optimization and Maturity where it becomes practical to modify, tune, re-engineer, and then go on.
From a “Customer” perspective I found this an interesting and educational read. I also found some better ways to communicate with my IT partners.
A quick pass through this book gives you a sense of issues for IT departments. Credibility is down, budgets squeezed, half finished projects. IT is in the dumps these days.
I get the feeling Faisal Hoque thinks IT departments area stupd. They should be closely monitored by business leaders at all times. I agree.
The book gives you a good sense of issues. It falls short on presenting solutions.
It nicely covers IT governance. It is a good intro or refresher for governance and hits the right points for me.
I picked up this book after realizing the company is a vendor at our firm.
I liked the forward and introduction. The book hits a nerve in today’s enterprise. Everywhere I turn, and every other planning meeting here, the subject of IT alignment shows up.
I read through the major sections to improve my skills. The principles are very mushy and hard to apply. Practical advice is non-existent.
The author abandons software engineering, project planning, and IT management. She presents a strange collection of people-centric approaches and age-old groupware ideas. As if the only issue is not enough meetings and fuzzy stuff. The fuzzy stuff can help, but at the end of the day, business has many really tough challenges. This book offers no short cut and no help.
Well into the information age, the issue of the failure of information technology to deliver on its promise of real business value continues to trouble us. That Hoque feels compelled to bring this matter to our attention is an indictment of our commitment to sensible information technology management. The world’s willingness to increasingly buy, yet not effectively improve the management of, information technology has amazed me for the 38 years I have been in the business. I somehow think I will continue to be amazed.
Hoque prescribes an approach to dealing with this issue that is understandable and can be put into action. Simply said, it is about understanding how a business works, how it can be configured to work better, how technology can enable this reconfiguration, and how the resulting benefits can be expressed in business terms.
Do not look in this book for a magic answer to resolve the issue. Indeed, there is no magic answer to be found anywhere. Attendance to the empirical facts of business and technology, and clear reasoning about them is the only way forward. Hoque provides useful guidelines for doing just this.
Some aspects of the book get in the way of clearly understanding Hoque’s message. I think the metaphor of building a house has been overused with regard to enterprise architecture, and the illustrations associated with the Rauha Communications case are a trifle abstract.
Hoque’s approach to Business Technology Management leads to the development of a considerable amount of useful information. One wishes that Hoque had dealt more clearly with how all of this is to be managed.
The final point is that cultural change is the paramount nemesis of Business Technology Management. We could benefit more from Hoque’s experiences in overcoming this barrier to progress.
I have no hesitancy in recommending this book as an easy weekend read to the business executive finally willing to step up to his responsibilities of managing the information technology asset.