A Reader’s Guide to A Seat at the Table

New!
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!

For the first time, enjoy Mark Schwartz's two books on IT leadership in the modern enterprise world in one bundle. A Seat at the Table and The Art of Business Value pave the path for the modern CIO and IT department.

A Reader's Guide to A Seat at the Table is intended to add another dimension to the original book. This reader's guide walks through A Seat at the Table chapter by chapter.

The guide includes additional material for each chapter on:
• What has changed between the Waterfall/contractor-control world and the Agile world.
• The key points of the chapter.
• The concrete actions that IT leaders should take away from the chapter.
• Questions to help stimulate further debate.
• And more.

Available now!

It’s not enough to say that the CIO is the geek who wears the suit, IT leaders must, now more than ever, take a seat at the table. In A Seat at the Table, CIO Mark Schwartz explores the role of IT leadership as it is now and opens the door to reveal IT leadership as it should be—an integral part of the value creation engine. With wit and an easy style, Schwartz reveals that the only way to become an Agile IT leader is to be courageous—to throw off the attitude and assumptions that have kept CIOs from taking their rightful seat at the table. CIOs, step on up, your seat at the table is waiting for you.

While the traditional IT organization is structured into functional silos, DevOps relies on empowered, cross-functional teams. Is it possible to blend the two approaches and work within the traditional structure? Or do you need to restructure your organization to support DevOps? This paper discusses ways to approach organization with DevOps in mind.