Jon Collins & Neil Macehiter 
The Technology Garden [PDF ebook] 
Cultivating Sustainable IT-Business Alignment

‘The book contains a practical approach and real actions that can
transform the credibility and alignment of IT to the
business.’

–Myron Hrycyk, CIO, NYK Logistics UK & Eire

‘A significant addition to the Enterprise Architect’s
bookshelf.’

–Rupert Brown, Principal Architect, Merrill Lynch Global Business
Technology EMEA

Many IT deployments fall short of delivering value to the
businesses that pay for them. On top of this, the combined forces
of rapid business change and technology innovation frequently
outpace the ability of IT organisations to make sense of their
implications. With business activity and IT now so intimately
intertwined, organizations urgently need a framework which allows
them to align IT capabilities with business strategies and
priorities in a way that is sustainable.

A team of IT-expert authors with more than 80 years’ combined
experience have interviewed dozens of CIOs, IT directors and other
senior technical and business decision makes to find out what works
and what doesn’t. The result is a handbook for organizations of all
sizes that want to improve the value of their IT investments, thus
enabling their IT capabilities to play a more pivotal business
role. Written in plain English that does not descend into technical
detail, The Technology Garden provides practical advice for
organizations looking to achieve sustainable IT-business alignment.
To do so, it defines:

* Six key principles – a distillation of best practice that readers
can apply directly to the domain of IT-business alignment

* A framework for their application – a pragmatic roadmap for the
application of the principles

* Adoption guidelines – a set of self-assessment checklists that
readers can use to understand where they are on the IT-business
alignment roadmap and how to progress.

With groundbreaking research and proven approaches, this blueprint
enables readers to understand what is at the heart of IT-business
alignment. Combining IT research, analysis and real-world insight,
The Technology Garden is the ultimate no-nonsense guide.

Cuprins

Preface.

1. Introduction.

2. The current realities of business and IT.

3. The IT organisation must get the basics right.

4. Create a common language.

5. Establish a peer relationship between business and IT.

6. Work towards coordinated goals and objectives.

7. Manage IT as a business-driven portfolio.

8. Foster relationships with key IT suppliers.

9. Applying the principles.

Appendix IT-business alignment scorecard toolkit.

Index.

Despre autor

Jon Collins has nearly 20 years of experience in IT. Jon has
worked as an industry analyst for over 7 years, for companies
including Quocirca, Bloor Research and IDC. He has acted as an
advisor to leading vendors including Cisco, EMC, IBM and Microsoft,
and to large IT user organisations in the Government,
Telecommunications and Financial Services sectors.

Neil Macehiter is one of the founders of Macehiter
Ward-Dutton, an IT advisory firm focused firmly on the challenge of
IT-business alignment. He has almost 21 years of experience in the
IT industry, having worked in consulting, product and technology
strategy roles for vendors.

Dale Vile is the research director of Freeform Dynamics.
He specialises in monitoring how IT industry developments map onto
practical business needs in the Enterprise and SMB mainstream.

Neil Ward-Dutton is the other founder of Macehiter
Ward-Dutton. He has over 15 years of experience in the IT industry
– in a mixture of consulting and industry analysis roles. He
started his career as a business analyst at ICI, and then spent a
number of years as a software engineer working for one of the UK’s
leading software consultancies at the time, Praxis.