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IT Savvy: Getting an Edge from IT

The WSJ has published a Business Insight Interview with MIT’s Peter Weill on IT Savvy, his (excellent) recent book, co-authored with Jeanne Ross.  The interview covers a few of the main ideas of the book, standardization for innovation, IT as strategic asset vs. liability, creating digital platforms, and the importance of connecting projects.  A couple of excerpts:

BUSINESS INSIGHT:Your newest book is about IT-savvy companies. How do you define IT savvy?

DR. WEILL: IT-savvy companies make information technology a strategic asset. The opposite of a strategic asset, of course, is a strategic liability. And there are many companies who feel their IT is a strategic liability. In those companies, the IT landscape is siloed, expensive and slow to change, and managers can't get the data they want.

IT-savvy companies are just the opposite. They use their technology not only to reduce costs today by standardizing and digitizing their core processes, but the information they summarize from that gives them ideas about where to innovate in the future. A third element is that IT-savvy companies use their digital platform to collaborate with other companies in their ecosystem of customers and suppliers.

So, IT-savvy companies are not just about savvy IT departments. It's about the whole company thinking digitally.

BUSINESS INSIGHT: You've done some research that suggests IT-savvy companies are more profitable than others. Tell me a bit about that.

DR. WEILL: The IT-savvy companies are 21% more profitable than non-IT-savvy companies. And the profitability shows up in two ways. One is that IT-savvy companies have identified the best way to run their core day-to-day processes. Think about UPS or Southwest Airlines or Amazon: They run those core processes flawlessly, 24 hours a day.

The second thing is that IT-savvy companies are faster to market with new products and services that are add-ons, because their innovations are so much easier to integrate than in a company with siloed technology architecture, where you have to glue together everything and test it and make sure that it all works. We call that the agility paradox—the companies that have more standardized and digitized business processes are faster to market and get more revenue from new products.

Those are the two sources of their greater profitability: lower costs for running existing business processes, and faster innovation.

…

DR. WEILL:  The real secret to IT-savvy companies is that each project links together—like Lego blocks—to create a reusable platform. IT-savvy companies think reuse first. When they have a new idea, the first question they ask is: Can we use existing data, applications and infrastructure to get that idea to market fast? When we look at the impact of reusing processes and applications, we see measurable benefits in the top and bottom lines.

The book also covers defining your operating model, revamping your IT funding model, allocating decision rights and accountability, driving value from IT and leading an IT Savvy firm.  Consistent with Ross and Weill’s other works, the book is research backed and calls out case examples.

Read the article.  Get the book.  Otherwise, risk getting the IT you deserve…

Todd Biske's SOA Governance Book: Buy-it, Read-it, Live-it

Back in August -- when Todd Biske and I were talking about SOA Governance and football -- I had the privilege to read the first draft of Todd's now released SOA Governance book.  I say privilege because Todd wasn't looking for a back cover quote, he wanted honest feedback on his material. 

Lucky for me, the job was easy.  The draft was strong, in both content and readability.  Along the way, Todd and I had some great interchanges, such as successful governance models beyond command and control.  As well, I noted Todd's guidance on pre-project, project and run-time policies to test the completeness of my service meta models.

Now that I've read the published book, I want to augment my "buy-it, read-it, live-it" book review tweet.  So, here goes... 

 

5 Reasons to Read Todd Biske's SOA Governance Book

 

1. Todd's view of SOA Governance is outcome, rather than product, centric.  Todd defines SOA Governance as "the combination of people, policies, and processes within your organization that will ensure that the desired behaviors of your strategic SOA initiative are achieved". 

Examples of those desired behaviors, or outcomes, are "increasing the number of assets reused by 10% each year", "decreasing the average time to produce a solution by 10%" and/or "increasing the number of projects delivered by 10% each year". 

While Todd does speak to the technology / product categories that enable SOA governance, at no point does he equate (confuse) SOA governance with the acquisition / implementation of a registry, repository, service broker or runtime monitor. 

 

2. The management fable will resonate with any practitioner who has ever worked in corporate IT.  Todd explains SOA Governance in the context of the SOA journey of a fictional corporation.  The book follows Advasco's SOA advocates, implementers and adversaries from an early win, to the trials of sharing, through the mysteries of problem detection and resolution, and finally to SOA success.  As the tale unfolds, Todd points out problem areas, suggests corrective action and supplies best practices.

 

3. The reference chapter is worth the price of the book.  Even if management fables aren't your thing, you'll find Chapter 8, Establishing SOA Governance at Your Organization, to be an indispensable reference.  This chapter covers:

• People: solution architect, business analyst, tech lead/domain architect, enterprise/technology architect, information architect, security architect, IT manager, service manager/owner, platform manager
• Organization: Enterprise Architecture, COE/Competency Center, Review Boards
• Policies: Pre-Project, Project and Run-time
• Processes: Establishment, Education/Communication, Enforcement, Measurement
• Technologies: Registry/Repository, Service Testing Platforms, ESB, XML Appliances, Security Gateways, Service Management Platforms, Service Invocation & Exposure Frameworks

 

4. The advice on governance -- policy establishment, communication, enforcement, measurement and feedback -- is pragmatic, not autocratic.  During their SOA journey, the Advasco team faces challenges where what's best for the architecture (long-run) isn't necessarily best for the business that day.  Instead of taking an architecture hard line, or business shortcut, the team considers options and implications, and makes pragmatic trade-offs.

 

5. Exhibiting good SOA form, the book is easily consumed and right-sized.

 

The book is available on Amazon and via the publisher.

 

[Disclosure: Todd Biske is a friend, one that I personally recruited into the SOA Consortium, for his thoughtful and pragmatic views on SOA, EA and business solution delivery].