Mr. Schwartz, Thank-you for reading "Achieving Process Profitability" and giving it a fair and honest review both here and on Amazon.com. I hope that you enjoyed it.
I agree that "Achieving Process Profitability" does not touch on "information" or "infrastructure". I intentionally left these out in order to focus the book on "process", which I feel is, by far, the least understood aspect of IT to most individuals within IT as well as the businesses they serve. You are absolutely correct that it is difficult, if not impossible, to build solid and useful IT systems without first having a solid and supportable infrastructure in place. However, I feel that this point is understood by most individuals in IT and most businesses. Whether or not they act on their understanding is another matter, but most people comprehend that you cannot build a house on a weak foundation. In terms of information, the information portion of IT that must be dealt with in businesses is the information that is an input or an output of particular business processes. As such, if one focuses on process and on achieving process profitability, the information about and surrounding those processes is taken care as a matter of course. However, it is difficult to get into specifics regarding such information because it is so unique to each business. This probably could have been stated a little clearer in "Achieving Process Profitability". I believe that there are a lot more aspects of the book that are very useful for both individuals and businesses such as the chapters on learning and corporate memory, micro-processes, specialization and opportunity cost. "Achieving Process Profitability" is certainly not aimed at re-hashing TQM or ITIL but instead focused on providing a solid foundation for how to apply those concepts to IT and transform IT within a business from a cost center to a profit center. I believe that winning this battle is of paramount importance and will lead to winning battles over infrastructure spending and the like. If businesses can see and understand that IT is a profit center for their company, then they will be much more likely to spend the money necessary to upgrade and replace aging infrastructure. It becomes a return on investment argument that is easily won if IT is providing the value it should be to a business. "Oh, we have a system that will save the company millions of dollars but it won't work unless we upgrade our infrastructure? Done." The economic justification for IT and IT's systems must be understood by a company first before they will make intelligent and informed decisions regarding IT. Again, I want to thank-you for holding up your end of the bargain. As you stated, "Achieving Process Profitability" is a short read. I wrote it this way because I feel that it is emminently more readable than those other titles you mentioned and will open-up the study of process within business to a wider audience than just those willing to read those relatively dry tomes. > I received and read this book (closer to a booklet than a book) Friday. The > author does a fairly good job of translating some basic TQM principles as > they relate to IT. The book is an easy read but could have used more real > world scenarios to emphasize certain points. As far as the philosophy of the > author goes, I feel that Greg has highlighted some of the failures that many > IT people make in their assumptions as to their role in an organization. (I > won't get into great detail as I'll leave other people who may be interested > in forming their own opinions.) I've called it the Mainframe Mentality in > the past. Build it and they will come has no place in IT anymore. His > assumptions as to role in IT I've feel he got it partially correct, but > missed some things as well. Automation of manual process is important, but > the I in IT does stand for something that the author failed to talk about at > all. There is another area that I feel that was missed entirely. The > importance of have a strong, flexible and reliable infrastructure. Most of > the focus at the end of the book was (to me) from the point of view of an > application developer and most of the points are valid. However, developers > must have an strong infrastructure to develop on. This is one of the most > difficult concepts for IT to sell to the money managers. > > Overall I'd rate the booklet "Fair". For those not familiar with TQM or ITIL > it is a basic introduction to some of those concepts. For those who what to > delve deeper into those concepts, I'd suggest reading "The Deming Management > Method" and "The 5 Pillars of TQM". The ITIL website also has information on > IT Service Management. http://www.ogc.gov.uk/index.asp?id=2261 > <http://www.ogc.gov.uk/index.asp?id=2261> > > > This e-mail contains the thoughts and opinions of the sender and does not > represent BB&T in any way. _________________________________________________________________ List posting FAQ: http://www.swinc.com/resource/exch_faq.htm Web Interface: http://intm-dl.sparklist.com/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=exchange&text_mode=&lang=english To unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Exchange List admin: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
