Average customer rating:
- Finally a How-To!
- Very good for newbies in process improvement field
- Good Book for a Foundation
- Excellent Business Process Modeling Book
- Workflow Modeling - This Book Flows...
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Workflow Modeling: Tools for Process Improvement and Application Development
Alec Sharp , and
Patrick McDermott
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Business Process Change: A Manager's Guide to Improving, Redesigning, and Automating Processes (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Data Management Systems)
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ASIN: 1580530214 |
Customer Reviews:
Finally a How-To!.......2007-09-15
Good overall analysis and methodology for approaching process re-design projects. Very practical and well written. Includes strategies for avoiding common pitfalls.
Very good for newbies in process improvement field.......2007-08-16
I enjoyed this book because of:
1) clear, coherent logic
2) it's very practical from cover to cover - everything you need to know before modeling processes you can find here and use it in your work on the very next day
3) the language - it's plain and definitely supports better adoption of the tools described. I also like the authors' delicate humor :)
As a whole - two thumbs up, 5 stars.
Good Book for a Foundation.......2007-08-09
I was recommended this book from BPMN Essentials course I recently took and just finished the book. It has a great deal of examples and suggestions for how to perform process modelling, which I like.
Excellent Business Process Modeling Book.......2006-11-29
Everything started with the creation of a two days workshop: Workflow Process Modeling. The authors have continually improved the workshop with participants' feedback and ideas based on their own hands-on consulting work with many organizations. The book is very well structured and it is based on real world experience. The structure is simple with no unnecessary parts that usually fill other books with redundant content. The content is not a mere recount of personal experiences: there are plenty of references to other publications. Plus, you will find good humor in the book that makes it even more readable.
Although the authors declared their work aimed at application development work as a final outcome, the book is focused very much on the business side with emphasis on process workflow. Nowadays the specialization pushes further and further apart the role of a business analyst from the system analyst, while in the past some would refer to these roles as one. This book might not be very useful for a system analyst because it is not very technically oriented. You will not find yourself drown under zillions of diagrams created with a specific software package, but you will get instead a method of how to approach business analysis from a broad, yet practical, perspective. The book does not bother even to talk too much about UML. I found that refreshing and extremely useful. I have been searching for a book that is more like a thought provoking companion rather than a software tool manual and this book fits that description.
Workflow Modeling is a comprehensive book. It does not focus on a particular stage of business analysis. It provides an inventory of areas the professional business process consultant would have to consider and the rationale for each one of them. Some readers might not agree with the little amount of space dedicated to class modeling which is almost inexistent. On the plus side, the authors talk about approach in dealing with project stakeholders, pitfalls, team building and difficulties and what questions to ask in various situations. The authors appreciate the importance of the final delivery, how to map the road between the as-is process to to-be process and understand the structure of the organization. I found many things that were said here very realistic and valuable; I could relate them to my own experience. The book does not say much about class modeling, but it talks a lot about swimlane diagrams and use cases analysis.
You can use Workflow Modeling to design your own work template that suits your style and formation. You can come back , re-read some parts or the whole book (I have done that) and still get something out of it. I recommend the book as a good investment that will not go out of fashion very soon.
Workflow Modeling - This Book Flows..........2006-09-16
Workflow Modeling serves both as a primer to a process approach to management, and a step-by-step guide for modeling the workflow required to achieve the process goals. The skills it teaches are critical as modeling is often the first step within larger improvement projects of all kinds.
Beyond modelling itself, the authors provide the context for process issues by considering organisational mission, strategy, goals and culture within which design and improvement projects usually occur.
Readers will find lots of case studies and vignettes that clearly illustrate the points and enliven the book in no small way.
Book Description
Misaligned companies, like cars out of alignment, can develop serious problems if not corrected quickly. They are hard to steer and don't respond well to changes in direction. This groundbreaking book shows you how to get -and keep -all the vital elements of your organization aligned and headed in the same direction at the same time.
Managers must now keep their people centered in the midst of change, deemphasize hierarchy, and distribute leadership by distributing authority, information, knowledge, and customer data throughout their organization. Alignment is a response to the new business reality where customer requirements are in flux, where competitive forces are turbulent, and where the bond of loyalty between an organization and its people has been weakened. The old linear approach to management has given way to one of simultaneity -to alignment.
As pioneers of the alignment concept, the authors have developed this unique approach based on their work with leading companies throughout the world. The Power of Alignment is packed with war stories and the firsthand perspectives of industry leaders. You'll learn how world-class organizations, including Federal Express, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Columbia/HCA Healthcare, Citizens Utilities, AirTouch, and UNUM achieved extraordinary business results. Now, through the authors' expertise, you'll see how alignment can work for your organization.
In essence, alignment links the five key elements of an organization -people, process, customers, business strategies, and, of course, leadership -to obtain breakthrough results, chief among them, sustained growth and profit, loyal customers, and a high-performing work force. The Power of Alignment:
* Offers a clear framework for aligning and linking the crucial elements that build and sustain a company's success
* Provides self-assessment tools as well as benchmarking measures for evaluating an organization's critical competencies
* Enables managers to create a work force where each employee can relate his or her activities to the goals and strategic objectives of the company
* Helps a company determine when and where it is out of alignment, and gives descriptions of such common company pathologies as "The Phantom Limb Syndrome," "Strategy Interruptus," and "Dead Man Walking"
* Prescribes specific steps for getting an organization back on track toward a single, shared vision of its goals
Essential reading for all managers and executives, The Power of Alignment offers a new way to reestablish focus and sustained energy, and is a dynamic approach for staying balanced and achieving extraordinary levels of performance.
"This book is savvy, detailed, timely, and clearly written. I highly recommend it for any leader facing the challenges posed by global business today." - Dana Mead Chairman and CEO, Tenneco Former Chairman National Association of Manufacturers
"It's not only the stars that have to be in alignment to reach your destination, it's all the internal processes, rewards, and drivers. Read The Power of Alignment, and while you may not unlock the secrets of the universe, you will overcome the barriers to corporate success." - William L. Boyan President and COO John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Company.
"This important book goes beyond TQM and reengineering by creating a new approach called Alignment. The authors show that great companies manage to link strategy and people and integrate customer needs with continuous improvement processes." - Peter Augustsson President and Group Chief Executive AB SKF.
"The Power of Alignment gets to the heart of a critical element of organizational leadership, namely focus. Every leader who reads it will undoubtedly do some serious soul-searching about the consistency of corporate vision, goals, management systems, and incentive mechanisms." - Louis E. Lataif Dean Boston University School of Management.
Customer Reviews:
As significant today as it was when first published.......2007-08-26
After reviewing several books on Strategic Execution, I was continuously left with the feeling that the authors had ommitted a key ingredient. This book has convinced me that that key ingredient was "Alignment".
This book was published 10 years ago (OK, I am embarrassed that I have only just got around to reading it) but it is as significant today as it was when it was first published. Probably more so considering the rapid state of change that most companies are faced with today.
It is a simple read, and the concepts are easy to follow. What I enjoyed most about the book is that the suggestions are practical and you can take them and implement them immediately within an organization.
I noticed that one of the readers who has reviewed the book said that the book was required reading for his MBA course. 10 years on, I still think it should be required reading for any business executive.
This Is a Great Resource!.......2007-07-10
I'm always looking for visual ways of understanding critical elements of strategy. The Power of Alignment offers a very helpful way of thinking about four important ingredients in keeping the main thing, the main thing. Vertical alignment, the relationship between your strategy and the people on your team, "energizes...provides direction, and offers opportunity for involvement." Horizontal alignment refers to the connection between your processes and customers. Taken together the two measures provide some great insight into the development of genuine alignment.
One of the most interesting elements of the book is a 16 question diagnostic tool that is designed to provide a graphic view of your organization's alignment. Very helpful!
Make Sure That Everything You Do Points To Success !.......2006-05-03
Great book! The basic premise is that once a business has a raison d'etre, or a 'main thing', that profits are maximized by the alignment of four key business areas: Strategy, Processes, People, and Customers. Built on this premise are actionalbe ways to build a self-aligning organization. I got the sense of discovering truth while I read this book. Leadership isn't really about power, it is about responsibility. This book shows a manager at any level how to align his area to the overall strategy of the company and to the end products of the company. It shows how processes should be designed and what factors should be used to reward, recognize and evaluate employees. Great food for thought and realistic to implement.
Five Stars
Powerful Organizational Focus.......2003-05-28
Quite simply, this book was one of the best business management and leadership books I have ever read. It was well-written and expertly balanced management and leadership concepts with real-world examples of effectively aligned organizations, such as Federal Express and Southwest Airlines. This book should be read and discussed by leaders and managers at all levels, especially by mid- to senior-level executives.
In brief, alignment deals with the relationships among the people, processes, strategy, and customers of an organization relative to that organization's purpose, or what the authors called "the main thing." Alignment is both a noun, a state of being, and a verb, a set of actions. Vertical alignment connects organizational strategy with the people responsible for transforming that strategy into meaningful work. Horizontal alignment deals with understanding your customers' wants and then creating processes to deliver what your customers want, when and how they want it. Effective leadership nurtures the organizational culture that is built around and upon "the main thing," and it is this culture and leadership combination that drives and sustains self-aligning organizations in turbulent times.
The authors' analogy of landing a plane helped me to visualize the dynamics involved with organizational alignment. To land a plane, a pilot must adjust and react to multiple simultaneous factors and conditions (i.e. air speed, altitude, angle of approach, wind speed and direction, etc.) and then understand how a change in one will affect the others. Likewise, to align an organization, a leader must adjust and react to feedback about his people, processes, strategy, and customers, and then understand how a change in one will affect the others.
The authors clearly and thoroughly explained the alignment factors and conditions throughout the book. They followed their explanations with incisive questions for readers to ask about themselves and their organizations to assess their degree of alignment. Those questions were definitely a highlight of the book for they really helped to stimulate my thinking and should help inspire organizational progress to alignment. Another highlight was the appendices that contained examples of actual tools and products used and created by some of the aligned organizations studied by the authors.
The inside back cover jacket sums up why I give the book my highest recommendation: "Essential reading for all managers and executives, "The Power of Alignment" offers a new way to reestablish focus and sustained energy, and is a dynamic approach for staying balanced and achieving extraordinary levels of performance."
Alignment is Key Essential Usually Overlooked.......2001-07-13
I found this book easy reading, concise, and presented it's basic premise well with specific examples and good suggestions for creation and implementation.
Working as a Director in Managed Care for several pharmaceutical companies, it creates a focus for any organization and a roadmap for the future(physician, health plan, pharmaceutical company) to avoid many of the mistakes and pitfalls that have already been experienced in an attempt to align with the ever changing healthcare landscape.
For those who do account management, it provides a construct and roadmap to use to optimize alignment with internal customers and maximize resources to create value and return with the external customers (....and their customers.) As the authors point, alignment is a continuing process, not a single event in time. Many companies become quickly aligned with the past, and misaligned with the present & future, and can not sustain the competitive edge because they forget this basic premise that the authors reinforce.
The concepts are basic and fundamental, but usually overlooked and forgotten in the day to day business of rapidly growing companies and changing environments.
Book Description
"In business, either you're an agent of change, or you're destined to become a victim of change." -- Norm Brodsky in Inc Magazine
Customer Reviews:
Not Very Practical.......2007-07-03
If you are a practitioner you will not find this book very helpful. It has a number of interesting ideas, but they randomly presented. If you are looking for a more systematic or strategic approach, I'd recommend Beitler's Strategic Organizational Change or Kotter's Leading Change.
Learning to Make the Best of Change.......2007-05-12
Good Book. It presents the reader with seveal different theories and I learned alot about how change takes takes place in the work place. Overall a good book to read for any leader.
Making Sense?.......2007-04-07
I'm not sure it made that much sense. I was looking for a more practical book on how to do it - how to design an organization based on the needs.
Basic.......2007-01-15
This book would be useful if you do not practice as a manager. It provides an elementary overview. If you are a practitioner, I'd recommend Kotter, Beitler, or Bridges.
A must-have.......2007-01-10
This is one of the most useful, accessible and instantly applicable books on change management out there!
It collates quite a few well-published theorems and methodologies in one place, demonstrates the pros and cons of each without going into too much detail, but leaves it to the reader to decide which is appropriate in a given situation and, as a whole, the authors provides you with an unsurpassed collection of tools and models to apply in any given change scenario.
You will find yourself referring back to this again and again.
Average customer rating:
- Mature Organizational Change Ideas and Practices
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Process Think: Winning Perspectives for Business Change in the Information Age
Manufacturer: IGI Global
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Similar Items:
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Essentials of System Analysis and Design (3rd Edition)
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Introduction to Management Science
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ASIN: 1878289683 |
Book Description
"Process Think" is a managerial orientation to act proactively in identification of process opportunities, a capability to apply process concepts in problem solving, and a demonstrated willingness to transfer process thinking to fellow employees, customers and partners. Process thinking managers have the capability to intuitively see the implications of their actions across the company and project themselves into the situations of their customers.
Business process change today must be more personal, dynamic and seamlessly supported by new IT. New and far more sophisticated IT will test a company's ability to quickly modify the business models and corresponding processes, and in doing so, place renewed importance on process thinking.
Process Think: Winning Perspectives for Business Change in the Information Age reflects a diversity of perspectives pertaining to change management in the information age.
Customer Reviews:
Mature Organizational Change Ideas and Practices.......2002-06-19
This book is one of the best repositories of ideas and practical information about organizational change management that I've come across. While I've been heavily influenced by many of Thomas H. Davenport's books, I've found a wealth of fresh ideas in this book because each chapter is a paper written by one or more experts in a specific aspect of organizational change. I also like the way the book is organized into four sections that examine change and process.
Part I is among my favorites because each of the five chapters build upon each other to provide a clearly defined map for defining and implementing change strategies. Part II's three chapters drill down into the mechanics of processes and how they fit within the context of a change management strategy. I especially like chapter 7, which covers gap analysis and a framework with which to identify, define and understand business processes at a level that allows you to see the dependencies and impacts of proposed changes. I also like chapter 8, which links IT strategic planning to enterprise processes. This is a major gap that I find in one consulting engagement after another and the information in this chapter will provide a clear--if briefly described--approach to closing that gap.
More advanced process management topics are covered in Part III, are each of the five chapters can be read as standalone papers. My favorite was "The New Waves of Business Process Redesign and IT in Demand/Supply Chain Management", which reflects professional interests. Other chapters that are equally valuable cover process innovation, reengineering effectiveness and business process impact case studies.
The final four chapters that comprise Part IV are predictions about the nature of IT and services in this century. Each are interesting and will contain ideas that can be incorporated into current projects or future plans.
Overall this book is invaluable because it provides the points of view of a large number of academic and industry experts, and all of the material can be put into practice.
Book Description
This book heralds a breakthrough that redefines competitive advantage for the next fifty years. Don't bridge the business-IT divide: Obliterate it! The book is the first authoritative analysis of how third-wave business process management (BPM) changes everything in business and what it portends. While the vision of process management is not new, existing theories and systems have not been able to cope with the reality of business processes --until now. This book describes a radical, simplifying shift in process thinking and technology that utterly transforms today's information systems and reduces the lag between management intent and execution.
A process-managed enterprise makes agile course corrections, embeds Six Sigma quality and reduces cumulative costs across the value chain. It pursues strategic initiatives with confidence, including mergers, consolidation, alliances, acquisitions, outsourcing and global expansion. Process management is the only way to achieve these objectives with transparency, management control and accountability. The process-managed enterprise grasps control of business processes and communicates with a universal process language that enables partners to execute on shared vision --to understand each other's operations in detail, jointly design processes and manage the entire lifecycle of their business improvement initiatives.
Process management is not another form of automation, a new killer-app or a fashionable new management theory. With the third-wave BPM breakthrough and its solid mathematical underpinnings, business processes can now be unhindered by the constraints of existing IT systems. Short on stories and long on insight and practical information, this book will help your business become the company of the future, the real-time enterprise, the fully digitized corporation --the process-managed enterprise. The book also offers continually updated information and a dialog with the authors at its Web site.
Customer Reviews:
This book shows the way.......2006-07-26
This book clearly outlines how process management has matured well beyond the reengineering phase and is blending with automation and quality management.
This book showed the way how Six Sigma is part of BPM and how BPM and SOA merge. It clearly relates technology and business opportunities. I be interested in an update, especially in relation to Peter Fingar's GREAT new book: Extreme Competition.
The Third Wave and Extreme Competition is a must read for every manager and MBA student.
THIS BOOK DOES NOT GET FULL STAR RATING AS IT LACKS CLEAR STEPS ON HOW TO MAKE THIS ACTUALLY HAPPEN
Business Process Management - The Third Wave.......2006-04-05
This book can be summed up quote from page 70 of the text: "long on talk and short on results." I was very disappointed with the investment of any money in this hyped book. The authors ramble on and on and give little but their long winded examples of what they think the third wave is. My advice is to read the introduction and don't waste your time with the rest of the book.
Get it, read it, buy it if ..........2005-07-27
you want to improve business processes.
History of business process management and beyond.......2005-05-19
I run a business in Maine, USA, and while I have no knowledge of BPM or workflow in a business context, this book helped me a great deal. I don't know if BPM is an important as the authors state, but it did present the past, present and future of a simple idea, improving business by improving business processes. I can well imagine new BPM and workflow systems helping enormously. But what I liked most of all was the explanations of how process has been a thread throughout business, from the 1920s to today, through the quality and reengineering movements. I heard about this book on the grapevine like a lot of management books. I run an operation, and don't have time for theory, but this book put a lot of what happens in my IT department into context. I like the idea of people being in charge of the processes that run on engines maintained by IT folks.
Ahead of its time.......2005-05-19
Its well known that people in business who tout business processes can come unstuck when they encounter people who don't believe in process improvement. I am a process improvement director in a fast moving consumer goods company. Process works. But I have an awful job convincing some of my colleagues. This book tells the story, and was way ahead of its time when first published. Now the case studies are coming in (as reported by Gartner et al) and anyone doubting this book is going to eat humble pie. BPM works.
Book Description
This is a *different* book on change management. Using commonsense and practical advice tested in their work with hundreds of organizations, the authors walk the reader through clear guidelines and checklists to implement change that works.
Readers will develop a change management strategy
that starts by diagnosing the current culture and organization, then prepares for change carefully, addresses resistance to change, develops the change strategy, measures results, builds momentum for further change, and prevents deterioration and reversion.
The authors then apply their framework to two areas that are major targets for change management: implementing new technology and systems and implementing successful e-business strategies. Included throughout are real-world examples from a number of industries and government.
* This method has been used successfully in over 70 organizations in over 20 countries.
* Commonsense and jargon-free approach focuses on the realities of implementing change in real world
* Most of the book deals with getting the change established, measurement, and practical ways to sustain the change long-term
Customer Reviews:
Solid path through a political minefield.......2004-06-20
Changing IT is akin to herding cats because as a whole there is a legacy mindset at one end of the spectrum, and lack of discipline at the other. This book provides a workable approach to changing the culture and effecting real change.
As in their other books the authors take a project-oriented approach to the goals and objectives. Where other books that attempt to address this subject are focused on solely human factors and considerations, this one does that, but gives a structured approach as well. The set milestones and wealth of associated checklists are what set this book apart from others, and are the means of systematically changing IT in an effective manner.
To be sure, human factors are taken into consideration - the authors show a keen understanding of, and give advice for dealing with, organizational dynamics, politics and resistance to change. This is an essential set of knowledge and skill factors without which change cannot be accomplished.
The keys to the approach given in this book, though, are in the chapters dealing with defining your goals and developing an overall strategy, then selecting the approach that is most suitable for your organization. The project-oriented aspects are covered in chapters dealing with characterizing "as-is" tasks, planning, and working towards the long-term objectives. The approach also includes a viable measurement strategy with which to ascertain results, and advice on how to build enthusiasm and support - instead of resistance - as the change initiative is being implemented. A key chapter is "Prevent Reversion and Fallback", which all too frequently happens in the real world. By recognizing this particular risk in change and addressing how to prevent it the authors provide sound advice to avoid a major pitfall.
Overall this is an excellent book by two authors who I hold in high regard. I also recommend reading "RoadMap: How to understand, diagnose, and fix your organization" (ISBN 0964163527) in conjunction with this book because it contains information that will help you select and develop an optimum overall strategy for an IT organization that is customer-focused and efficiently run.
Average customer rating:
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Time to take control: The impact of change on corporate computer systems
Tony Johnson
Manufacturer: Butterworth-Heinemann
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ASIN: 0750698632 |
Book Description
Time to Take Control provides reasonable and effective guidelines for successfully using computers to improve the workplace. This is a perfect book for anyone who wants to increase the productivity and flexibility of their business.
The author maintains an Internet Web site, designed as a forum and bulletin for the latest papers and research on the subject as it develops.
Explores the role of computers in corporate change.
Provides guidelines for those wishing to realign corporate computer systems to a new level of flexibility as change becomes a way of life.
Shows how these guidelines are pragmatic and proven.
Book Description
If one thing catches the eye in almost all literature about (re)designing or (re)engineering of enterprises, it is the lack of a well-founded theory about their construction and operation. Often even the most basic notions like "action" or "process" are not precisely defined. Next, in order to master the diversity and the complexity of contemporary enterprises, theories are needed that separate the stable essence of an enterprise from the variable way in which it is realized and implemented. Such a theory and a matching methodology, which has passed the test of practical experience, constitute the contents of this book. The enterprise ontology, as developed by Dietz, is the starting point for profoundly understanding the organization of an enterprise and subsequently for analyzing, (re)designing, and (re)engineering it. The approach covers numerous issues in an integrated way: business processes, in- and outsourcing, information systems, management control, staffing etc. Researchers and students in enterprise engineering or related fields will discover in this book a revolutionary new way of thinking about business and organization. In addition, it provides managers, business analysts, and enterprise information system designers for the first time with a solid and integrated insight into their daily work.
Book Description
This is the second edition of the book, identical in all respects to the first but with the addition of a single page detailing the six intelligence and counterintelligence failures that allowed the 9/11 attacks to occur. This book is about the reinvention of national, defense and business intelligence within the larger context of an open world--a world where "Evil Empires" and the Berlin Wall have fallen--but also a world where transportation, power, financial, and communications infrastructures are so open as to dramatically increase the vulnerability of America to trans-continental epidemics, anonymous information terrorism, and nation-wide power black-outs and financial melt-downs. As the world enters the Information Century, and simultaneously confronts the fragmentation of many nation-states and the emergence of widespread ethnic, tribal and criminal gang terrorism and confrontation, no topic can be more important to federal, state, and local governments--and to international, national, and local businesses than the topic of "intelligence". Thankfully, there are many positive lessons and methods to be drawn from the U.S. Intelligence Community, and there are a wealth of open sources and services that can be drawn upon to make both government and business "smarter" about their environment, their customers, and their competitors. This book is a primer on the role of intelligence qua sources, methods, and community at the dawn of the 21st century.
Customer Reviews:
Intelligence Future Shock.......2007-07-31
Most current and objective risk assessments indicate that the risk environment faced by the U.S. during the Cold War has drastically changed. The risk of conventional war with peer nation states has been greatly reduced while the risk of asymmetrical war by non-state actors has greatly increased. Further because of the dynamics of the globalization, regional instability, failed states, pandemics, poverty, and immigration all have become serious risks to U.S. National Security. This new risk environment clearly needs a new carefully crafted National Security Strategy based among other things on timely and accurate strategic intelligence.
Which brings us to this altogether remarkable book by Robert David Steele. In spite of, or perhaps because of, the many recent efforts at reform the U.S. Intelligence System remains culturally moribund. Steele offers a rather detailed plan to rebuild this system into an open, flexible, and relevant source of knowledge about the threats and risks faced by the U.S. in the 21st Century. It is necessary not just to read this book, but to think carefully about what Steele is proposing. For example, this reviewer had to really contemplate such strange concepts as a "Global Knowledge Foundation" and "University of the Republic", before fully understanding how such institutions are vitally important to the sort of Intelligence System that Steele is advocating.
Now Steele has written a number of books that offer innovative, if radical, ideas about reforming intelligence, but this is the only one of his books that provides sufficient details to understand how he really would like to transform the U.S. Intelligence System into a system capable of dealing with both military and non-military threats and risks to U.S. security. The opportunities and risks of the phenomenon called "Globalization" are fluid and often elusive. It will take an intelligence system such as the one Steele is advocating to provide the knowledge needed to formulate an effective National security Strategy to deal with both the opportunities and risks.
This book is not an easy read. Readers need to be pro-active in critically thinking about what Steele presents. This effort will be rewarded with new and original insights on the state of U.S. security. More to the point Steele will provide the reader with a clear and unique understanding of the often arcane world of intelligence.
Steele exposes the failure of the cult of secrecy.......2003-08-03
Robert Steele is the one man crusade for the importance of open source intel. This and his more recent New Intelligence tell and show why open source intel is the most useful means of understanding the world around us and at the same time maintaining our personal liberties. To him each citizen should be running their own open source collection in in the areas of their personal interest. Read both of these books. Buy both of these books. Then go to the OSS convention in Washington. You'll quickly see how muth the professionals think of him.
relevant to DC sniper case.......2002-11-09
For over a decade, Steele has been trying to draw attention to the fact that intelligence needs in the post-Cold-War era require different strategy, organization and tactics. This book is a useful summary of his views.
One point of emphasis is "open source" intelligence--the information that is available from sources outside of the secret intelligence community. Steele argues that the institutional secretiveness of the FBI and CIA is a hindrance rather than a help.
Another point of emphasis is language translation. A further point of emphasis is the fact that threats no longer exclusively take the form of powerful nation-states. I wish that the book focused more specifically on Islamic terrorism, since the other potential threats seem more remote at the moment.
Yet another point of emphasis is database integration. Writing this review in the aftermath of the DC sniper investigation, this seems to be an important point. Before the suspects drove to Maryland, they were involved in a murder in Alabama at which one of them left a fingerprint. Had the Alabama police been able to access a national database, they would have been able to identify the murderer and perhaps apprehend him. Instead, the fingerprint was matched only after a dozen more murders and after the suspects themselves told police to connect the dots to Alabama.
Lack of database integration kills.
Nice contents, ugly packaging........2002-07-20
As a book, it's rather ugly. The pages are obviously printed out by an inkjet printer or something (you can actually see some jaggies in the font), and the index is created by MSWord indexing menu, which has multiple entries of the same item, and the way he indexes whole phrases makes it very hard to look up.
It's contents are extremely repetitive. You'll see the same ideas and examples expressed over and over and over and over again, in almost exact same wording. With proper editing, this book would have become 1/3 the volume that it is. The ideas are interesting, although some part, like his suggenstion that the US government should engage in industrial spying, seems questionable. Also, when he uses the word "Open Source", it's not the open source that the people in the software community is used to, so be careful. But it's a book worth skimming through.
9/11 is for intelligence what Sputnik was for science.......2001-12-12
This book, the second edition, is an exact copy of the first edition with two changes: the publisher, and a new one-page Publisher's Foreword that itemizes the six intelligence and counterintelligence failures that allowed 9/11 to happen.
9/11 is for intelligence what Sputnik was for science. The across-the-board failure of clandestine intelligence (overseas), counterintelligence (at home) and our generally mediocre understanding of the real world (since we lack a properly funded, language-qualified foreign or diplomatic service), all contributed equally.
Henry Kissinger is absolutely right when he laments the lack of any serious consideration of foreign policy in recent presidential and congressional elections, and that is what 9/11 must change--this book is intended to be useful to citizens as well as government and business intelligence professionals. It lays out with great precision (see the index) both $11.6 billion dollars (out of $30 billion a year) in potential savings that could be applied to the new craft of intelligence, and it recommends with great precision all that should be in a new National Security Act of 2002.
Intelligence in the 21st Century is too important to be relegated to a chaotic cluster of secret government agencies. It is time for all citizens to take an interest in intelligence, to migrate the proven process of intelligence (there is a great deal that is good about the U.S. intelligence community) into the business sector as well as over to the sovereign states and their localities, and to demand of our elected representatives a proper accounting for the failure, and measures to prevent future failures.
Less than 2% of the $30 billion a year intelligence has been spent on terrorism--the policy and intelligence leadership over several administrations have given lip-service to the war on terrorism--and there will be no improvements, no matter how much money we pour into intelligence and counterintelligence, unless we change the fundamentals--who's in charge, how we do it, who we do it with, and how seriously we take our responsibilities for protecting America.
Amazon.com
You don't have to look far to see that technology is driving today's economy. Turn on CNBC, open The Economist, scan the Wall Street Journal--you'll find that technology is the prime force creating growth in almost every industry. In Unleashing the Killer App, authors Larry Downes and Chunka Mui look at the dynamics of technological change and its potential to create "killer apps." The authors describe a killer app as a product or service that "wind up displacing unrelated older offerings, destroying and re-creating industries far from their immediate use, and throwing into disarray the complex relationships between business partners, competitors, customers, and regulators of markets." Examples of killer apps throughout history include the Welsh longbow, the pulley, the compass, moveable type, and the Apple Macintosh. And today, with our increasingly networked economy (for example, the World Wide Web), killer apps are appearing all around us.
Downes and Mui argue that the dominant trend behind the proliferation of killer apps is a combination of Moore's Law, which states that the processing power of the CPU doubles every 18 months, and Metcalfe's Law, which observes that the value of a network increases dramatically with each node that's added to it. These two laws are fundamentally changing how businesses interact with each other and with their customers. To exploit these changes, the authors outline 12 points for designing a digital strategy to help you identify and create killer apps in your own organization. The book includes dozens of examples of how killer apps were discovered and implemented.
Unleashing the Killer App provides an excellent framework for rethinking the nature of business in today's wired economy. No matter the size of your company or what it does--health care, publishing, or fast food--there's probably a killer app lurking somewhere. This book will help you find it. Highly recommended. --Harry C. Edwards
Book Description
Now in Paperback--A Business Week Bestseller! Over 100,000 hardcover copies sold!
When technologies, products, and services converge in radical, creative new ways, a killer app can emerge--a new application so powerful that it transforms industries, redefines markets, and annihilates the competition. Companies large and are swiftly attempting to remake themselves into organizations that nurture killer apps and successfully translate their digital strategy into market dominance.
With
Unleashing the Killer App, Downes and Mui offer a progressive guide to transforming your company into a place where killer apps are born. Drawing from their experience and research with leading global businesses, the authors:
Identify the twelve fundamental design principles for building killer apps
Illustrate these principles with classic stories from history and examples from a wide range of industries that have successfully developed killer apps
Examine the economic consequences of the diminishing transaction costs in cyberspace
Describe how to integrate digital strategy into an organization's planning process to create new markets, form new customer relationships, and change the product line.
Unleashing the Killer App provides the tools, the techniques, and the proof that you need to incubate--perhaps even release--the killer app within your organization. Also available in hardcover; ISBN 087584801X, $24.95.
Customer Reviews:
Ok...but no hurrahs here.........2007-01-07
I thought that this book would be a little more than what it ended up being. I don't recall it keeping my attention for long, as I bought it well over a year ago.
I think that the Blue Ocean Strategy book is what this book should have been and is a much better read regarding development for market segment domination.
Still useful, but discretion needed.......2006-11-13
Being written few years before the internet bubble burst, this books shares the optimism and the hype common in those days - along with belief in a revolution in which everything would change, when those awaken would prosper, an those unprepared would die.
Exaggerations aside, it describes some very interesting key concepts, some very well known by the average public (Moore's law), others not so well (Metcalfe's law) and others yet known mostly by economists only (transaction costs and they relation to corporate sizes), combines them and develops some ideas from them. You can disagree to the conclusions, and certainly some rosy predictions the book made were proved wrong, but many clever insights make worth the reading.
Where the knowledge economy meets Coasian Economics.......2006-01-27
A Killer App is an invention, product or service that changes the world dramatically and quickly. Today, killer applications seem to be coming at a remarkable rate, threatening to overwhelm and destroy entrenched companies in long-standing industries. You must learn how to design Killer Apps in your company, say the authors, and you must have the courage to implement them, even if they may destroy your current products and services.
The authors have outlined twelve principles of Killer App design:
Reshaping the Landscape
1. Outsource to the customer. The customer is the best customer service representative and the best product developer.
2. Cannabalize your markets, before your competitors do it for you. The Killer Apps your company designs may threaten your existing products and services. You must implement them before your competitors make you irrelevant.
3. Treat each customer as a market segment of one. Technology makes it possible to create a customer offering that is unique, every time.
4. Create communities of value. The internet creates communities of like-minded people. This creates an opportunity for effective, targeting marketing.
Building New Connections
5. Replace rude interfaces with learning interfaces.
6. Ensure continuity for the customer, not yourself.
7. Give away as much information as you can. Balance the value of proprietary value against the potential of business partners to add value by using it.
8. Structure every transaction as a joint venture. The better you are at forming, executing and completing joint ventures, the better positioned you will be to exploit new opportunities.
Redefining the Interior
9. Treat your assets as liabilities. The true value in your organization is its information, not its possessions.
10. Destroy your value chain, before your competitors do it for you.
11. Manage innovation as a portfolio of options. Redefine your risk assessment outside of the traditional ROI model.
12. Hire the children.
Are you on the bench or the playing field?.......2005-04-27
"Are you going to be part of creating the future or are you just going to be a spectator - the choice is yours." - Michael A. Davis
According to Bill Gates "Going digital will put you on the leading edge of a shock wave of change." Maybe you missed the dot-com boom. Are you going to miss the Wireless boom - which will change the world a thousand times over. The time is now to seize opportunity and the "Killer App" will help you do it.
What exactly is a killer app?
"Killer App - a new application so powerful that it transforms industries, redefines markets, and annihilates the competition." Not just a recent digital age phenomenon; inventions like the compass, moveable type, eyeglasses, the steam engine, and lightbulbs have impacted society in a huge way. Downes and Mui did a fantastic job of describing the characteristics of true killer apps and have aptly illustrated the degree of impact they can have on society.
You certainly don't have to look far to see that technology, particularly the Internet, is driving today's economy. Turn on CNBC, read Business Week or browse the Wall Street Journal - you'll find that technology is the prime force creating growth in almost every industry.
Downes and Mui argue that the dominant trend behind the proliferation of killer apps is a combination of Moore's Law (CPU processing power doubles every 18 months) and Metcalfe's Law (network value increases dramatically with each additional user.) These two laws are fundamentally changing how businesses interact with each other and with their customers. Owing to the today's rapidly changing business environment, business owners will inevitably lose out to competition if they're not utilizing the latest technology.
Unleashing the Killer App is divided into three parts:
Digital Strategy
Designing the Killer App
Unleashing the Killer App
In Part I, there is a brief discussion of one "killer app" in the Middle Ages, the stirrup, which added mounted cavalry to the battle equation. The "lowly stirrup" played a singular role in rearranging the political, social, and economic structure of medieval Europe.
In Part II, what they refer to as "a few rules of thumb." They suggest three stages of "killer app" design and carefully explain each. They identify 12 specific principles on which to base the design process.
In Part III, they shift their attention to "Unleashing the Killer App" and correctly stress the importance of communication, one which "speaks with the language of ideas, scenarios, options, and what-ifs."
Think of and measure your daily operations as a series of unique transactions. Then focus on how these transaction costs can approach zero. With technology allowing for greater interactivity, the ability exists to create online communities where people can share in ways never imagined.
Unleashing the Killer App is an awesome book that will certainly make you think about ways to ride the waves of technological change surrounding us. With that said, it is prudent to consider both traditional and digital strategy, particularly in light of the Dot Com Bust, when developing strategic plans. Two interesting concepts are illustrated in Table 3.1 "Strategic Planning vs Digital Strategy," p. 59 and Figure 3.1 "The New Forces," p. 65.
Michael Davis, President - Brencom Strategic Business Consulting
This I/T technologist now thinks digital.......2005-02-05
For technologists that have worked in the I/T field for twenty years or more, it is easy to find ourselves reacting poorly to technology changes and business opportunities due to a lack of clear understanding of how digital strategies are affecting business economics, lifestyles, and our jobs. "Unleasing the Killer App" is applicable to technologists, managers and business analysts alike; but reading it from the viewpoint of a technologist, it forced me to take an introspective look at how I provide service to my clients using the paradigm of "digital strategies for market dominance" as presented by the authors.
Part one introduces generation defining technologies, i.e. "Killer Apps", the new economics, and the "digital strategy". The theories of Gordon Moore (Moore's Law), Robert Metcalfe (Metcalfe's Law) and Ronald Coase (economist) are used by the authors to describe the "Law of Diminishing Firms". In short, my take on the matter is that businesses must create "flat" decentralized management support organizations to reduce transaction costs or risk being diminished; this includes I/T service organizations.
Part two presents twelve principles of "Killer App Design". Of major significance to technologists is the idea to "outsource to the customer". What better way to drive down the cost of transactions than to design systems that allow the customer to bypass customer representatives entirely. Another significant principle is to "give away as much information as you can" to open up interfaces that will create new markets and opportunities for integration. I believe one of the failures of I/T service organizations has been the propensity to create internal (closed system) applications, fostering proliferations of organizational silos.
Part three deals with implementing the "Killer App-digital strategy". I/T organizations are struggling to balance investments between new technology projects and growing operating costs. In almost all companies, those responsible for operations and maintenance are also responsible for strategizing new technology directions. As discussed in chapter 8, managing innovation requires observing technology trends and implementing practices that drive change based on the new technology. The author states, "Succeeding at these early stages of digital strategy development requires substantial changes to the organization" (p. 182). My perception is that I/T organizations should consider shifting experienced technology specialists from the operations areas into the strategic technology areas to stay ahead of the technology wave or risk being swept away by it.
Although "Unleashing the Killer App" was written in 1998, the principles are still applicable today. It is a must read for any technologist that cannot determine whether his I/T service organization is simply a provider of technology solutions designed to meet business requirements or an I/T organization that provides technology solutions that drive the business.
Books:
- Writing That Works: Communicating Effectively on the Job
- Analysis of Financial Time Series, 2nd Edition (Wiley Series in Probability and Statistics)
- Beyond E-Learning: Approaches and Technologies to Enhance Organizational Knowledge, Learning, and Performance
- Building Storage Networks
- Buy Low, Sell High, Collect Early and Pay Late: The Manager's Guide to Financial Survival
- C.A.R.E. Packages for the Workplace: Dozens of Little Things You Can Do To Regenerate Spirit At Work
- Case Studies in Information Technology Ethics (2nd Edition)
- CCNP Video Mentor
- "China and the New World Order: How Entrepreneurship,Globalization, and Borderless Business Are Reshaping China and the World"
- Cisco ASA and PIX Firewall Handbook
Books Index
Books Home
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- Wallace Stevens : Collected Poetry and Prose
- The Simon & Schuster Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs and Prehistoric Creatures: A Visual Who's Who of
- Mac OS X: The Missing Manual, Panther Edition
- Quantitative Business Valuation: A Mathematical Approach for Today's Professionals
- The Last Will and Testament of Senhor da Silva Araujo
