Product Description

How would you feel if you visited your financial planner's office and saw past-due credit card notices on their desk? Would you trust an auto mechanic whose car backfires and produces black smoke? A dentist with bad teeth? A banker in shabby clothes? An interior designer whose offices are a shambles?

This is the position of the IT capability in many large organizations. The designated custodian of critical business processes and data does not manage its own processes and data reliably. A response in the form of Enterprise Resource Planning for Information Technology is emerging from major companies, research firms, and vendors; they are labeling these offerings "ERP for IT," "IT Resource Planning," and related terms.

This groundbreaking, practitioner-authored book provides an independent examination of and response to these developments. An analysis of the large scale IT capability, with specific attention to business processes, structured data, and enabling systems, it is essentially a comprehensive systems architecture, not for the business capabilities IT supports, but for IT itself.

Features
The book presents on-the-ground coverage of enabling IT governance in architectural detail, which you can use to define a strategy and start executing. It fills the gap between high-level guidance on IT governance, and detailed discussions about specific vendor technologies. It is a next-step book that answers the question: OK, we need to improve the way we run IT - now what? It does this through:

* A unique value chain approach to integrating the COBIT, ITIL, and CMM frameworks into a coherent, unified whole
* A field-tested, detailed conceptual information model with definitions and usage scenarios, mapped to both the process and system architectures
* Analysis of current system types in the IT governance and enablement domains: integration opportunities, challenges, and evolutionary trends
* Patterns for integrating the process, data, and systems views to support specific problems of IT management.
* Specific attention throughout to issues of building a business case and real-world implementation.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Charles Betz is a Senior Enterprise Architect, and chief architect for IT Service Management strategy for a US-based Fortune 50 enterprise.

He has held consultant and architect positions for Best Buy, Target, and Accenture, specializing in metadata, configuration management, IT governance, enterprise application integration, and ERP systems. He holds a summa B.A. in Political Science and a Master of Science in Software Engineering, both from the University of Minnesota. Charlie is an active member of the professional community, belonging to the IT Service Management Forum, IEEE, ACM, and Data Management Association (DAMA). He presents frequently both locally and nationally to professional associations and conferences.

He is the sole author of the popular www.erp4it.com weblog.

Are you in the thick of sorting out how to make ITIL and COBIT work, and trying to make sense of the dozens of vendors clamoring to help?

Are you puzzled over how the ITIL vision for Change Management fits into the reality of your current processes? And how it relates to Enterprise Architecture and Portfolio Management?

Is the concept of configuration management and the CMDB giving off more heat than light for you? How can you make it real?

Have you found yourself wondering whether you really need an IT portfolio management tool, an enterprise architecture repository, a metadata repository, a service management tool, and a configuration management database (CMDB)? And if you have them, are you wondering if they should be related somehow?

The book presents on-the-ground coverage of enabling IT governance in architectural detail, which you can use to define a strategy and start executing. It fills the gap between high-level guidance on IT governance, and detailed discussions about specific vendor technologies. It is a next-step book that answers the question: OK, we need to improve the way we run IT - now what? It does this through:

* A unique value chain approach to integrating the COBIT, ITIL, and CMM frameworks into a coherent, unified whole

* A field-tested, detailed conceptual information model with definitions and usage scenarios, mapped to both the process and system architectures

* Analysis of current system types in the IT governance and enablement domains: integration opportunities, challenges, and evolutionary trends

* Patterns for integrating the process, data, and systems views to support specific problems of IT management.

* Specific attention throughout to issues of building a business case and real-world implementation.

Among the specific topics addressed are:

* ITIL recommendations from a practical systems implementation point of view
* Configuration management: challenges, misconceptions, myths, and realities. Business justification for. Support for compliance and regulatory goals.
* Interrelationships between IT portfolio planning, solutions development, and IT operations
* The relationship between application development and hosting (infrastructure) organizations
* Business intelligence, performance management, and metrics for the IT capability itself
* Detailed, actionable clarification of the vague concept of "IT Service" and all its permutations and implications
* IT portfolio degradation through complexity
* Detailed models of IT information
* The various classes of systems used internally by large scale IT organizations
* The concept of "repository" and its relationship to the Configuration Management Database (CMDB)
* Process roles and responsibilities. Closed-loop, self-reinforcing processes for IT data management.
* Application as critical control point and portfolio entry. Clarifying relationship between "application" and "IT service." Application portfolio management: process, data structures, and systems.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #341682 in Books
• Published on: 2006-11-20
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 424 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780123705938
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Review
"In most companies IT has "evolved"-perhaps it's time to consider "intelligent design." This is the value of Charlie's book. Charlie describes a process-based approach coupled with data modeling and metadata concepts, which translate in turn to distributed system architectures: a type of three-legged stool for the purpose of putting more intent into ITSM infrastructure design. I consider him one of the foremost thinkers in the area. He has certainly opened my eyes to the wonders of it all." - Ken Wendle, FISM, ITSM Solution Lead, Hewlett Packard, Co-founder and Past President, itSMF, USA

"Charles Betz' work is innovative and paradigm-shifting, but more importantly he is the first person to get below the hype of running 'IT Like a Business' and provide actionable ideas for managing information technology business processes more effectively and efficiently. This is a must read for anyone charged with enterprise architecting, IT planning, and IT governance and management in general." - David Buckholtz, Vice-President, Enterprise Architecture; Sony Pictures Entertainment

"Betz tells us that the cobbler has been ignoring his children, but in fact the average Fortune 500 executive probably believes that IT management is already a science: i.e., the emperor has no clothes! In a succinct yet detailed fashion, Betz clothes & shods the royal progeny with a clear and concise approach to IT management that leverages the enterprise resource planning and value chain integration notions. How do enterprise and business process modeling, performance metrics, SOA and BPMN, business planning and the COBIT & ITIL frameworks contribute to better, cheaper and faster IT systems and change that matches the business' pace? Betz shows how to leverage what's available, and run IT like a business. This book is destined to sit on the shelf of every IT professional who is tired of patching software and fighting fires, and prefers to offer a businesslike service to the business he serves." - Richard Mark Soley, Ph.D., Chairman and CEO, Object Management Group, Inc.

"Charles Betz's new book is a welcomed look at IT governance. By breaking down the different functional areas of IT, he has created a roadmap to the highest levels of maturity. Serious technology professionals will find this resource extremely valuable in planning, executing, and reviewing their infrastructure environment. Making Shoes for the Cobbler's Children is critical reading for anyone who envisions a new world of technology governance. This book unveils a great model that managers and executives can use to maximize their technology investment. It develops an action plan for managing all elements of the technology environments as a business which is long overdue." - R. Todd Stephens, Ph.D., BellSouth Corporation

"Making Shoes for the Cobbler's Children will help you implement a successful IT governance program by giving you a firm foundation in current IT governance essentials. Betz's practical patterns, models, and processes will jumpstart your IT governance planning and analysis initiatives, leading to increased business confidence in IT's overall effectiveness and ability to deliver." - aren Lopez, Principal Consultant, InfoAdvisors, Inc.

" For decades, the management of Information Technology has been driven by more art than science. Charlie's broad view of the IT Value Chain and his use of design patterns for IT processes gives the reader clear examples of how to get started with their own journey toward IT excellence. His clear passion for the subject matter makes for an easy read." - Dennis Gaughan, Research Director, AMR Research

From the Back Cover
How would you feel if you visited your financial planner's office and saw past-due credit card notices on their desk? Would you trust an auto mechanic whose car backfires and produces black smoke? A dentist with bad teeth? A banker in shabby clothes? An interior designer whose offices are a shambles?

This is the position of the IT capability in many large organizations. The designated custodian of critical business processes and data does not manage its own processes and data reliably. A response in the form of Enterprise Resource Planning for Information Technology is emerging from major companies, research firms, and vendors; they are labeling these offerings "ERP for IT," "IT Resource Planning," and related terms.

This groundbreaking, practitioner-authored book provides an independent examination of and response to these developments. An analysis of the large scale IT capability, with specific attention to business processes, structured data, and enabling systems, it is essentially a comprehensive systems architecture, not for the business capabilities IT supports, but for IT itself.

Features
The book presents on-the-ground coverage of enabling IT governance in architectural detail, which you can use to define a strategy and start executing. It fills the gap between high-level guidance on IT governance, and detailed discussions about specific vendor technologies. It is a next-step book that answers the question: OK, we need to improve the way we run IT - now what? It does this through:

* A unique value chain approach to integrating the COBIT, ITIL, and CMM frameworks into a coherent, unified whole
* A field-tested, detailed conceptual information model with definitions and usage scenarios, mapped to both the process and system architectures
* Analysis of current system types in the IT governance and enablement domains: integration opportunities, challenges, and evolutionary trends
* Patterns for integrating the process, data, and systems views to support specific problems of IT management.
* Specific attention throughout to issues of building a business case and real-world implementation.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Charles Betz is a Senior Enterprise Architect, and chief architect for IT Service Management strategy for a US-based Fortune 50 enterprise.

He has held consultant and architect positions for Best Buy, Target, and Accenture, specializing in metadata, configuration management, IT governance, enterprise application integration, and ERP systems. He holds a summa B.A. in Political Science and a Master of Science in Software Engineering, both from the University of Minnesota. Charlie is an active member of the professional community, belonging to the IT Service Management Forum, IEEE, ACM, and Data Management Association (DAMA). He presents frequently both locally and nationally to professional associations and conferences.

He is the sole author of the popular www.erp4it.com weblog.

About the Author
Charles Betz is a Senior Enterprise Architect, and chief architect for IT Service Management strategy for a US-based Fortune 50 enterprise. Previously, he was the head of Enterprise Repository Services for the specialty electronics retailer Best Buy. He has held architect positions for Best Buy, Target, and Accenture, specializing in metadata, configuration management, and IT governance. He holds a summa B.A. in Political Science and a Master of Science in Software Engineering, both from the University of Minnesota. He is an active member of the professional community, belonging to the IT Service Management Forum, IEEE, ACM, and Data Management Association (DAMA). He presents frequently both locally and nationally to professional associations and conferences.

Customer Reviews

Finally! A book on managing IT, *using* IT!
A little introduction is in order - I've led ERP, data warehouse, product data management and infrastructure tool (Tivoli, BMC, etc.) implementations at fortune 500 and Global 100 companies. I've also spent a good portion of my career leading software development teams at small and medium sized software companies.

I can find a dozen books on the latest "software development methodology", .NET tool or java API. The challenge there is sifting through them all.

In the "managing IT" space, I've had to put up with management gurus who don't understand IT, and software developers who confuse project based IT with the management of IT assets.

To my knowledge, no book has ever covered the "management of IT" - Those things left behind by agile software development projects (great methodology for new stuff, btw) so cogently and so earnestly. There's no "philosphocal" smoke, and axes being ground here... It's just plain spoken common sense that you've thought about if you've had to manage large, in place systems, but never taken the time to articulate.

This book puts to words what thousands of IT Directors, managers and CIO's wish they had time to put to words. Check out the table of contents - What's in it is actually covered, and covered well... FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER!

If you're responsible for a large IT budget, you can't afford to *not* read this book.

A understandable roadmap for implementing
As a recent inductee into enterprise technology architecture from the silos of network and server deployment, I was looking for a resource to serve as both a overall view of the IT organisation structure, and as a vision of making the IT organisation more useful to their enterprise customers.

From my perspective this book was great value, simply by informing me what I didn't know I didn't know.

Data modellers love to reduce their enterprise's line of business to a series of normalised entities; this book does a similar job for the IT business enterprise itself.

I see this book as being useful to people in at least the following scenarios:

* Those who are looking to advance their technology career into a more holistic view across technologies and indeed into understanding their customer's business.

* Those who wish to see how the various IT-related standards fit together inside the overall value-chain model. For example, it becomes clear that ITIL is not the be-all and end-all of the IT business.

* Those who are trying to convince their bosses and "technology silo" management as to the specific benefits of opening up those silos. The author's credibility is enhanced by calling out the major problems in the siloed approach, which completely resonated with my previous experience in silos (e.g. the chucking "over the wall" of new applications to operations, leaving a mess for operations to clean up). Furthermore, the author lays out a credible alternative based on fostering collaboration and the vocabulary upon which the various silos can collaborate.

* Those who are already-enlightened leaders can use this book as a blueprint or roadmap for future IT projects and operations - buying several copies of this book is more scalable than the leaders having to disseminate this vision in their own words.

* Those who are Enterprise Architects will become enlightened that indeed the IT group in their line-of-business enterprise can actually be considered an enterprise in their own right. This book gives plenty of ideas for building that IT enterprise architecture.

* Those who are trying to retain talent can do no worse to try-on the concepts presentented in their book. If the IT group has more automated business processes (as opposed to home-grown paper based systems) then your IT talent will escape a lot of the caveman work that seems to still hang around IT groups. With less caveman work, your IT professionals have more time to contemplate the bigger picture and work on higher value activities, surely leading to better morale.

* Those who believe in the "share before buy before build" approach can at least "buy" this IT strategy before "building" their own wheel.

One star is taken off this book because it is currently only published as a paper book and not in any kind of complete electronic version (in fairness though, various topics have a presence at the author's blog at [...]). When you're trying to persuade your fellow IT professionals as to the merit of a particular argument in this book, it would have been great to just be able to snip out the relevant argument and email it to them. Also, if you start initiating projects based on the book's advice, it would have been great to have an online reference to trace your IT-business requirements back to.

That said though, if you're interested in the bigger picture around IT from someone who's been there managing enterprise IT, give this book a go. We need the messages in this book to be amplified and therefore drive IT groups to maturity.

A book that respectfully bridges the IT business divide
Whether you're on the business side and are frustrated with IT's rigidity and cost excesses. Or, you're on the IT side and are frustrated with the business' lack of understanding of the complex technical issues at hand. This book is required reading.

Charles Betz - one of the world's leading practitioners in enterprise architecture and data management - brings together in an impressively accessible volume, his knowledge and experience of; what IT is; what it can do; and why an effective IT programme is so difficult to accomplish.

Unlike other books which I've read that tend to promote "_the_ way to success", Mr. Betz instead provides us with an overview of all modern best practices, and weighs their pros and cons, as well as their motivations. In this book, you will get the skinny on: ITIL; Service Oriented Architecture; Master Data Management; Enterprise Frameforks; Metadata; Business Intelligence; Business Process Management; and other relevant topics. But don't let all these terms scare you off, if you don't understand them. Mr. Betz provides the background and motivation.

For business folk:
The days of IT being considered just another department are over. IT now permeates every aspect of business, and at every level. If you have any aspirations to change or improve your business, a certain understanding of IT is now essential. In the same way that we all need to understand the rules of the road in order to drive (and realistically get anywhere in modern society). We also need to have a basic understanding of the principles behind IT to realistically get anywhere in the modern enterprise.

For IT folk:
While technologies and standards are constantly changing, what Mr. Betz is discussing in this tome is unlikely to change for quite some time. Case-in-point: ITIL v3 has since been released. However, there is nothing in ITIL v3 that isn't already stated in this book. Put another way, Mr. Betz explains the _motivations_ behind these standards and frameworks, so that any new standards and frameworks can easily be understood, and assessed for their core value. This includes ITIL v3.