The Alignment Effect: How to Get Real Business Value Out of Technology

by Faisal Hoque

Book Overview

The Alignment Effect offers managers a systematic blueprint for demanding real accountability and bottom-line business results from their IT investments. Using actual case studies, Faisal Hoque... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0130449393
• ISBN13: 9780130449399
• Release Date: January 2002
• Publisher: FT Press
• Length: 245 Pages
• Weight: 1.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.0" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

Mind the Gap. Now Bridge It. Here's How--

Faisal Hoque's The Alignment Effect brings into focus in a particularly helpful way the reasons why companies have failed to reap business value from their technology investments, and uses these reasons to frame and codify a series of steps companies can take to bring business, process and technology issues into alignment to drive business return. In the wake of the new economy crash, IT-business alignment is firmly on the map of companies' strategic concerns. Nonetheless, it's an area that has generated more strategic pronouncements than actionable ideas. The Alignment Effect goes a long way toward correcting that imbalance. The book brings together the practical and the conceptual to characterize the nature and causes of the IT-business disconnect and lay out a game plan for fixing it. This thoroughly worked-out game plan is credible in both the simplicity of its elements (business, process, technology) and the nuanced view it presents of how these elements dynamically interrelate in real-world enterprises. The book's highest-level insights--excerpts from interviews with respected industry veterans--are boxed off, with the effect of framing the more practical points of discussion without pitching them too high.As with all books in the IT-business space, The Alignment Effect is charged with walking the line between business and IT audiences. The book succeeds in this. Indeed, part of its contribution to the problem of IT-business alignment is the production of a common guidebook IT and business audiences can share and through which both audiences can understand how the disconnect looks from the other side of the enterprise. Refreshingly, The Alignment Effect brings to bear a strong feel for the problems real corporations face. Real-world experience populates the compelling frameworks that the book proposes for thinking about and fixing IT-business alignment challenges. Ultimately, the book offers a strong new angle of vision on an old but poorly conceptualized problem--and shows how this vision can be realized, step by step, issue by issue, in today's corporate environment.

Achieving Business-IT Fusion

I have used The Alignment Effect as one of three books for teaching an MBA course: Strategic Management of IT, at the Stuart Graduate School of Business, Illinois Institute of Technology. The content has been an effective means to communicate the challenges, complexities, and benefits for Business Technology Management [BTM]. This book has an important message. In this network economy, more organizations are transforming into digital enterprises to grow and prosper. The Alignment Effect specifically provides a clear approach to planning and managing the complex mosaic of enterprise strategy, business processes, and technology resources. Most nuggets are easily identifiable as separate guiding principles. Some nuggets, however, are woven into the normal flow of the text and should be emphasized to the students with less business experience. Overall, the content of this book should resonate well with MBA students. Business strategy formulation, formal modeling, risk assessment, portfolio analysis, investment justification, and designing adaptive organizations represent content from other MBA courses that can be applied to information services management. The structure of the book provides an overview, some detail with examples, and a conclusion for each of the three major sections. A mini-case, used in the three chapters on business models, business processes, and technology automation, provides a useful means for illustrating the BTM methodology. The content of this book is very readable by all students whether they have an introductory or an advanced knowledge of information systems. Prior to adopting BTM, a readiness assessment is proposed: Is your organization presently using formal modeling and scenario analyses, promoting collaborative teamwork, and sharing knowledge repositories? If yes, BTM can be successful. If not, the benefits and rationale are documented in the book to persuade your management to become a more collaborative organization. Building upon this readiness assessment, five challenges for more effective IT management are mapped to BTM activities: business model formulation, business process optimization, technology automation [application, data, network, and platform services], and IT portfolio management. After completing The Alignment Effect, the reader should understand clearly that harvesting business value from IT investments requires alignment between: (1) business and IT strategies, (2) business and IT performance metrics, (3) business and enterprise architectures, and (4)the attitudes and values of senior business and IT executives.

Bridging Business Value and Technology Solutions

I picked up this book as part of my regular effort to keep on top of industry trends. I had recently attended a META CIO Boot Camp and was interested to read what Dale Kutnick and others were saying about the link between technology and business value. The author presents several scenarios and commentary to illustrate just how his method of decision-making can yield choices that support the business. The book also reaffirms the challenges that we face daily to bridge the gap business leaders and their visions, with the practicality of technology solutions. I found this book very helpful as it took me a step further in thinking about business processes with a view from the top. While I have been successful in communicating that technology choices and implementation first require a disciplined look at business processes, Mr. Hoque's book gave me insight into possible directions available to help make business cases compelling and realistic.

Practical Guiding Principles

In "The Alignment Effect", Hoque has capture the essence of what companies of all sizes wrestle with in achieving value for their technology investment. As a CEO and former technology consultant, I would strongly suggest that people investing in technology invest in this book and understand it before spending one more dollar on technology. Once you do, the dollar you spend will be well-targeted in your organizations.Daniel G. MagniPresident/CEOBeaconVision

Refreshing Delight

Faisal's book is a very approachable look inside the enterprise. I found the many examples very helpful in understanding challenges of today's IT leaders.The book presents a many-sided view of issues facing IT, without distracting me from key points with depth or details. I was astonished by the breadth of contributors and reviewers. All this support seems too good for any book and drives skeptical people like me to dig deeper. ... The book seems solid, well-written and is enjoyable to read. I look forward to seeing more books from the author.