The Audit Value Factor: Making Management’s Head Turn empowers readers with a systematic method to build and maintain a value-centric internal audit organization. The book explores how to identify, quantify, and articulate value for customers. It details six critical success factors:Value propositions that link directly to customer needsFostering customer relationships using the CREATE modelTalent development using the T...

One of the key success factors for any organization is effective strategic change - to ensure adaptability and increase productivity. Despite its importance, most change management projects fail or only partly deliver on their promise, the missing link often being the conflict between boardroom strategic initiatives and the working process design of the company. Implementing Strategic Change shows that most of this conflict occurs during interfacing activity - the...

The notion of improvement permeated social and political discourse in colonial Canadian society. From agriculture to building roads and mills to defining correct habits and behaviour, Nova Scotia's improvers embraced the ideals of innovation and progress and promoted modern programs of government.Daniel Samson moves Nova Scotia and rural Canada from the colonial margins to the heart of a modernizing society, showing how the countryside functioned as a centre of change and innovatio...

About a year ago, we published the Cloud Academy primer "Shedding Light on Cloud Computing". Since then, interest in cloud computing has blossomed and I have had the opportunity to present our Cloud Academy content at cloud computing events around the world. This new book encapsulates the insights and knowledge gathered from the conversations at these events. That includes the dialogue with cloud practitioners, vendors, customers and the considerable number of cloud computing gurus this in...

Lean Software Development: An Agile ToolkitAdapting agile practices to your development organizationUncovering and eradicating waste throughout the software development lifecyclePractical techniques for every development manager, project manager, and technical leaderLean software development: applying agile principles to your organizationIn Lean Software Development

Design IT Organizations for Agility at ScaleAspiring digital businesses need overall IT agility, not just development team agility. In Agile IT Organization Design, IT management consultant and ThoughtWorks veteran Sriram Narayan shows how to infuse agility throughout your organization. Drawing on more than fifteen years’ experience working with enterprise clients in IT-intensive industries, he introduces an agile approach to “Business–IT ...

Building on their breakthrough bestsellers Lean Software Development and Implementing Lean Software Development, Mary and Tom Poppendieck’s latest book shows software leaders and team members exactly how to drive high-value change throughout a software organization—and make it stick. They go far beyond generic implementation guidelines, demonstrating exactly how to make lean work in real projects, environments, and companies.The Poppendiecks organize this book aro...

"This remarkable book combines practical advice, ready-to-use techniques, anda deep understanding of why this is the right way to develop software. I haveseen software teams transformed by the ideas in this book."--Mike Cohn, author of Agile Estimating and Planning"As a lean practitioner myself, I have loved and used their first book for years.When this second book came out, I was delighted that it was even better. If youare interested in how lean prin...

CIO BEST PRACTICESEnabling Strategic Value with Information TechnologySECOND EDITIONFor anyone who wants to achieve better returns on their IT investments, CIO Best Practices, Second Edition presents the leadership skills and competencies required of a CIO addressing comprehensive enterprise strategic frameworks to fully leverage IT resources.Filled with real-world examples of CIO success stories, the Second Edi...

Project Management the Agile Way was written for experienced project managers, architects and systems analysts who are comfortable in traditional methods of project management but now need to learn about agile methods for software projects and understand how to make agile work effectively in the enterprise. The methodologies included under the agile umbrella go by many names, such as Scrum, XP, Crystal and EVO, to name a few. Project managers will gain practical day-to-day...

Excellence doesn't just happen. It needs to be designed, and even the best designs can be improved upon.That's something that Angelo Baratta, who spent more than thirty years leading more than a hundred projects for more than fifty organizations, discovered the hard way. While most of these projects succeeded, success rates were never as high as they should have been. This, he determined, was the direct result of the design of the business processes.By mastering process des...

A close look at cloud computing's transformational role in businessCovering cloud computing from what the business leader needs to know, this book describes how IT can nimbly ramp up revenue initiatives, positively impact business operations and costs, and how this allows business leaders to shed worry about technology so they can focus on their business. It also reveals the cloud's effect on corporate organization structures, the evolution of traditional IT in the global economy, ...