Thanks to 乱翻书, who translated it into Chinese and posted it on Yeeyan.com. Without his work, I think many people in China, like me, will be unable to read this book.

This books does teach me something. Well, I don’t want to talk about much on blog.

If you’re interested in this book, why not go to www.yeeyan.com and read it? Yeeyan is a good website, I like it. and I believe you will like it as well.

Well, I have to get ready for my graduate thesis now.

At first, I would take some time to read books written by Peter Weill and some other authors about the relation between business and IT. I’d like to take the relation between business and IT as my graduate thesis. I hope in this area, I can find something interesting.

overview of the book

l chapter 2: introduce the first discipline for creating the foundation for execution: the operating model and its two key dimensions—business process standardization and integration. Four different types of operating models are described: Unification, Coordination, Replication, and Diversification.

l Chapter 3: introduce the second discipline for creating the foundation for execution: the enterprise architecture. The key elements—digitized business processes, IT infrastructure, shard data, and customer interfaces—are indentified and linked in the enterprise architecture. The one-page core diagram is introduced, and comparative diagrams are developed for each of the four operating models.

l Chapter 4: the four stages of enterprise architecture maturity: business silos, standardized technology, optimized core, and business modularity.

l Chapter 5: how companies get unique business benefits at each of the four stage s of maturity by using various management practices and roles. We explain how achieving these benefits require implementing different management mechanisms at each stage to formalize organizational learning.

l Chapter 6: The third discipline for creating the foundation for execution: the IT engagement model. The IT engagement model has three ingredients; IT governance, project management, and linkages connecting the two. A good engagement model enables a company to build its foundation one project at a time.

l How outsourcing can contribute to enterprise architecture maturity but warn that outsourcing success is far from guaranteed. To improve the likelihood of success, we show how to use the operating model and enterprise architecture to determine what and when to outsource. We distinguish between three different types of outsourcing—strategic partnerships, co-sourcing alliances, and transaction relationships.

l Chapter 8: make the urgent case for increased agility in companies that must compete in a global economy.

l Chapter 9: summarizes the key ideas in the book with a review of the symptoms of an ineffective foundation for execution. We follow with a set of six steps for rethinking your foundation for execution. Then we provide ten leadership principles for building and leveraging a foundation for execution.

Asking the Right Questions

作者: Neil Browne / Stuart M. Keeley

副标题: A Guide to Critical Thinking (8th Edition)
ISBN: 9780132203043
页数: 212
定价: USD 41.20
出版社: Prentice Hall
装帧: Paperback
出版年: 2006-02-10

This is a wonderful book!

Everyday, we talk with others about one thing or another. Someone proposes their opinions and used evidences to support their standing point.

You might not quite agree with them, but you don’t know how to criticise their idea, or even, what they are talking about? You are lost. This book, will teach you how to think of thing and ask the right questions to make you know think better.

The book provides 11 questions for you, which help you have a

1. What are the issues and the conclusions?

2. What are the reasons?

3. Which words or phrases are ambiguous?

4. What are the value conflicts and assumptions?

5. What are the descriptive assumptions?

6. Are there any fallacies in the reasoning?

7. How good is the evidence?

8. Are there rival causes?

9. Are the statistics deceptive?

10. What significant information is omitted?

11. What reasonable conclusions are possible?