Taking a Step BackwardFor the last 40 years, we struggled hard to develop the scientific base an engineering team needs -- "craftsmanship" is what we tried to overcome! Now a new movement is trying to drag us back into the old times of chaos. |
Taking a Step BackwardFor the last 40 years, we struggled hard to develop the scientific base an engineering team needs -- "craftsmanship" is what we tried to overcome! Now a new movement is trying to drag us back into the old times of chaos. |
With this month's CBR we crafted one such issue on a topic that is losing some of the buzz surrounding it -- and for that very reason may be moving into its most productive phase! Let me take a tangent here. Have you ever noticed how there are largely two broad sets of people: those who talk and those who do? OK, that may be an oversimplification (how uncharacteristic for an academic you may say), as there are plenty of variations between these two extremes, but go with me here for a minute. I'm sure you remember the many people you have met in your life who have told you how good they are, how much they have achieved, how close they were to getting that new position, and so on. Very often this façade of certainty and bravado hides a relatively thin record of real accomplishments; conversely, there is a broad group of extremely accomplished people who let the facts speak for themselves.
The articles in this Cutter Business Technology Journal (formerly titled Cutter IT Journal) present differing views about what makes a good leader, but there is one common thread. The success of an IT organization is directly affected by the kind of leader you are -- and the kind of leaders you develop. (Not a subscriber? Download your complimentary copy here.)
In this issue, seven authors from very diverse backgrounds will help you understand and explore -- if not entirely resolve -- some of the challenges and myths affecting the current preoccupation with BPM. Their thoughtful analyses provide guidance to those who wish to raise the awareness of business processes in their organizations and arrive at better control over their design, execution, monitoring, and optimization.
This month's Cutter Benchmark Review, taking its inspiration from the current economic situation, termed by many the "great recession," tackles management in a crisis. Amidst all the turmoil, IT shops within firms and governmental institutions have to keep the operations humming while contributing to the survival of the organization. Setting the course for the IT function in a financial and economic storm is a subject that requires insight from some special contributors. We have assembled one of the best duos of CBR contributors since I took over editing of the publication in 2006. On the academic side we have Dorothy Leidner, the Randall W. and Sandra Ferguson Professor of Information Systems and Director of the Center for Knowledge Management at Baylor University (USA). On the practitioner side, we have one of my favorite IT leaders: Tom Murphy, Senior VP and CIO of AmerisourceBergen, a US $54 billion wholesale distributor of pharmaceuticals and related healthcare products.