Know how to lead and establish business agility in your organization. Benefit from clear, actionable steps based on change management truths that have been long underutilized and have limited the success of agile expansion into your business. This book provides a pragmatic framework for leading your business toward shifting to an agile mindset. Achieving Business Agility offers strategies and concrete examples to engage business executives and will teach you how to effectively execute these strategies. Whether you are a delivery executive, a change advocate, a consultant, a business leader, or a newcomer to agile, you will learn clear actions from a practical, business-oriented perspective that is vital to effect change and bring agile into your business. The book is structured in three sections. The first provides you with a deep understanding of each of four strategies. The second section tells the story of a company that applied these strategies through the eyes of several key players. The last section helps you get started applying what you learned in your own company. What You’ll Learn Get the attention of your executives by alerting them to a company problem that can impact them personally and create a sense of urgency to address it Collaborate with your executives in a way that gets them to open up and to see how their operating model is a contributing cause to the company problem Demonstrate how your executives can specifically benefit from a new agile business operating model and address the company problem Create a reinforcement structure on a larger scale to establish agile as the new standard operating model in your organization Who This Book Is For Managers, business leaders, and consultants at/for large enterprises or small startups who want their company to better compete in today’s fast-moving markets that present threats and opportunities at every turn. No agile expertise is required.

This MaxFacts[ interactive book explores business agility and IBM's smart work initiative in the context of business process management and SOA connectivity and Integration. It contains information and graphics gathered and adapted with permission from multiple IBM and non-IBM sources. Also, there are embedded links to more-detailed, multimedia content available on the Internet so you always have the most current information at your fingertips. We are confident that you will find this a useful reference tool. As we are always working to better help you succeed, please forward any comments or suggested improvements to this book to info@maxpress.com.

m-Business technology enables you to achieve extraordinary organizational agility Ñ and deliver unprecedented value to customers wherever they are. In Business Agility, Internet Week columnist Nicholas D. Evans draws upon real case studies to illuminate today's best m-Business strategies and tactics, and offers a complete step-by-step blueprint for execution: planning, process models, architecture, implementation, and much more.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Service-Oriented Computing, ICSOC 2011, held in Paphos, Cyprus, in December 2011. The 54 revised papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 184 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on business process modeling, quality of service, formal methods, XaaS computing, service discovery, service security and trust, service runtime infrastructures and service applications.

Praise for Service-Oriented Architecture "This book provides a superb overview of the SOA topic. Marks and Bell provide practical guidance across the entire SOA life cycle-from business imperatives and motivations to the post-deployment business and technical metrics to consider. With this book, Marks and Bell demonstrate a unique ability to take the complex dynamics of SOA, and through an eloquent set of metaphors, models, and principles, provide an understandable and insightful how-to manual for both technical and business executives. This will become a required handbook for any organization implementing SOA." —Dan Bertrand, Enterprise Technology Officer & EDS Fellow, EDS Corporation "A fundamental breakthrough in the business and technology perspectives of SOA-this book belongs in every software developer, architect, and IT executive library. Marks and Bell demonstrate a creative and practical approach to building complex, service-oriented systems. I especially liked the hands-on perspective brought to multiple aspects of SOA. A must-have guide in the technology turbulence of the future." —Ariel Aloni, Chief Technology Officer, SunGard Data Management Solutions "This outstanding text gets straight to the heart of the matter, cutting through the hyperbole and discussing how to drive real business value through SOA. It will certainly impact my behavior, our governance models, and, subsequently, the successful business outcomes we derive as we continue to embrace SOA. A must-read for battle-scarred SOA veterans and fledgling architects alike." —Christopher Crowhurst, Vice President and Chief Architect, Thomson Learning "Too often, SOA has been perceived as 'all about the technology'-standards, technology stacks, operational monitoring, and the like. In this book, Marks and Bell expand beyond the technology to provide a refreshing business-driven perspective to SOA, connecting the dots between business requirements, architecture, and development and operations, and overlaying these perspectives with tried-and-true governance techniques to keep SOA initiatives on track. A must-read for those leading the charge to adopt SOA within their enterprise." —Brent Carlson, Chief Technology Officer, LogicLibrary and coauthor of San Francisco Design Patterns: Blueprints for Business Software "Marks and Bell have captured a wealth of practical experience and lessons learned in what has become the hottest topic in software development. In this book, they explain in detail what works and what does not, from procedural issues to technical challenges. This book is an invaluable reference for organizations seeking the benefits of SOAs." —Dr. Jeffrey S. Poulin, System Architect, Lockheed Martin and author of Measuring Software Reuse: Principles, Practices, and Economic Models "One of the last things companies often consider when implementing a business solution such as SOA is the impact on people. Marks and Bell provide an in-depth look at 'what has to change' from a process standpoint to make any SOA implementation a success. A great read for those considering to embark on an enterprise SOA and looking for the right mix of people, process, and products." —Alan Himler, Vice President of Product Management and Marketing, LogicLibrary SOA is a complex topic and a complex organizational goal Service-Oriented Architecture: A Planning and Implementation Guide for Business and Technology shows you how to plan, implement, and achieve SOA value through its prescriptive approach, joining the business and strategic perspective to the technical and architectural perspective. Applicable to all industries, technology platforms, and operating environments, this innovative book provides you with the essential strategies to drive greater value from your SOA and realize your business goals.

Games are playing a crucial role in many successful businesses—not just in PR and marketing, but as a model for designing business systems and workflows. In this book, Michael Hugos provides compelling case studies that demonstrate how game mechanics enable companies to respond quickly to challenges in today’s real-time economy. It’s not about giving workers a smiley face for producing more widgets. You’ll discover how game mechanics—particularly popular multiplayer video games—provide field-tested best practices for engaging workers in creative and complex activities. With games, your company can shift from an outmoded top-down hierarchy to an agile network structure that promotes coordination over control. Discover why industrial age business structures from the 20th century no longer work Design real-time business collaboration systems, using massively multiplayer online game concepts Make your in-house systems more agile with technologies such as social media, mobile devices, and cloud computing Understand game dynamics: goals, rules, real-time feedback, and voluntary participation Apply virtual worlds and 3-D animation to business intelligence and data analytics applications

The buzz and hype created over the last few years around Digital Transformation has resulted in confusion and ubiquity that has rendered the term nearly meaningless. Transformation extends far beyond the technology stack and must include the organization's culture, its operating processes, and virtually every facet of how it functions.This fact means that leaders must break through the hype and demystify this term once and for all. They must get past the breathless hyperbole and understand what it really means to lead their organization through a continuous digital transformation process.The demystification of digital transformation and understanding what it really means is critical for all leaders. And that's what this book is about.Related Links

This book contains the refereed proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Business Process Modeling, Development and Support (BPMDS 2011) and the 16th International Conference on Exploring Modeling Methods for Systems Analysis and Design (EMMSAD 2011), held together with the 23rd International Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering (CAiSE 2011) in London, UK, in June 2011. The 22 papers accepted for BPMDS were selected from 61 submissions and cover a wide spectrum of issues related to business processes development, modeling, and support. They are grouped into sections on BPMDS in practice, business process improvement, business process flexibility, declarative process models, variety of modeling paradigms, business process modeling and support systems development, and interoperability and mobility. The 16 papers accepted for EMMSAD were chosen from 31 submissions and focus on exploring, evaluating, and enhancing current information modeling methods and methodologies. They are grouped in sections on workflow and process modeling extensions, requirements analysis and information systems development, requirements evolution and information systems evolution, data modeling languages and business rules, conceptual modeling practice, and enterprise architecture.

Process-Driven SOA: Patterns for Aligning Business and IT supplies detailed guidance on how to design and build software architectures that follow the principles of business-IT alignment. It illustrates the design process using proven patterns that address complex business/technical scenarios, where integrated concepts of service-oriented architecture (SOA), Business Process Management (BPM), and Event-Driven Architecture (EDA) are required. The book demonstrates that SOA is not limited to technical issues but instead, is a holistic challenge where aspects of SOA, EDA, and BPM must be addressed together. An ideal guide for SOA solution architects, designers, developers, managers, and students about to enter the field, the book: Provides an accessible introduction to basic and more advanced concepts in process-driven SOA Illustrates how to manage the complexities of business aligned IT architectures with detailed examples and industry cases Outlines a step-by-step design process using proven patterns to address complex business/ technical scenarios Integrates SOA, BPM, and EDA into practical patterns promoting SOA 2.0 Describing how to synchronize parallel enterprise processes, the authors explain how to cope with the architectural and design decisions you are likely to encounter when designing and implementing process-driven SOA systems. The decisions are described in the form of software patterns to provide you with a practical guideline for addressing key problems using time-tested solutions.

For a company to ensure its survival and growth in such dynamic and turbulent times, it must be agile. This book introduces the concept of business agility to professionals and executives and explains why it is required and how it can be incorporated with