Organizational executives must change the way they think about how to invest in and manage IT if they want to get lasting value from computer-based innovations. The old way of thinking has not served organizations well. They continue to experience high levels of technological and operational failures even though they apply a wide variety of industry best practices. The rapid pace of technological advancement has tended to hide some fundamental problems that have existed from the start. These involve, not the technology only, but also the management and application of that technology. The human and organizational factors have not kept pace. They have remained relatively static and, to a shocking degree, ineffective.
As a result, the IT department in many organizations has remained a breed apart. Communication between IT and the rest of the organization is fraught with misunderstanding. This leads to failures, recrimination, and, sometimes, wholesale changes which fall well short of their goals. The authors wrote this book because they wanted to help both business and IT to shift their focus from technology project implementation to that of value realization.
In The Value Imperative readers will be introduced to a new business model called The Agricultural Model created by the authors for managing IT in organizations. This innovative model will help you learn how to change the mindset of people in your organization about how IT should be invested in and managed; key considerations for ensuring that business value is delivered from IT investments; how to measure that value that has been delivered and whether there has been effective return on the investments made; and finally the authors challenge business and IT managers to focus on the business value that customers seek which will help companies.