Business Models: A Guide for Business and IT

Rating:
Summary: Tear down the business/IT barriers using precise models!
Review: A truly insightful and delightful book that presents an approach to tearing down the business and IT barriers by using abstractions and models which have a precise meaning but which are also clear, understandable, and even elegant! This approach is not based on a methodology, CASE tool, language, or technology. Rather it is based on discovering concepts that provide a common ground for business domain analysis and effective reasoning that will favor successful business-IT interaction and business results.

The author is a first rate practitioner (business analysis) and truly cultured scholar. He uses many rich and inspiring examples from many disciplines and teaches us how to deal with/avoid the problem of semiotic pollution (aka information pollution) that is so common in todays so called information systems (especially WEB material and systems).

This book is comparable to an elegant and appealing piece of music. The more you are exposed to it, the more you find creative and well-structured ways of understanding and communicating information about business and IT domains.

In an age of mediocrity, this book and its ideas should be the daily diet for true professionals (i.e., knowledge workers) who want to facilitate common understanding (based on a powerful and logical system of concepts).

Thank God for Kilov's book! His book abundantly provides the framework so that you will learn how to think and present your results in a lucid and effective manner so that people with different viewpoints will be able to effectively communicate.

I believe that Kilov's essential message is that in any era (in particular, in the "knowledge age"), the proper concepts are even more important than measurements, tools, and technologies (not that the latter are not important but their selection should be predicated on good and succinct concepts.) People (including knowledge workers and support staff) are even more important than concepts, but they must have an effective system to help them discover and differentiate the essential (knowledge) from the accidental (data).

I have used this book at Stevens Institute of Technolgy. At first (I must confess) that I didn't get it, but the fogs soon cleared (i.e., cognitive dissonance dissipated), and then I learned how to produce meaningful reusable analysis and design artifacts and many progressed to a stage of enlightenment and knowledge activation within my company (which is on FORTUNE 500 list).

What todays businesses need is a major cultural change. Kilov is not the entire answer (for that matter neither is anybody else's work). However, if you appreciate the great thinkers of western civilization, the power of precision and abstraction in obtaining effective business results, I think you will gain much from perusing "Business Models" and you will even feel like saying "Thank you Haim Kilov" for writing such an elegant and elevating book. If you want to follow the crowd, or drop names to address your problems, than don't read this book. Instead, rely on the current "laundary list" of buzz words!(I love Kilov's colorful term: debuzzwordification.) It is for the true lover of knowledge and is a book to read so that you can think (with practice) in a systematic way and learn how to tear down the walls between business and IT folks!

I have sucessfully participated in the analysis and design of business strategies, databases, and e-commerce systems. I found applying the ideas of this book to be directly applicable and effective with the "executive board," subject matter experts, and business analysts who wanted to develop a succesful system based on meaningful artifacts.

Rating:
Summary: Great for beginners!
Review: I found the book, Business Models, very accessible to a beginner like myself. This book brings modeling down to its simplest terms and shows that modeling is a powerful and practical tool. The art of abstraction will make my business life and even my everyday life simpler and easier.

Rating:
Summary: Some excelllent, but obfuscated ideas
Review: This book is manages to both delight and disappoint. The delight comes from the interesting perspective the author brings to modeling, and his obvious deep understanding of UML and its strengths and weaknesses. It disappoints because the writing is marred by overly academic format (copious footnotes and stilted language), and some disorganization.

Highlights include incorporating business rules, modeling and viewpoints to develop a business model that integrates IT and business. While the author appears to be going in the right direction, especially by touching on what I consider to be the major critical success factors and techniques, he manages to weaken this book by putting a non-standard spin on the topics. For example, his view of business rules seems to be more in line with what he proposed in his earlier book titled "Business Specifications", instead of the more mainstream approach that is well documented in Tony Morgan's "Business Rules and Information Systems" and Barbara Von Halle's "Business Rules Applied". The modeling approach itself departs from standard UML, even though the author does make a good case for doing so. The problem is that by sticking with an established standard, regardless of shortcomings, you will be consistent with accepted practices that are understood throughout industry. Going with the author's approach means a learning curve for your own staff as well as consultants, and serious problems when attempting to use mainstream tools, such as Rational Rose, to instantiate the business models.

I recommend this book to advanced practitioners in business modeling who want to mine some excellent ideas that are interwoven throughout, but do not recommend it to anyone who wants to learn business modeling.