Rating: 
Summary: Strong opinions; risky and unproven approach
Review: I've read about a dozen books on the topic of strategic outcomes for IT. The "alignment" theme with various names is common in them all.
I expected this book to help me in my role as a strategic IT practices advisor.
After a thorough reading the book seems naive to me. It suggests only obvious practices. When real issues are mentioned, the answer is you need a product. The book seems like a paper about the authors product.
This is no case study. The book offers many stories to show a real problem exists. It doesn't give me any sense that this approach has been used before. This is my biggest complaint.
I'm expected by clients to make good recommendations. I would never suggest that my clients try such an approach, with or without the product. I believe the book is all form and little substance.
Rating:
Summary: Strong opinions; risky and unproven approach
Review: I've read about a dozen books on the topic of strategic outcomes for IT. The "alignment" theme with various names is common in them all.
I expected this book to help me in my role as a strategic IT practices advisor.
After a thorough reading the book seems naive to me. It suggests only obvious practices. When real issues are mentioned, the answer is you need a product. The book seems like a paper about the authors product.
This is no case study. The book offers many stories to show a real problem exists. It doesn't give me any sense that this approach has been used before. This is my biggest complaint.
I'm expected by clients to make good recommendations. I would never suggest that my clients try such an approach, with or without the product. I believe the book is all form and little substance.
Rating: 
Summary: Practical Guiding Principles
Review: In "The Alignment Effect", Hoque has capture the essence of what companies of all sizes wrestle with in achieving value for their technology investment. As a CEO and former technology consultant, I would strongly suggest that people investing in technology invest in this book and understand it before spending one more dollar on technology. Once you do, the dollar you spend will be well-targeted in your organizations. Daniel G. Magni
President/CEO
BeaconVision
Rating:
Summary: Solid advice on getting IT and Biz People to Communicate
Review: Most of my customers for my consulting practice (ExecutiveSummary.com) are marketers. While "technology" and "marketing" used to be very far apart in most organizations, the Web and customer relationship management have changed that. Still, the biggest challenge for making CRM and other technology-fueled marketing programs work is the communication gap that often remains between these two vital business groups. Marketers are at the front end of their businesses, innovating product development and finding ways to attract and retain happy customers. The huge technological advances of the past decade have created profound new ways to market products and communicate with customers. But a disconnect remains where marketers often underestimate technical complexities in their grand visions as "a simple matter of programming," while often the technologists they partner with focus foremost on what is technically possible or expedient at the expense of the actual business problem the marketer is trying to solve. This book provides a solid framework for bridging that gap, importantly focusing also on the often-missing component of business processes. Process is often where innovative programs like CRM break down - where systems that are technically robust fail to address how people in the trenches are accustomed to doing their jobs. The author Faisal Hoque does a remarkable job gaining real-world insights from how large companies have faced similar challenges, including the likes of Marriott Hotels, Chase Bank and General Electric. Although this book is not specifically directed towards marketers, I will be happy to recommend it to many of my clients as a way to help those at the front end of business (marketers) and those at the backend (technologists) understand how best to collaborate and align their roles to make technology serve marketing and business needs most effectively.
Rating:
Summary: Good Info for Customers as well as IT Professionals
Review: Practical Advice for the Customer as Well as the Implementer.... In the last 15 years, I have been involved with 3 distinct IT implementations or migrations. During all three of these implementations, I acted as a customer of the planning and implementation teams. Facing yet another migration in another environment I sought to get a leg up on some current thinking outside my normal working conditions. Reading this book as a "Customer," I became aware of the true impact of a customization request. One of the characteristics of all of my experiences is that the simple communication of "cost to customize" vs process change is/has never been adequately discussed. Consequently, the implementations usually end up as a struggle between the budget centers. In The Alignment Effect, a clear rationale is presented for accommodation, and perhaps more importantly, testing of the implementation via an impact analysis. Here I found a clear and concise recipe for making good judgments and a practical way of evaluating them before an implementation is executed. A second area I found informative is the attention given to futures. All too often, we implement and then the business changes and our existent process and information systems are not flexible enough to accommodate the change in the business environment. I have experienced several situations where the business had to conform to the infrastructure. In this "One size fits all, therefore one size fits none" society, business process and business models play second fiddle to "The way it is". I read with enthusiasm the sections on Optimization and Maturity where it becomes practical to modify, tune, re-engineer, and then go on. From a "Customer" perspective I found this an interesting and educational read. I also found some better ways to communicate with my IT partners.
Rating:
Summary: A Recommended Read for the Executive
Review: Well into the information age, the issue of the failure of information technology to deliver on its promise of real business value continues to trouble us. That Hoque feels compelled to bring this matter to our attention is an indictment of our commitment to sensible information technology management. The world's willingness to increasingly buy, yet not effectively improve the management of, information technology has amazed me for the 38 years I have been in the business. I somehow think I will continue to be amazed. Hoque prescribes an approach to dealing with this issue that is understandable and can be put into action. Simply said, it is about understanding how a business works, how it can be configured to work better, how technology can enable this reconfiguration, and how the resulting benefits can be expressed in business terms. Do not look in this book for a magic answer to resolve the issue. Indeed, there is no magic answer to be found anywhere. Attendance to the empirical facts of business and technology, and clear reasoning about them is the only way forward. Hoque provides useful guidelines for doing just this. Some aspects of the book get in the way of clearly understanding Hoque's message. I think the metaphor of building a house has been overused with regard to enterprise architecture, and the illustrations associated with the Rauha Communications case are a trifle abstract.
Hoque's approach to Business Technology Management leads to the development of a considerable amount of useful information. One wishes that Hoque had dealt more clearly with how all of this is to be managed. The final point is that cultural change is the paramount nemesis of Business Technology Management. We could benefit more from Hoque's experiences in overcoming this barrier to progress. I have no hesitancy in recommending this book as an easy weekend read to the business executive finally willing to step up to his responsibilities of managing the information technology asset.
Rating:
Summary: A Recommended Read for the Executive
Review: Well into the information age, the issue of the failure of information technology to deliver on its promise of real business value continues to trouble us. That Hoque feels compelled to bring this matter to our attention is an indictment of our commitment to sensible information technology management. The world's willingness to increasingly buy, yet not effectively improve the management of, information technology has amazed me for the 38 years I have been in the business. I somehow think I will continue to be amazed. Hoque prescribes an approach to dealing with this issue that is understandable and can be put into action. Simply said, it is about understanding how a business works, how it can be configured to work better, how technology can enable this reconfiguration, and how the resulting benefits can be expressed in business terms. Do not look in this book for a magic answer to resolve the issue. Indeed, there is no magic answer to be found anywhere. Attendance to the empirical facts of business and technology, and clear reasoning about them is the only way forward. Hoque provides useful guidelines for doing just this. Some aspects of the book get in the way of clearly understanding Hoque's message. I think the metaphor of building a house has been overused with regard to enterprise architecture, and the illustrations associated with the Rauha Communications case are a trifle abstract.
Hoque's approach to Business Technology Management leads to the development of a considerable amount of useful information. One wishes that Hoque had dealt more clearly with how all of this is to be managed. The final point is that cultural change is the paramount nemesis of Business Technology Management. We could benefit more from Hoque's experiences in overcoming this barrier to progress. I have no hesitancy in recommending this book as an easy weekend read to the business executive finally willing to step up to his responsibilities of managing the information technology asset.
| 
