Most managers know very little about the technology they introduce into their firms, often preferring to leave such decisions to a small band of technological 'experts'. As a result large amounts of time and money are often wasted on inappropriate and inefficient systems. The cost of retraining and reorganising can also be prohibitive if the new technology does not deliver the desired results. In a business environment where technology is of increasing importance, the non-technical manager cannot afford to remain in the dark. Technology in Context provides a toolkit of approaches to this difficult subject. Subjects covered include: * the fundamental concepts required for the management of technology * the gathering of information in a firm to support strategic decisions on technology * technology assessment in the public domain * the wider social implications of technology * problems associated with technology, from the danger of environmental degradation to employment and skills.

While emerging technologies create massive opportunity, especially for investors and companies that seek more adaptable forms of economic growth than currently available, value is held inert by traditional approaches, patents, and other closed systems. Yet, open data, content, and information may be the key to mass innovation for future technologies, although they bring difficult challenges to private-industry models that depend on the established ideas of intellectual property. It is from this foundational observation that OpenXFORM (a blending of the words Open and the engineering abbreviation for Transformation) was developed and is explored and described in this book. The intent of the model design is to synthesize an approach to the process of innovation, inspired by natural systems and human-centric design processes. OpenXFORM describes how an open system of innovation can adapt to the unregulated world of information, data, and content; can decompose its own information to release to the open world; and can discover ways to find the points of synergy among the studied and tested methodologies that put human relationships first. This book presents an explicit innovation process that shows how to move from a breakthrough idea through a process that encourages innovative thinkers to test their assumptions, validate hypotheses, and tune and tweak their ideas, not only to drive solutions for users but also to meet the strategic goals of their companies. The anatomy of innovation through OpenXFORM contains the process for moving ideas from a flight of fancy to an explicit concept that is ready to produce.

Today, there are few in senior management positions who can afford to ignore modern information technology, and few individuals who would prefer to be without it. Modern IT is key to organizational performance; yet we often assume the benefits will occur without forethought or effort. As managerial tasks become more complex, so the nature of the required information systems changes - from structured, routine support to ad hoc, unstructured, complex enquiries at the highest levels of management. If taken for granted, serious implications can arise for organizations. This fifth edition of Strategic Information Management has been brought fully up to date with recent developments in the management of information systems, including digital transformation strategy, the issues surrounding big data and algorithmic decision-making. The book provides a rich source of material reflecting recent thinking on the key issues facing executives, drawing from a wide range of contemporary articles written by leading experts in North America, Europe, and Australia. Combining theory with practice, each section is fully introduced, includes further reading and questions for further discussion. Designed for MBA, master's level students, and advanced undergraduate students taking courses in information systems management, it also provides a wealth of information and references for researchers.

"Sharing knowledge is power." If ever there were a field to which this applies, it is the knowledge management industry. And in today's highly-competitive, fast-paced business world, corporations, businesses and organizations in both the public and private sectors are constantly searching for new cutting-edge methods and techniques for creating, storing, capturing, managing, organizing, distributing, combining, and retrieving knowledge. But the task of accomplishing such functions is not as simple as it sounds. Jay Liebowitz's Building Organizational Intelligence: A Knowledge Management Primer gives executives, managers, systems analysts, and other knowledge-management professionals the competitive edge they need in achieving that task. In a concise and easy-to-read format, the book describes the concepts, techniques, methodologies, and tools associated with those functions, and includes mini-case studies and vignettes of how industry is developing and applying these functions towards building organizational intelligence.

What's more, the book is packaged with a limited functionality version of "WisdomBuilder," the first in a family of knowledge-management tools that provide a fully integrated solution to the information management and analysis dilemma. Able to run under Windows 95, 98 and NT, "WisdomBuilder" solves the information overload problem by reducing the time and cost of extracting information and other research knowledge from disorganized repositories of heterogeneous data.

Table of Contents

What is Organizational Intelligence? Creating Knowledge. Capturing and Storing Knowledge. Transforming Individual Learning Into Organizational Learning. Combining, Transferring, and Distributing Knowledge. Building A Continuous Learning Culture. Culture: The Key Ingredient. Developing A Knowledge Management Capability

Assessing Knowledge Management Through A Knowledge Audit. Augmenting Organizational Intelligence. Role and Skills for Knowledge Management-Questionnaire. Appendix A: The Intelligent Agent-Based Knowledge Management System for Supporting Multimedia Systems Design on The Web. Appendices

This book presents simple, elegant methods for dealing, both in theory and in application, with a variety of problems that have formulations in terms of flows in capacity-constrained networks. Since the theoretical considerations lead in all cases to computationally efficient solution procedures, the hook provides a common meeting ground for persons interested in operations research, industrial and communications engineering, or combinatorial mathematics. Originally published in 1962. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Operational Assessment of IT presents ideas and concepts of optimization designed to improve an organization's business processes and assist business units in meeting organizational goals more effectively. Rather than focus on specific technologies, computing environments, enterprise risks, resource programs, or infrastructure, the book focuses on organizational processes. Throughout the book, the author presents concerns and environments encountered throughout his career to demonstrate issues and explain how you, too, can successfully implement the tools presented in the book. The assessment process reviews the economics as well as the effectiveness and efficiency of the process. Whether your organization is profit-based, not-for-profit, or even governmental, you cannot provide services or products at a continuous loss. For an operational assessment to be of value, the ultimate goal must be to insure that the business unit process is effective and efficient and employs the financial assets and resources appropriately or helps the business unit make adjustments to improve the operation and use resources more efficiently and economically. After reading this book, you will be able to devise more efficient and economical ways to meet your customers' requirements, no matter who or where your customers are. You will learn that the goal of any process is to service or supply customers with what they want. The book provides tools and techniques that will assist you in gaining a 360-degree view of the process so that you can help the business unit improve the delivery of a quality product or a service to the customer.

Assessing and Managing Security Risk in IT Systems: A Structured Methodology builds upon the original McCumber Cube model to offer proven processes that do not change, even as technology evolves. This book enables you to assess the security attributes of any information system and implement vastly improved security environments. Part I delivers an overview of information systems security, providing historical perspectives and explaining how to determine the value of information. This section offers the basic underpinnings of information security and concludes with an overview of the risk management process. Part II describes the McCumber Cube, providing the original paper from 1991 and detailing ways to accurately map information flow in computer and telecom systems. It also explains how to apply the methodology to individual system components and subsystems. Part III serves as a resource for analysts and security practitioners who want access to more detailed information on technical vulnerabilities and risk assessment analytics. McCumber details how information extracted from this resource can be applied to his assessment processes.

Although there are countless books on statistics, few are dedicated to the application of statistical methods to software engineering. Simple Statistical Methods for Software Engineering: Data and Patterns fills that void. Instead of delving into overly complex statistics, the book details simpler solutions that are just as effective and connect with the intuition of problem solvers. Sharing valuable insights into software engineering problems and solutions, the book not only explains the required statistical methods, but also provides many examples, review questions, and case studies that provide the understanding required to apply those methods to real-world problems. After reading this book, practitioners will possess the confidence and understanding to solve day-to-day problems in quality, measurement, performance, and benchmarking. By following the examples and case studies, students will be better prepared able to achieve seamless transition from academic study to industry practices. Includes boxed stories, case studies, and illustrations that demonstrate the nuances behind proper application Supplies historical anecdotes and traces statistical methods to inventors and gurus Applies basic statistical laws in their simplest forms to resolve engineering problems Provides simple techniques for addressing the issues software engineers face The book starts off by reviewing the essential facts about data. Next, it supplies a detailed review and summary of metrics, including development, maintenance, test, and agile metrics. The third section covers the fundamental laws of probability and statistics and the final section presents special data patterns in the form of tailed mathematical distributions. In addition to selecting simpler and more flexible tools, the authors have also simplified several standard techniques to provide you with the set of intellectual tools al

This is a primer on the development process for embedded systems designed to teach the specialised aspects of writing software in this enviroment that are not covered in standard coursework for software developers and electrical engineers. It traces the software and hardware methodologies and the intergration of the two disciplines in the lifecycle. The guide details the steps necessary for designing and producing embedded systems and discusses the key methods and technologies for each phase of the process: specification, partition, design, integration, validation, release, maintenance and upgrade.

How many IT books have you read that are long on theory and short on practical application? They are interesting, but not very impactful. They provide a framework from which to think and understand, but lack a process from which to act. Addressing this urgent need for the IT community, The Lean IT Field Guide explains how to initiate, execute, and sustain a lean IT transformation. Illuminating a clear path to lean IT, the authors integrate more than two decades of combined experience to provide you with a proven method for creating and sustaining a true lean IT workplace. This field guide not only highlights the organizational techniques of more agile and lean processes, but also the leadership work required to help management adopt these new approaches. Based on proven methods from different industries, including banking, manufacturing, insurance, food and beverage, and logistics, the book details a clear model that covers all the components you need to achieve and sustain a favorable work environment and culture in support of lean IT. Filled with anecdotes and case studies from actual businesses, the book includes pictures, templates, and examples that illustrate the application of the lean methods discussed.

These proceedings of the symposium ISIT 2014 aim to be a platform for international exchange of the state-of-the-art research and practice in information technology. The contributions cover a wide variety of topics, ranging from theoretical and analytical studies to various applications.

Command and Control (C2) is the set of organizational and technical attributes and processes by which an enterprise marshals and employs human, physical, and information resources to solve problems and accomplish missions.C2 Re-envisioned: The Future of the Enterprise identifies four interrelated megatrends that are individually and collectively shaping the state of the art and practice of C2 as well as the mission challenges we face. These megatrends the book examines are: Big Problems -manifested in part as increasing complexity of both endeavors and enterprises, as military establishments form coalitions with each other, and partnerships with various civilian agencies and non-governmental organizations Robustly Networked Environments-enabled by the extremely broad availability of advanced information and communications technologies (ICT) that place unprecedented powers of information creation, processing, and distribution in the hands of almost anyone who wants them-friend and foe alike Ubiquitous Data-the unprecedented volumes of raw and processed information with which human actors and C2 systems must contend Organizational alternatives-as decentralized, net-enabled approaches to C2 have been made more feasible by technology. The book analyzes historical examples and experimental evidence to determine the critical factors that make C2 go wrong and how to get it right. Successful enterprises in the future will be those that can reconfigure their approaches in an agile manner. Offering fresh perspectives on this subject of critical importance, this book provides the understanding you will need to choose your organizational approaches to suit the mission and the conditions at hand.

This is a monumental reference for the theory and practice of computer security. Comprehensive in scope, this text covers applied and practical elements, theory, and the reasons for the design of applications and security techniques. It covers both the management and the engineering issues of computer security. It provides excellent examples of ideas and mechanisms that demonstrate how disparate techniques and principles are combined in widely-used systems. This book is acclaimed for its scope, clear and lucid writing, and its combination of formal and theoretical aspects with real systems, technologies, techniques, and policies.

Project planning is generally accepted as an important contributor to project success. However, is there research that affirms the positive impact of project planning and gives guidance on how much effort should be spent on planning? To answer these questions, this book looks at current literature and new research of this under-studied area of project management. The author presents his findings from an extensive review of project planning literature that covers more than 270 sources. He also discusses new research that analyzes data from more than 1,300 global projects. The book confirms that the time spent on planning activities reduces risk and significantly increases the chances of project success. It also concludes that there can be too much planning and shows that the optimum ratio of planning to effort is 25%. The book examines the impact of project planning on different industries. It discusses research in the construction and information technology (IT) industries, and presents a case study of how to plan and track a software development project. The book also looks at the impact of geography on project planning and success. Intended as a basic tool in the library of any project manager or general manager, this book brings to light project planning techniques and information that have never been published previously. It is an important resource on how to plan projects properly and propel your career forward.

Executives should not necessarily know the intricacies of project management, but they should know how project management, as a discipline, can benefit the organization in implementing its strategies and realizing its vision. The only way that executives can effectively apply project management to realize these goals is to have sound knowledge of the project management discipline.

The purpose of this book is to provide executives with a comprehensive overview of the discipline of project management. It focuses on the benefits of project management to an organization. The goal is to provide executives with a view as to how project management can deliver organizational strategies. The various chapters focus on specific aspects within the project management discipline and how each aspect should be managed from a business perspective.

The book covers the entire spectrum of project management from a management and leadership perspective. The focus is not necessarily on what needs to be done from a project management perspective, but on what organizations and senior executives can do to facilitate projects. The book covers:

The value of project management

Project management as a strategic enabler

Project, program, and portfolio management

The role of the project management office in the successful delivery of projects, programs, and portfolios

The benefits of project deliverables bring

Sustainability of the organization

Governance and the role of the project sponsor.

The book concludes with a comprehensive portfolio, program, and project management framework. This holistic framework enables organizations to achieve value from project management and realize strategic goals.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

2. Value of Project Management

2.1. Value Components

2.2. Project Success Rates

2.3. The Executive’s Role in Realising Value from Project Management

3. Strategic Alignment of Programmes and Projects

3.1. Strategic Alignment of Programmes and Projects

3.2. Aligning Projects with the Organisational Vision

3.3. The Executive’s Role in the Strategic Alignment of Programmes and Projects

4. Portfolio Management

4.1. Defining Portfolio Management

4.2. Overview of Portfolio Management Standards

4.3. Portfolio Management Process

4.4. Portfolio Management Success

4.5. The Role of the Portfolio Manager

4.6. The Executive’s Role in Portfolio Management

5. Programme Management

5.1. Defining Programme Management

5.2. Programme Management Framework

5.3. Overview of Programme Management Standards

5.4. The Role of the Programme Manager

5.5. Programme Management Success

5.6. The Executive’s Role in Programme Management

6. Project Management

6.1. Defining Project Management

6.2. Overview of Project Management Standards

6.3. Methodologies

6.4. Talent Management

6.5. Project Management Maturity

6.6. Project Success

6.7. The Executive’s Role in Project Management

7. Project Management Offices

7.1. Portfolio Management Offices

7.2. The Role of the PMO

7.3. PMO Maturity Stages

7.4. Metrics. for the PMO

7.5. PMO Challenges

7.6. The Executive’s Role in the Project Management Office of the PMO

8. Benefits Realisation Management

8.1. Defining Benefits Realisation Management

8.2. The Benefits Realisation Management Process

8.3. Roles and Responsibilities within BRM

8.4. Challenges Facing Benefits Realisation Management

8.5. Profile of a Benefit

8.6. Benefits Dependency Network (BDN)

8.7. Benefits Realisation Management Maturity

8.8. The Executive’s Role in Realising Benefits

9. Sustainability in Project Management

9.1. Defining Sustainability

9.2. Sustainability in Project Management

9.3. Sustainability in Project Management Competencies

9.4. Maturity Model for Sustainability in Project Management

9.5. Project Management Sustainability Model

9.6. The Executive’s Role in Sustainability Project

Management

10. Project Governance and Auditing

10.1. Corporate and Project Governance

10.2. Defining Project Governance

10.3. Project Governance and Project Success

10.4. Project Governance—Roles and Responsibilities

10.5. Project Governance Framework

10.6. Contextualising Project Governance

10.7. Project Auditing

10.8. The Executive’s Role in Project Governance

11. Executive Sponsor

11.1. Defining the Executive Sponsor

11.2. Characteristics of the Executive Sponsor

11.3. Role of the Executive Sponsor

11.4. Project Success and the Executive Sponsor

11.5. Challenges Facing the Executive Sponsor

11.6. Empowering the Executive Sponsor

12. Comprehensive Overview of Project Management

12.1. Comprehensive 3PM Framework

12.2. Symbiotic Relationships

12.3. Chief Project Officer

For many organizations, a big part of DevOps' appeal is software automation using infrastructure-as-code techniques. This book presents developers, architects, and infra-ops engineers with a more practical option. You'll learn how a container-centric approach from OpenShift, Red Hat's cloud-based PaaS, can help your team deliver quality software through a self-service view of IT infrastructure. Three OpenShift experts at Red Hat explain how to configure Docker application containers and the Kubernetes cluster manager with OpenShift's developer- and operational-centric tools. Discover how this infrastructure-agnostic container management platform can help companies navigate the murky area where infrastructure-as-code ends and application automation begins. Get an application-centric view of automation-and understand why it's important Learn patterns and practical examples for managing continuous deployments such as rolling, A/B, blue-green, and canary Implement continuous integration pipelines with OpenShift's Jenkins capability Explore mechanisms for separating and managing configuration from static runtime software Learn how to use and customize OpenShift's source-to-image capability Delve into management and operational considerations when working with OpenShift-based application workloads Install a self-contained local version of the OpenShift environment on your computer

Internet attack on computer systems is pervasive. It can take from less than a minute to as much as eight hours for an unprotected machine connected to the Internet to be completely compromised. It is the information security architect's job to prevent attacks by securing computer systems. This book describes both the process and the practice of assessing a computer system's existing information security posture. Detailing the time-tested practices of experienced security architects, it explains how to deliver the right security at the right time in the implementation lifecycle. Securing Systems: Applied Security Architecture and Threat Models covers all types of systems, from the simplest applications to complex, enterprise-grade, hybrid cloud architectures. It describes the many factors and prerequisite information that can influence an assessment. The book covers the following key aspects of security analysis: When should the security architect begin the analysis? At what points can a security architect add the most value? What are the activities the architect must execute? How are these activities delivered? What is the set of knowledge domains applied to the analysis? What are the outputs? What are the tips and tricks that make security architecture risk assessment easier? To help you build skill in assessing architectures for security, the book presents six sample assessments. Each assessment examines a different type of system architecture and introduces at least one new pattern for security analysis. The goal is that after you've seen a sufficient diversity of architectures, you'll be able to understand varied architectures and can better see the attack surfaces and prescribe security solutions.

As global competition grows more fierce, companies continue to look for ways to increase their competitive edge without jeopardizing profit margins. Today's corporations are starting to realize the competitive advantage that Information Technology (IT) can bring to a company. These corporations are also realizing that staying current with technology requires a great deal of effort, risk, and expense. This is one of the primary reasons CEO's are considering outsourcing as an alternative. Written by a CIO who has successfully maneuvered through the outsourcing process, Outsourcing: A CIO's Perspective addresses the realistic expectations and the most commonly asked questions about IT outsourcing, while reviewing it's advantages and disadvantages. This text identifies key elements that can be used to assess the feasibility of securing a profitable and manageable outsourcing agreement. It provides a convincing case that even if the final decision is to not outsource, the result of the process will identify potential business improvement opportunities.

Everything that we know about the world of finance is changing before us. Innovation is happening constantly, despite the protests of the traditional financial industry. With all the new technology that we have today, it is almost mind-blowing to think about the kind of technology that we will have in another ten years or so. The change is going to keep coming, the only thing we can do is get on board with it. This book introduces the basics of FinTech and equips readers with the knowledge to get on the cutting edge of age we live in today.

Table of Contents

Part 1: Evolution of Financial Services. 1. Financial Services. 2. Collapse of "Too Big to Collapse." 3. Green Shoots Transforming the Way Financial Services Are Managed. 4. First-Generation Disruptions. 5. Emergence of Unicorns. 6. Fintechs as an Established Industry. Part 2: Fintechs: Unchartered Territory for Traditional Business. 7.Challenging Goliaths of Banking Industry. 8. Replacing Wallets. 9. Homecoming of a Safe Way of Leading Your Life. 10. Keeping Fraudsters Away. 11. Skin in the Game (Guaranteed Returns). 12. Transforming the Experience. 13. Collapse of the Great Wall. 14. Thinking Like Me. Part 3: Techtonic Shift in Technology Propelling Fintech Innovations. 15. Emergence of App Stores. 16. Cloud. 17. Big Data and Hadoop. 18. IoT. 19. Blockchain. 20. Artificial Intelligence. 21. Opening the APIs. Part 4: Fintech Revolution Is Everywhere. 22. USA. 23. Europe. 24. The Dragon and Tiger Countries. 25. Innovations in the Sahara and Amazons of the World. Part 5: Funding the Fintechs. 26.Large Banks Funding Fintechs. 27. Convergence of Telecom and Retail to Banking Using the Fintech Route. 28. Institutional Investors Jumping into the Fray. 29. Self-funded Fintechs. 30. Crowd-Sourced Fintechs. Part 6: The Road Ahead for Fintechs. 31. Disruptions a Hype or Reality. 32. Let the Orders Flow. Making Money for Investors. 33. Being Legally Compliant. 34. Becoming the Torch Bearer to a More Simplified Financial Services Industry.

There are a lot of e-business security concerns. Knowing about e-business security issues will likely help overcome them. Keep in mind, companies that have control over their e-business are likely to prosper most. In other words, setting up and maintaining a secure e-business is essential and important to business growth. This book covers state-of-the art practices in e-business security, including privacy, trust, security of transactions, big data, cloud computing, social network, and distributed systems.

This book defines what IoT Systems manageability looks like and what the associated resources and costs are of that manageability. It identifies IoT Systems performance expectations and addresses the difficult challenges of determining actual costs of IoT Systems implementation, operation, and management across multiple institutional organizations. It details the unique challenges that cities and institutions have in implementing and operating IoT Systems.

Managing change across cultures can be tricky, and universal approaches to change management may not serve their purpose in every cultural setting. This book examines the cultural dimensions that can influence the perceptions of and reactions to change in different cultural contexts and highlights the benefits of developing and applying cultural mindfulness when planning and running cross-cultural change initiatives. It offers practical advice to project and change management teams and leaders for developing Cultural Intelligence, tailoring plans to consider any cultural variables that could be barriers to (or catalysts for) effective change, and applying facilitating strategies.

There are a number of books on computational intelligence (CI), but they tend to cover a broad range of CI paradigms and algorithms rather than provide an in-depth exploration in learning and adaptive mechanisms. This book sets its focus on CI based architectures, modeling, case studies and applications in big data analytics, and business intelligence. The intended audiences of this book are scientists, professionals, researchers, and academicians who deal with the new challenges and advances in the specific areas mentioned above. Designers and developers of applications in these areas can learn from other experts and colleagues through this book.

Most information systems textbooks overwhelm business students with overly technical information they may not need in their careers. This textbook takes a new approach to the required information systems course for business majors. For each topic covered, the text highlights key "Take-Aways" that alert students to material they will need to remember during their careers. Sections titled "Where You Fit In" and "Why This Chapter Matters" explain how the topics being covered will impact students on the job. Review questions, discussion questions, and summaries are also included. This second edition is updated to include new technology, along with a new running case study. Key features: Single-mindedly for business students who are not technical specialists Doesn't try to prepare IS professionals; other courses will do that Stresses the enabling technologies and application areas that matter the most today Based on the author's real-world experience Up to date regarding technology and tomorrow's business needs This is the book the author-and, more importantly, his students-wishes he had when he started teaching. Dr. Mallach holds degrees in engineering from Princeton and MIT, and in business from Boston University. He worked in the computer industry for two decades, as Director of Strategic Planning for a major computer firm and as co-founder/CEO of a computer marketing consulting firm. He taught information systems in the University of Massachusetts (Lowell and Dartmouth) business schools for 18 years, then at Rhode Island College following his retirement. He consults in industry and serves as Webmaster for his community, in between hiking and travel with his wife.

There are a lot of e-business security concerns. Knowing about e-business security issues will likely help overcome them. Keep in mind, companies that have control over their e-business are likely to prosper most. In other words, setting up and maintaining a secure e-business is essential and important to business growth. This book covers state-of-the art practices in e-business security, including privacy, trust, security of transactions, big data, cloud computing, social network, and distributed systems.