Table of Contents Foreword Introduction Part One: Finding the Table 1. Sitting Alone 2. Kept from the Table 3. Approaching Agilely and Leanly Part Two: Earning the Seat 4. Planning 5. Requirements 6. Transformation 7. Enterprise Architecture 8. Build vs. Buy 9. Governance and Oversight 10. Risk 11. Quality 12. Shadow IT Part Three: Sitting at the Table 13. The CIO's Place at the Table 14. Exhortation and Table Manners Endnotes Recommended Reading Acknowledgements
Mark Schwartz is an iconoclastic CIO and a playful crafter of ideas, an inveterate purveyor of lucubratory prose. He has been an IT leader in organizations small and large, public, private, and nonprofit. As the CIO of US Citizenship and Immigration Services, he provokes the federal government into adopting Agile and DevOps practices. He is pretty sure that when he was the CIO of Intrax Cultural Exchange he was the first person ever to use business intelligence and supply chain analytics to place au pairs with the right host families. Mark speaks frequently on innovation, bureaucratic implications of DevOps, and Agile processes in low-trust environments. With a computer science degree from Yale and an MBA from Wharton, Mark is either an expert on the business value of IT or just confused and much poorer.
Mark Schwartz is a rare combination: a deep thinker who has also
applied lean, Agile, and DevOps principles at the highest level,
leading an extraordinary Agile transformation in the US Federal
Government at USCIS. In this book, he shows how modern IT lead-ers
succeed by driving business outcomes rather than operating an
order-taking function. This shift in organizational mindset is
critical to any successful technology transformation but requires
substantial changes in behavior at every level, and Mark's thorough
analysis will prove invaluable to leaders who must execute it.
*Jez Humble*
This book should be required reading for all technology and
business leaders who are serious about digital transformation. It
takes you on a provocative, fun, and comprehensive tour of the key
areas that will promote and ignite agility, creativity, learning,
community, and collaboration. This book may be about taking a seat,
but this is no time to be sitting still! IT leaders will be
convinced that their job is now about incentivizing and inspiring
courage, passion, and technical excellence in service of business
objectives rather than blindly servicing requirements. You will
find practical advice on how to deal with projects, scope creep, IT
assets, governance, security, risk management, quality, and shadow
IT.
*Jason Cox*
In his first book, The Art of Business Value, Mark brought together
aunique understanding of modern techniques—Agile, DevOps,
andContinuous Delivery. In A Seat at the Table he grabs hold of
theseconcepts and disrupts the conventional dynamics around the
role ofthe CIO in any organization. His progressive thinking is
unmatchedand a must read for leadership and practitioners of all
kinds.
*Luke McCormack, former CIO of the Department of Homeland
Security*
High-performing organizations see technology as a strategic
capabilityof their business. The walls, inertia, and confusion of
seats, sides,and responsibilities does not exist for them. Yet many
organizationsstill retain legacy mind-sets and behaviors that limit
their opportunitiesto improve, innovate, and inspire their people.
Mark shows thesteps needed to break free of these challenges and
unlock potential,speed, and growth. His advice is pragmatic,
practical, and to the point.
*Barry O'Reilly, Co-Founder Nobody Studios, author of Unlearn and
Lean Enterprise*
“Agile” is more than a new software development practice; it is a
newway to think, engage, and lead. As Mark Schwartz points out in
hiscompelling new book, A Seat at the Table, when CIOs
re-conceptualizetheir role based on Agile principles, they will
stop worrying about havinga seat at the table, and start realizing
all of the full potential of IT.
*Martha Heller, CEO of Heller Search Associates and author of Be
the Business: CIOs in the New Era of IT*
I use to feel guilty when someone would ask me how do I get my
leader-ship to understand DevOps if they refuse to accept it. My
answer was, basically, you can't. Now I can give them a copy of A
Seat at the Table.
*John Willis*
If you're a CIO, read this book. If you're not a CIO but work
closely with one, read this book. Mark Schwartz is the best of
iconoclasts. He brings deep insights from his unique erudition and
real-world experience—ranging from a startup to government
agency—in untangling the dilemma of the CIO in the second decade of
Agile. There aren't many people who can swing from Horace to Daniel
Pink without losing a breath. And there aren't many who can
critique Agile and Waterfall with equal insight. This is a
surprising book—well worth your (20%) time.
*Sam Guckenheimer, Product Owner, Visual Studio Team Services,
Microsoft*
Fresh thinking and useful advice fill the pages of Mark Schwartz's
A Seat at the Table, which strikes an encouraging, instructive tone
about the future of IT leadership and the CIO's expanding business
role. “If we cannot know the future, then we have to think a bit
dif-ferently,” he writes. And he does just that. Mark's argument
that IT executives must change their behaviors—dropping the
“command and control” mindset in favor of community building and
Agile leadership practices—resonates throughout this
well-organized, thoughtful book. While attaining that “seat at the
table” often refers to CIO career goals, the ideas and approaches
explored in this book are essential reading for anyone hoping to
advance in the IT profession today.
*Maryfran Johnson, Executive Director of CIO Programs, IDG
(International Data Group)*
Mark Schwartz's A Seat at the Table will be one of the most
important books on technology and business leadership of our
generation.
*Gene Kim*
As with his book The Art of Business Value, Mark Schwartz directly
confronts the tensions that exist across the corporate IT
landscape, showing us how we got here and what to do about it.
Almost every page contains a situation I've seen in my day-to-day
work, but that have not been articulated before. [A Seat at the
Table is] required reading for anyone seeking to understand how IT
should work with an organization to achieve success in an Agile
age.
*Ian Miell, Cloud Native Consultant, Container Solutions*
Mark has found the IT leadership cheese after Agile moved it.
Finally,an idea of how to structure IT, including leadership and
the teams,and joining the business and IT together!
*Joshua Seckel, Chief Engineer at WhiteHawk CEC, Inc.*
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