Friday, November 07, 2003

I.T. Doesn't Matter - Business Process Do

A few days back I mentioned that the new Howard Smith book came out called, "I.T. Doesn't Matter - Business Processes Do". I've had enough conversations with Howard to believe that he is one of the best minds in process driven, service oriented thinking. However, this book was quite disappointing.

Don't get me wrong. I think that Nicholas Carr is an incompetent pansy with a silver spoon stuck up his ass. As far as I can tell, Nicholas has never worked in an I.T. department, been a vendor to an I.T. department, or been the user of an I.T. department. He is a professional writer that gets paid by the word, regardless of the truth in the word.

Unlike Nicholas, Howard is an innovator, a practitioner and an evangelist. However, his critical analysis of Nicholas Carr's work was shabby at best. It appears as though he cranked out 120 pages of material while his emotions had control of him, and bitter emotions at that. It was clear to me that he was racing a publication to press while the Carr episode remained hot in peoples mind.

Save your money. Here are a couple great books:
For business dudes: "Designing and Managing the Supply Chain"
For geeks: "Non Functional Requirements in Software Engineering"

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