The article about %%Keyword%%, which is currently a popular topic of Q&A Book, Is commanding substantial observance, isn’t it? Today, let’s explore some A Seat at the Table: IT Leadership in the Age of Agilit… that you may not know about in this article on https://camilledimaio.com/!

The comment on the article A Seat at the Table: IT Leadership in the Age of Agilit…

A Seat at the Table is Mark’s follow-up to the Art of Business Value. With AoBV, he began posing troubling questions for the Agile community by explaining how we’ve been taking too narrow a view of business value. He also revealed his ulterior motives when he asks as a CIO, “If the team is not allowed to listen to anyone other than the product owner, then what exactly should I be doing to add value to the enterprise?”. That’s Mark: provocative and funny.

Maybe Mark makes trouble because he’s has been troubled by his own role as a CIO during the Agile revolution. In “The CIO” chapter of AoBV, he tells a story about being called-out by the CEO for a project which delivered exactly what the business had asked for within budget and on time but was nevertheless, as Mark puts it “a disaster”. His reaction to the CEO at that time was the all-too-common, that’s on the them, not us — we did our part. Mark’s CEO responded “You’re missing the point. I have trusted you with an investestment in an IT system. Your job is to make sure I get a good return on IT investments. I am not getting a good return.” This was a wake-up call for Mark and he clearly had much more to say on this than he could fit into one chapter of AoBV.

In his latest book, A Seat at the Table, Mark gives us a tour-de-force on how to close the gap between the Agile team and the traditional IT department. This time, he makes trouble for everybody. But stick with him. You’ll be glad you did because Mark will make you laugh and make you better.

In ASaT, Mark continues to to stir-up trouble for the Agile community. He doubles-down on what he calls Agile’s “fist pounding, this must change” echo chamber. He points-out the hypocrisy of how the Agile team expects management to stay out of the way unless there is an impediment, in which case they expect a bit of command-and-control to remove it. He also makes quite possibly the most provocative criticism ever made of Agile: “I am not sure that the Agile approach fully accounts for how the Agile team can deliver value — and I think it should.”

Now, if you were to read those excerpts out of context (as I’ve presented them here), you might get the idea that Mark is opposed to Agile but nothing could be further from the truth. Wait until you read what he has to say about Waterfall.

Comparisons of Agile to Waterfall are easy to come by but Mark does it in a fresh way. In ASaT, he’s actually put his finger on the fatal flaw of Waterfall. He calls it the “contractor-control model”. This shines new light on something that, as Mark puts it, “is so ingrained in us, we don’t even know we’re doing it”. He further explains how traditional IT is still locked-in to that model and how its insistence upon imposing certainty where it isn’t possible is not only self-defeating but actively destructive.

Mark saves his most potent venom for Chapter 4 on planning, in which he launches a devastating assault on the plan-driven approach. Using reductio ad absurdum, Mark enumerates what he calls the “articles of faith for the PTW-WTP (i.e. “plan-the-work / work-the-plan”) religion”. It is both hilarious and boldly provocative. How provocative? Quoting this passage to management actually landed me in hot water for a couple of days. That is high-praise in my mind. Thank you Mark, sincerely.

A Seat at the Table is not just critical though. As one might expect from a scholar like Mark. It’s researched, constructive and novel. Beginning each chapter with a passage from a philosopher, he sets the stage for moving IT from a service provider to a driver of outcomes; replacing the plan-driven, control paradigm with ‘shaping behavior’, a shift from ‘buy’ to ‘build’, a fresh look at Enterprise Architecture (EA) and a concept that I hope Mark is considering as the subject for his next book, impeccability — although I suspect it’ll be EA.

This book is not just for CIO’s. If you are in IT, consider yourself an Agilist, want to understand more about Lean or DevOps, this book must be on your shelf, in your Kindle and part of your audiobook library. It’s that important of a work. Then, I challenge you to experiment with and advocate for some of the ideas put forth. Doing so will take courage. It may even put you at risk, but at least you’ll be choosing that risk and you’ll never wonder if you could have done more.