Agile, Lean, and DevOps approaches are radical game changers, providing a fundamentally different way to think about how IT fits into the enterprise, how IT leaders lead, and how IT can harness technology to accomplish the objectives of the enterprise. But honest and open conversations are not taking place between management and Agile delivery teams.

In A Seat at the Table, CIO Mark Schwartz explores the role of IT leadership as it is now and opens the door to reveal IT leadership as it should be-an integral part of the value creation engine. With an easy style, Schwartz reveals that the only way to become an Agile IT leader is to be courageous-to throw off the attitude and assumptions that have kept CIOs from taking their rightful seat at the table. CIOs, step on up, your seat at the table is waiting for you.

About the Author

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 an Enterprise Strategist for Amazon Web Services, he uses his extensive CIO wisdom to advise the world's largest companies on the obvious: time to move to the cloud, guys. As the CIO of US Citizenship and Immigration Services, he provoked 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, change leadership, bureaucratic implications of DevOps, and using Agile practices in low-trust environments. With a BS in computer science from Yale, a master's in philosophy 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 is the author of The Art of Business Value, which - he is proud to report - has been labeled by his detractors "The Ecclesiastes of Product Management," and "Apocryphal." The book takes readers on a journey through the meaning of bureaucracy, the nature of cultural change, and the return on investment of an MBA degree, on the way to solving the great mystery ... what exactly do we mean by business value and how should that affect the way we practice IT? He promises that A Seat at the Table is more canonical and less apocryphal.

Mark is the winner of a Computerworld Premier 100 award, an Amazon Elite 100 award, a Federal Computer Week Fed 100 award, and a CIO Magazine CIO 100 award, which strongly suggests that there are less than 99 other authors you could better spend time reading.

Reviews
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.



Book Information
ISBN 9781942788119
Author Mark Schwartz
Format Paperback
Page Count 313
Imprint IT Revolution Press
Publisher IT Revolution Press
Weight(grams) 449g
Dimensions(mm) 229mm * 150mm * 18mm