Book Reviews

Tad Anderson just wrote a great review of Decision Management Systems, my new book, over on his blog on the SOA World Magazine site. Two of his comments struck me particularly. The first summarized what I consider to be the biggest limiting factor in information systems today: There are not too many systems being created [...]

Decision Management can only succeed if the business rules for decisions can be effectively managed. Effective management must involve both business and IT organizations. There must be alignment and collaboration if the business rules are to be managed correctly. Indeed empowering this collaboration is the primary value of a business rules management system. Yet most [...]

Nancy Pearson and David Farrell kicked off the main event. 8,000 people at IBM IMPACT apparently and Nancy introduced the key themes – helping companies optimize for growth and focus on delivering results. The topics are based on a continued focus on getting business and IT to work together (a key theme of Decision Management [...]

My friend Carsten Ziegler, with Thomas Albrecht, has just released a new book on business rules for SAP customers – BRFplus — Business Rule Management for ABAP Applications. I was delighted to provide a foreword to this book as I think BRFplus is a terrific tool for SAP customers, giving them the power of business [...]

I am a big believer in the power of standards to drive market expansion when they are done right and one of my favorite standards recently has been PMML – the Predictive Model Markup Language. This XML standard allows analytic models to be developed on one of  a wide range of analytic modeling workbenches and [...]

I received a pre-release copy of Tom Davenport’s new book Analytics at Work: Smarter Decisions, Better Results. The book is a follow-on to Competing on Analytics (reviewed here) and is a shorter, pithier book than its predecessor. Once again Tom collaborates with Jeanne Harris and this time Robert Morison of the Concours group. Where the [...]

[amazonify]0201788934:right[/amazonify][amazonify]0201788934::text::::Principles of the Business Rule Approach by Ron Ross[/amazonify] This book is one of the classics on business rules from one of the most long-standing authors in the area, Ron Ross. The book is a little more than three years old but, as it is not really focused on technology for managing business rules so [...]

[amazonify]0471412937:right[/amazonify][amazonify]0471412937::text::::Business Rules Applied: Building Better Systems Using the Business Rules Approach by Barbara von Halle[/amazonify] This book is one of the classics on developing information systems with a business rules approach. Not only does the book give a good overview of the key concepts in business rules, it also lays out the core tasks and [...]

[amazonify]0470027215:right[/amazonify][amazonify]0470027215::text::::Business Rules Management and Service-Oriented Architecture by Ian Graeme[/amazonify] This is a fairly technical look at business rules, the technology of a business rules management system and patterns of using them. The book gives a fairly quick overview of SOA and then introduces business rules, both as an approach and as a class of technology. [...]

[amazonify]1600050131:right[/amazonify][amazonify]1600050131::text::::Business Rule Revolution: Running Business the Right Way by Barbara Von Halle, Larry Goldberg[/amazonify] The book is a collection of chapters, not necessarily designed to be read in sequence. The chapters include: A great summary of various rules projects surveyed by KPI showing the focus on agility, consistency, knowledge management, legacy modernization, business control (though [...]

[amazonify]0470189088:right[/amazonify][amazonify]0470189088::text::::The Best Service is No Service: How to Liberate Your Customers from Customer Service, Keep Them Happy, and Control Costs[/amazonify] I just finished reading The Best Service is No Service: How to Liberate Your Customers from Customer Service, Keep Them Happy, and Control Costs and I can’t recommend it too highly. This is a tremendous [...]

[amazonify]1422125009:right[/amazonify][amazonify]1422125009::text::::Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies[/amazonify] I have just finished reading Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies. Groundswell is a great book providing a thorough and up to date discussion of how to use social media, and more, to connect with and energize your customers. The book approaches the [...]

[amazonify]0470018534:right[/amazonify][amazonify]0470018534::text::::The IT Value Stack: A Boardroom Guide to IT Leadership[/amazonify]I recently finished Ade McCormack’s book, The IT Value Stack: A Boardroom Guide to IT Leadership. The book is aimed at a fairly high-level audience and makes a case for better integration, or “entwinement”, of technology into businesses. Ade can come across somewhat opinionated but he [...]

[amazonify]0553805401:right[/amazonify][amazonify]0553805401::text::::Super Crunchers: Why thinking by numbers is the new way to be smart[/amazonify] Ian Ayres book, Super Crunchers: Why thinking by numbers is the new way to be smart, is another book extolling the virtues of data-driven decision making. In that regard it is very similar to Competing on Analytics. The book focuses in on [...]

[amazonify]0071450149:right[/amazonify][amazonify]0071450149::text::::The Power to Predict: How Real Time Businesses Anticipate Customer Needs, Create Opportunities, and beat the competition[/amazonify] I recently read The Power to Predict: How Real Time Businesses Anticipate Customer Needs, Create Opportunities, and Beat the Competition by Vivek Ranadive (CEO of Tibco). I liked the book – it was readable and well-written. It was [...]

[amazonify]1422106667:right[/amazonify][amazonify]1422106667::text::::IT Risk: Turning Business Threats into Competitive Advantage[/amazonify] I was lucky enough to get a pre-release copy of IT Risk: Turning Business Threats into Competitive Advantage by George Westerman and Richard Hunter. The book approaches IT risk not as a technical issue but as a business and management one with potentially serious consequences. As businesses increasingly are [...]

[amazonify]1400063515:right[/amazonify][amazonify]1400063515::text::::The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable[/amazonify] I have just finished reading Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s book – The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. NNT (as he calls himself) has some fascinating points and some interesting turns of phrase, though he does rather go on and on and on…. Leaving aside [...]

[amazonify]1591398622:right[/amazonify][amazonify]1591398622::text::::Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths And Total Nonsense: Profiting From Evidence-Based Management[/amazonify] On the plane over I finished Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths And Total Nonsense: Profiting From Evidence-Based Management by Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton. This excellent book lays out why and how companies fail to drive their business based on evidence, and instead “miracle cure” [...]

[amazonify]0470043555:right[/amazonify][amazonify]0470043555::text::::Chocolates on the Pillow Aren’t Enough: Reinventing The Customer Experience[/amazonify] I have just finished Jonathan Tisch’s book Chocolates on the Pillow Aren’t Enough: Reinventing The Customer Experience.The author is Loews Hotels chairman and CEO and is clearly very knowledgeable about the customer experience and how to improve it. The book has two main sections – [...]