"In this innovative book, Irene Polikoff, Robert Coyne, and Ralph Hodgson have captured deep insights from many years of studying how to get across the 'Business-IT Gap.' Capability Cases are an invaluable tool for bridging from envisioning to design."

--Steve Cook, software architect, Microsoft Corporation

"Capability Cases offers hope that mere mortals can rise above the daunting challenge of blending technology and process. Executives hoping to adopt high-performing business models will want to learn this step-by-step approach to designing and implementing IT-enabled organizational change."

--Dr. Jeanne W. Ross, principal research scientist, MIT Center for Information

BRIDGE THE GAP BETWEEN BUSINESS VISION AND SOFTWARE SOLUTION

Both IT organizations and business leaders recognize the urgent importance of aligning technology solutions with enterprise strategy. But they've struggled to do so... until now. Capability Cases represents a breakthrough: a powerful, systematic way to translate business vision into effective plans and system designs.

The authors' Solution Envisioning methodology addresses the crucial "front end" of software development, where you decide what to build and how you're going to build it. Using realistic examples, they walk you through exploring the capabilities you need, capturing business best practices, identifying optimal solutions, and crafting software systems that deliver them.

Solution Envisioning enables you to specify better solutions in less time, build systems that more fully reflect your true needs, and dramatically reduce risk and cost throughout the entire development process. Understand Solution Envisioning--from vision to plan--in three phases:

• Use Business Capability Exploration (BCE) to build a shared understanding of what is needed in a solution--model your business situation using business forces, desired results, metrics, and scenarios

• Run Solution Capability Envisioning (SCE) workshops to facilitate decision-making, collaborative assessment, and consolidation of a solution concept--use Capability Case Galleries to discover alternatives, gain context, promote stakeholder interaction, and stimulate creativity

• Move from concept to business case to a roadmap for realization with Software Capability Design (SCD)

Includes easy-to-use "best of class" templates for developing a business case, concept of operations, architectural decisions, and other key work products.

Whether you're an executive, architect, project manager, developer, change agent, or consultant, Capability Cases will help you bridge the gap between vision and solution--so you can finally get what you need from information technology.

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This book introduces Capability Cases -- a solution-based technique to building viable enterprise and commercial software. UNK] Help your organization bridge the gap between business and ITI UNK] Empowers the reader to better grasp business needs and more quickly solve problems by leveraging the promise of emerging technologies UNK] Optimize the enterprise by envisioning solutions and taking advantage of the emerging practice of capability cases In today's climate of breakneck business pace, enterprise computing practitioners have to be results-oriented. This insightful new book lays our a clear path to achieving solutions. It describes an innovative and powerful new approach to envisioning, planning, designing, and building contemporary business software system solutions, using best practices captured in the form of Capability Cases. The authors help the reader align business strategy and required results to successful technology implementations. They demonstrate how to build a reliable bridge from the organization's business needs to optimal technology solutions that assure the long term viability of the enterprise, and maximize return on institutional investments. and design patterns, and this book is the first to show you how to make them work for your organization.