Second Edition, a book by Fred A. Cummins

Recently Fred A. Cummins published a new book about his favorite topic:

“Building the Agile Enterprise with Capabilities, Collaborations and Values, Second Edition”
by Morgan Kauffman.

I want to share a small review or introduction with you. Because it has many lessons we can learn from, when designing or transforming the Business. In this book you can read about the Business Design that forms the bridge between how the Business operates and the Business IT architecture.

The design and management of an enterprise is increasingly complex. Much of this complexity is a result of the impact of information technology on product design, business design, customer and supplier relationships, the global marketplace, and expectations for efficiency, quality and timeliness.

This book builds on a vision for business design where:

1. Capabilities are shared and optimized from an enterprise perspective
2. People and machines collaborate and are supported to fully utilize and coordinate the resources of the enterprise and its business partners
3. The business delivers multiple values, not just with low cost, to satisfy both internal and end customers as well as other business partners

This vision will further increase the ability to optimize the business operation through sharing of capabilities and improved coordination, to empower employees to contribute their skills and insights to the competitive strength of the enterprise, and to adapt quickly to challenges and opportunities for continuing competitive advantage.

However, this efficiency, agility and value optimization will increase the complexity of the enterprise. This complexity must be addressed by computer based models and support for optimization of business design and operation, by cross-organizational collaboration and by orderly, continuous strategic planning and transformation.

Several chapters deal with business design that exploits information technology. It is in particular demonstrated how the new Value Delivery Modeling Language (VDML) of the Object Management Group (OMG) can be leveraged for the purpose of business design and continuous strategic planning and transformation.

To order the book on Amazon, here the link: https://www.amazon.com/Building-Agile-Enterprise-Capabilities-Collaborations-ebook/dp/B01M12OR0N