"Offers a practical, close-up examination of how a manager or executive can best determine whether a new technology expenditure is justified by a business need." - cover.

Do you really understand what business value is? Information technology can and should deliver business value. But the Agile literature has paid scant attention to what business value means—and how to know whether or not you are delivering it. This problem becomes ever more critical as you push value delivery toward autonomous teams and away from requirements “tossed over the wall” by business stakeholders. An empowered team needs to understand its goal! Playful and thought-provoking, The Art of Business Value explores what business value means, why it matters, and how it should affect your software development and delivery practices. More than any other IT delivery approach, DevOps (and Agile thinking in general) makes business value a central concern. This book examines the role of business value in software and makes a compelling case for why a clear understanding of business value will change the way you deliver software. This book will make you think deeply about not only what it means to deliver value but also the relationship of the IT organization to the rest of the enterprise. It will give you the language to discuss value with the business, methods to cut through bureaucracy, and strategies for incorporating Agile teams and culture into the enterprise. Most of all, this book will startle you into new ways of thinking about the cutting-edge of Agile practice and where it may lead.

This book uses a system-based approach to decipher and organize the concepts and conclusions relevant for creating and capturing value in business. It develops a scientific theory based on systems science and logical reasoning that is commonly employed in mathematics and natural science. The resulting new theory focuses on the organizational nature of the world and the organic and holistic feature of human organizations and their interactions. To this end, this book identifies a few axioms, instead of empirical discoveries, on which it reliably constructs the entire theory.

This text examines a variety of important knowledge-related topics, such as the use of informal networks, communities of practice, the impact of knowledge on successful alliances, and social capital and trust.

Praise for Business Valuation: An Integrated Theory, 2nd Edition "The Second Edition of Business Valuation: An Integrated Theory manages to present the theoretical analysis of valuation from the first edition and expand on that discussion by providing additional guidance on implementing the relevant valuation theories, notably in its expanded discussion of the Quantitative Marketability Discount Model." —Dr. David Tabak, NERA Economic Consulting Your Essential Valuations Reference Whether you are an accountant, auditor, financial planner, or attorney, Business Valuation: An Integrated Theory, 2nd Edition enables you to understand and correctly apply fundamental valuation concepts. Thoroughly revised and expanded, the Second Edition demystifies modern valuation theory, bringing together various valuation concepts to reveal a comprehensive picture of business valuation. With the implementation of new accounting pronouncements mandating the recognition of numerous assets and liabilities at fair value, it has become critical for CPAs charged with auditing financial statements to understand valuation concepts. With thoughtful and balanced treatment of both theory and application, this essential guide reveals: The "GRAPES of Value"-Growth, Risk and Reward, Alternative Investments, Present Value, Expectations, and Sanity The relationship between the Gordon Model and the discounted cash flow model of valuation The basis for commonly applied, but commonly misunderstood valuation premiums and discounts A practical perspective on the analysis of potential business acquisitions Grounded in the real world of market participants, Business Valuation, 2nd Edition addresses your need to understand business valuation, providing a means of articulating valuation concepts to help you negotiate value-enhancing transactions. If you want to get back to valuation basics, this useful reference will become your guide to defining the various levels of value and developing a better understanding of business appraisal reports.

The importance of demonstrating the value achieved from IT investments is long established in the Computer Science (CS) and Information Systems (IS) literature. However, emerging technologies such as the ever-changing complex area of cloud computing present new challenges and opportunities for demonstrating how IT investments lead to business value. Recent reviews of extant literature highlights the need for multi-disciplinary research. This research should explore and further develops the conceptualization of value in cloud computing research. In addition, there is a need for research which investigates how IT value manifests itself across the chain of service provision and in inter-organizational scenarios. This open access book will review the state of the art from an IS, Computer Science and Accounting perspective, will introduce and discuss the main techniques for measuring business value for cloud computing in a variety of scenarios, and illustrate these with mini-case studies.

An in-depth examination of the concept of value in a digital world, an analysis of a range of digital business models and a framework for assessing the value of digital businesses. Assessing the value of traditional business was easy. There are hard, well tested metrics and tangible, measurable assets you can literally kick the tyres of. But how do you measure the value of something that consists of little more than bits of information, brand awareness and a compelling idea? In the winner takes all digital world how do you know if this idea is one that will attract billions of dedicated users or a few thousand fleeting trialists? And, most importantly, how do you assess whether any given business model is robust enough to make billions or flawed in a way that will lose millions? Lopez Lubian and Esteves look at what economic value means in a digital world, and argue for a shift from traditional value metrics to digital value metrics. Through high profile case studies they examine the process of valuation in the digital world – examining the challenges of making objective judgments from subjective information and how to assess the value of data. Next they analyse in depth a number of different digital business models from the perspective of delivering value to investors, stakeholders and society at large. Finally they present a framework model for assessing value in digital business.