[ecoop-info] CALL FOR CHAPTERS: Information Technology Aligned with Business Objectives and Values: Integrating Software Engineering, System Management, and Governance

[Vladimir Tosic]

CALL FOR CHAPTERS: Information Technology Aligned with Business Objectives and Values: Integrating Software Engineering, System Management, and Governance
A book edited by Dr. Vladimir Tosic, NICTA, Australia
Proposals Submission Deadline: 	March 31, 2008
Full Chapters Due: 		April 30, 2008
For up-to-date information, visit: www.nicta.com.au/people/tosicv/igi_book

Introduction
   To maximize benefits from information technology (IT) systems, their execution should be coordinated with business objectives, values, and 
operations of user organizations. Unfortunately, it has been noticed many years ago that improvements in IT (e.g., better performance) need not result in expected business benefits, often because of poor alignment between business operations and used IT systems. Due to the constantly 
rising complexity and total cost of IT systems, this old and difficult problem has gained additional prominence. 
   Almost independently and simultaneously, several research communities have emerged to address various aspects of business-IT alignment, including (but not limited to): 
1)	Value-based software engineering (VBSE, a.k.a. value-driven software engineering – VSE) explicitly considers value issues (e.g., value-based prioritization) during the software engineering process, in order to make the resulting systems more useful to customers and users. 
2)	The goal of business-driven IT management (BDIM) is to determine mappings between technical and business performance metrics and leverage them to make run-time IT system and/or service management (monitoring and control) decisions that maximize business value. 
3)	IT governance is a part of corporate governance that tries to ensure that IT systems support business objectives and strategies. 
   Each of these three communities makes significant progress towards business-IT alignment. Unfortunately, there is very little awareness within these three communities (and other communities that research business-IT alignment) about issues in and results from the other communities. Since all these communities work on the problem of business-IT alignment, there are some similarities and overlaps between them. However, there are also important differences, caused by the diversity of research community backgrounds, methodologies, and focus topics. 

The Overall Objectives of the Book
   The main goals of this book are to:
1)	Inform a wide audience about the problem of business-IT alignment and basic concepts, research issues, and recent results (from various research communities) on improving business-IT alignment. 
2)	Provide a unique forum for discussions of why and how to integrate results achieved in various research areas (particularly, value-based software engineering, business-driven IT management, IT governance) that explore different aspects of business-IT alignment. Such integration will lead to better modeling, monitoring, and control of business value produced by IT systems, improving thus business-IT alignment during the whole lifecycle of IT systems. 
   To accomplish these objectives, the book will present surveys of different research areas, a number of contributed chapters on specific recent advances, as well as explicit discussions of why and how the results from different communities should be integrated to improve business-IT alignment. 

The Target Audience   
   The intended book audience includes, but is not limited to, researchers, practitioners, and educators who want to learn more about advanced approaches to improving business-IT alignment. Researchers in the areas of value-based software engineering, business-driven IT management, and/or IT governance will find the content of this book vital to their research endeavors. In addition, researchers in related broad areas, such as requirements engineering, software engineering, software economics, system/network management (and self-management), autonomic computing, business process modeling/management, corporate governance, and management (business) information systems will find the book relevant and useful for their work. The book is also targeted towards practitioners (software developers, system administrators, other IT professionals, IT managers, and business managers), because the problem of business-IT alignment affects many of them. Furthermore, educators (particularly academics) and students will be able to use it as a textbook for advanced courses and/or as a reference resource.

Topics of Interest (include, but are not limited to) 
-	Strategic alignment between business and IT
-	Requirements engineering for strategic alignment
-	Measures (and measurement) of business value of IT and/or business-IT alignment
-	Modeling of relationships between business objectives/values/operations and IT system features
-	Modeling of mappings between business and technical metrics
-	Balanced scorecard (particularly, IT balanced scorecard)
-	Economics of software and IT in general
-	Value-based approaches to different IT system (e.g., software) engineering life-cycle phases, activities, and decisions
-	Quantifying value of new technologies for IT system (e.g., software) engineering
-	Management of risk and business value during IT system (e.g., software) engineering
-	Business-driven IT system planning, acquisition, deployment, and provisioning
-	Business-driven IT monitoring and control (e.g., optimization, adaptation)
-	Bridging the gap between business process modeling/management and IT system/service management
-	Business-driven service level management
-	Adaptive/autonomic computing from a business value perspective 
-	Software tools for engineering and/or (automated) management of IT systems aligned with business objectives and values
-	IT governance structures, processes, and relational mechanisms
-	Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL), Control Objectives for Information and related Technology (COBIT), and other IT governance frameworks
-	Integration of value-based software engineering, business-driven IT management, and IT governance
-	Application of business-IT alignment solutions to advanced IT systems (e.g., Web services, grids)
-	Case studies in value-based software engineering, business-driven IT management, or IT governance
   We strongly encourage submissions discussing topics that are not included in the above list, but are related to the problem of business-IT alignment and the overall objectives of this book. Submissions that bridge results from different communities in order to provide better business-IT alignment and submissions analyzing practical experiences with recent research results are particularly welcome. 

Submission and Review Procedure 
   Authors are invited to submit chapters describing original, high-quality research on topics of relevance for this book. They should first e-mail 2-5 page chapter proposals (in Word) to the book editor (vladat  at_server: computer.org, with Subject line starting with “IGI Book”) before March 31, 2008 (earlier submission is encouraged). A chapter proposal should contain title, author details (names, affiliations, and e-mail addresses), an extended abstract, suggested chapter structure, an explanation of relevance for this book, a discussion of relationships with other publications by the same authors, and brief biographies of the authors. The authors will be notified about the acceptance of their chapter proposals and sent chapter preparation guidelines (e.g., chapter size) around April 7, 2008. Subsequently, the authors of accepted proposals will have to e-mail full chapters (in Word) to the book editor before April 30, 2008. All submitted chapters will be reviewed on a double-blind review basis by at least 3 international experts. This means author details must not be given in a chapter submission and the authors should refer to their past work using the third person. The process for selecting which submitted chapters will be accepted will be competitive. The authors will be notified about acceptance of their chapters around June 30, 2008. Revised accepted chapters will be due on July 31, 2008. 
   The book is scheduled for publication in 2009 by IGI Global (formerly Idea Group Inc.), http://www.igi-pub.com, publisher of the IGI Publishing (formerly Idea Group Publishing), Information Science Publishing, IRM Press, CyberTech Publishing and Information Science Reference (formerly Idea Group Reference) imprints. 

Inquiries and submissions can be forwarded to (e-mail is strongly preferred):
Dr. Vladimir Tosic
Managing Complexity Research Group - Sydney (ATP), NICTA (National ICT Australia Limited)
Bay 15, Locomotive Workshop, Australian Technology Park, Eveleigh, NSW, 1430, Australia
Tel.: +61 2 8374 5517
E-mail contact: vladat  at_server: computer.org (Subject line MUST start with “IGI Book”)
For up-to-date information, visit: www.nicta.com.au/people/tosicv/igi_book