The Book

Getting the book

The proposed timeline is that within a year, the book is published. Using a time boxing method, draft releases will be published (externally or internally) every eight weeks.

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Scope of Interest

Given the complexity of modern organizations and the dependencies between the organization and its customers, employees, partners and suppliers, sourcing activities can be an endeavour. Without fully understanding the strategic, tactical and operational consequences, sourcing can be risk full and where bad decisions can lead to serious repercussions.

To further explore the idea of ‘right sourcing’ - we are collecting material for a book.

We are interested in finding a way to improve the strategy and decision making and improve the execution of the organizational transformation in case of splitting the organization or integrating mergers and acquisitions. So is there a way to make the dependencies at the level of people, process and technology visible and explicit so that well informed decisions can be made? How agile is the chosen solution, how well is it equipped to future changes? And last but not least can we assure that the solution that is chosen is in line with the chosen business strategy, business models, business plans and the technology that is available?

Outline of Ideas

The image below illustrates our preliminary ideas for topics to include in the book. The topics involve the four parts of the Sourcing equation (People, Organization, Economics and Technology). The mind-map is not final and we are open for other ideas and topics.

Organization

There are many methods of collaborative book writing, and there is no single methodology which stands out as perfect. Instead the methodology needs to be selected based on the characteristics of the team members, communication methods, time lines, etc. The chosen method for the production of this book is modeled on the Agile Development Methodology. The concept is quite straight forward and is a methodology that should hopefully fit how we work rather than forcing us to work contrary to how we feel comfortable working.

The modified core values of the methodology which we would like to follow is:

-Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
-Legible chapters over comprehensive masses of notes
-Responding to change over following a plan

Exploring these values gives us a number of principles:

-Reader/Contributor/Author satisfaction by rapid, continuous delivery of useable chapters
-Legible book is delivered frequently (weeks rather than months) – This is really fundamental to how we would like to work. This relates to the concept of time boxing – the practice of limiting activities to a particular amount of time.
-The legibility of the book is the principal measure of progress.
-Even late changes in requirements are welcomed.
-Rapid interaction between the editor team and the writers is the best form of communication.
-Regular adaptation to changing circumstances

A small editor team will use their own professional network to find writers for the book. The editor team supports and facilitates the writers team. The editor team also tries, with an architectural framework as a reference, to get a rich and diverse content for the book. To give the writers some freedom and to prevent that they are bounded by an architectural framework as used by the editor team, our first thought is to arrange the chapters around the topics people & organization, economics and technology as they should be the foundation for ‘right sourcing’.

We write in an iterative fashion, every eight weeks producing a book which should be a ‘rewarding read’ for someone in our target audience. In other words, our work on the book is time boxed into eight week iterations. If we are unable to complete the work we had in mind for the current iteration, we do not present half finished work, but instead it naturally falls into the work for the following release.

One of the most important points above is that a legible book is delivered frequently. This is opposed to an approach where the book is only legible at the very end when all the loose ends and all the notes in the margins, post-it notes, etc are addressed and dealt with at the end of the writing process. It is our opinion that this approach, while it may work for seasoned writers working alone, will most likely end up with a book of lower quality which is harder to read. Instead, the suggested approach is as follows – We write in an iterative fashion, every eight weeks producing a book which should be a ‘rewarding read’ for someone in our target audience. In other words, our work on the book is time boxed into eight week iterations. If we are unable to complete the work we had in mind for the current iteration, we do not present half finished work, but instead it naturally falls into the work for the following release.

Using a website and social media the book promotion will start at an early stage. The editor team will encourage writers to participate in the promotion activities. The writers will get a platform to present them self and their work on the book.

Intellectual ownership

The book is to be written as a non-profit making, internationally collaborative book, to be released under a Creative Commons license. As an internationally collaborative book writing initiative, the book can be made better by building on top of each others work. Traditionally a book would be released using an ‘all rights reserved’ style license. But why stop building on each others hard work once the book is finished? What about allowing the book to be a seed that enables the creation and development of other projects/initiatives/works?

The believe is that by opening up the book to an appropriate Creative Commons license we stand to benefit the most from our hard work in creating the book.

The overall goal is to communicate to a large audience how Right Sourcing has a great potential to help organizations to optimize resource use, to cut waste of human labor and energy, and capital. To increase awareness on this potential, we are writing a non-profit making internationally collaborative book, released under a Creative Commons license.

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