*Project status: Green* Well, folks, we did it.
Our final call for feedback provided the last bit of guidance we needed to polish the book's name. The fifth book in the _Open Organization_ book series will be titled: THE OPEN ORGANIZATION Guide to IT Culture Change Open principles and practices for a more innovative IT department A few notes on how we arrived at this decision: * **Guide to IT Culture Change**: This title retains the familiar feel of previous community-produced companions by conveying a sense of utility; it's a "guide," a useful and practical resource for accomplishing something. Also in contention was the term "handbook," but community members ultimately felt "guide" sounded less intimidating and more accessible. What's more, this is a guide to _culture change_, a phrase that recurred across so many of our informational interviews and research calls with authors and source matter experts. Consensus was clear here: The biggest problems IT organizations are facing today aren't technical—they're cultural. That's why a book about something like "openness" is not only relevant but necessary today, and the title must absolutely stress this. * **Open principles and practices for a more innovative IT department**: In the end, we managed to recuperate a term we initially sought to avoid because of its ambiguity: "innovation." While phrases like "culture of innovation" and "generating innovation" rang too hollow to really express the aim of the book, we think it works rather well in this particular instance, as it gestures toward the _kind_ of IT department our interviewees and authors described as imperative in the face of digital transformation. The evocative phrase "principles and practices" comes to us from contributor Justin Holmes, who offered it as a way of framing the book's twin focus on "cultures" (in Part 1) and "skills" (in Part 2)—on the abstract and the concrete. In the end, this subtitle/tagline seemed more descriptive and effective than the slightly more nebulous "Creating a culture of success in your IT department," and it allows us to "double down" on the notion of "open" as an essential component of IT culture change today (it also allows us to avoid some redundancy with the word "culture" appearing twice). When we produced previous books, we simply compiled and edited the material, brainstormed a few relevant titles, shopped those to our friends and colleagues, performed a bit of SEO work, and settled on something. The process was straightforward and quick. But what's true of the open source approach to just about anything is true here, as well: Opening up decision-making ability to a community of interested and engaged participants will yield better results—even if those results take longer to land. Now, land they have—and we're much better off than we'd been had we gone it alone. Thanks, all. May 1 begins our next project phase: Content freeze. Practically speaking, this means all book content will be finalized so authors writing introductions can work with complete copies of the manuscript. Stay tuned to the project's GitHub repository for more frequent updates. Bryan _______________________________________________ Openorg-list mailing list [email protected] https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/openorg-list
