9 Augustine Confessions (selections) Augustine of Hi.docx

9 Augustine
Confessions
(selections)
Augustine of Hippo wrote his Confessions between 397 -400
CE. In it he gives an
autobiographical account of his whole life up through his
conversion to Christianity.
In Book 2, excerpted here, he thinks over the passions and
temptations of his youth,
especially during a period where he had to come home from
where he was studying
and return to living with his parents. His mother Monica was
already Christian and
his father was considering it. They want him to be academically
successful and
become a great orator.
From Augustine, Confessions. Translated by Caroline J-B
Hammond. Loeb Classical
Library Harvard University Press 2014
(Links to an external site.)
.
1. (1) I wish to put on record the disgusting deeds in which I
engaged, and
the corrupting effect of sensual experience on my soul, not
because I love
them, but so that I may love you, my God. I do this because of

my love for
your love, to the end that—as I recall my wicked, wicked ways
in the
bitterness of recollection—you may grow even sweeter to me.
For you are
a sweetness which does not deceive, a sweetness which brings
happiness
and peace, pulling me back together from the disintegration in
which I was
being shattered and torn apart, when I turned away from you
who are unity
https://www-loebclassics-
com.offcampus.lib.washington.edu/view/augustine-
confessions/2014/pb_LCL026.61.xml
and dispersed into the multiplicity that is oblivion. For there
was a time
during my adolescence when I burned to have my fill of hell. I
ran wild and
reckless in all manner of shady liaisons, and my outward
appearance
deteriorated, and I degenerated before your eyes as I went on

pleasing
myself and desiring to appear pleasing in human sight.
2. (2) What was it that used to delight me, if not loving and
being loved? But
there was no boundary maintained between one mind and
another, and
reaching only as far as the clear confines of friendship. Instead
the slime
of fleshly desire and the spurts of adolescence belched out their
fumes,
and these clouded and obscured my heart, so that it was
impossible to
distinguish the purity of love from the darkness of lust. Both of
them
together seethed in me, dragging my immaturity over the
heights of bodily
desire, and plunging me down into a whirlpool of sin. Your
anger grew
strong against me, but I was unaware of it. I had been deafened
by the
loud grinding of the chain of my mortality, the punishment for
the pride of
my soul, and I went even further away from you, and you let
me. I was
shaken about and poured away and spilled out and burned up by
my
sexual immorality; and you said nothing. How long you took,
my Joy! You
were silent then, and I wandered far, so far, from you, toward
more and
more sterile seeds, whose only fruit was grief, in my proud
despondency
and restless lethargy.
(3) Who would bring order to my predicament? Who would turn

the fleeting
attractions of these most recent experiences to a proper purpose
and fix limits to
their luscious taste, to make the foaming waves of my youth
surge toward the safe
haven of marriage? If I were unable to find contentment in such
experiences by
being confined to the procreation of children (this is what your
law prescribes, Lord,
for you also cultivate the offshoots of our mortality, and in your
power you set your
gentle hand to keeping in check the thorns which you excluded
from your
paradise—for your omnipotence is not far from us, even when
we are far from
you)—or I would surely have taken more notice of the sound
from your clouds, “Such
as are married will experience the troubles of the flesh: but I am
sparing you," and, “It
is good for a man not to touch a woman"; and, “He who has no
wife thinks upon the
things of God, how to please God; he who is joined in
matrimony thinks upon worldly
things, how to please his wife.” I should have paid more
careful attention to these
voices, and if I had become a eunuch for the sake of the
kingdom of the heavens I
would now be anticipating your embraces with more pleasure.
(4) I was in a pitiful state of turmoil, abandoning you to follow
the impulse of my own
moral weakness. I transgressed all your true ordinances, but I
did not escape your
scourges. What mortal ever can? After all, you were always
there, merciful even in
your severity, sprinkling all my forbidden pleasures with the

bitterest of
disappointments, so that I would seek a kind of pleasure that is
free from
disappointment, and when I did so I would find none other but
yourself, Lord,
yourself alone. You shape pain into precepts, and you strike us
to heal us, and you
put us to death so that we do not die apart from you. Where was
I? And how far was
I in exile from the pleasures of your house in that sixteenth year
of my mortal age,
when the madness of lust seized dominion over me (and I
surrendered myself to it
completely)? Such passion was permissible by human standards,
disgraceful as they
are: but it is forbidden by your laws. Not that my family was
concerned to rescue me
from ruin by marrying me off—their only concern was for me to
master oratory and
rhetoric as thoroughly as possible.
3. (5) In that year, there was a break in my studies. I was
brought back from
Madauri, the nearby town where I had now begun to lodge in
order to
study literature and oratory. My father, with more temerity than
wealth,
was saving up to pay for me to stay at Carthage in the longer
term, for
even though he was a citizen and councilor at Thagaste, he was
a man of
modest means. Who am I telling this? Certainly not you, my
God! But I am

narrating this story in your presence to my kind, to the whole
human race,
whatever tiny fraction of it happens to come across these
writings of mine.
And why is this? Obviously so that I, and whoever reads this,
may ponder
the depths from which we must cry out to you. What is closer to
your ears
than a heart that makes its confession to you and a life that is
faithful?
Who was there, back then, who did not praise that man, my
father, because he was
spending on his son whatever he must, even beyond his means,
so that his son
could travel far away in order to pursue his studies? Many
citizens, far richer than he,
took less trouble than this for their children: although in the
meantime this same
father was not at all troubled about what kind of person I grew
up to become before
you, or whether I was chaste. So long as I was well-spoken, so
what if I was
estranged from worshipping you, O God?—though you are the
one true Master over
your field which is my heart.
(6) In my sixteenth year I found myself obliged to be at leisure,
for funds at home
were low, and I had a break from all this education and started
living with my
parents. Thorny growths of sexual immorality sprouted up
higher than my head, and
there was no hand to uproot them. Rather, when we were at the
baths my father saw
that I was becoming a man and clothed with the turbulence of

adolescence; he was
delighted by this, at the prospect of grandchildren. In his
pleasure he told my mother.
It was a pleasure fueled by wine, which is the way this world
has forgotten you, its
creator, and loved—instead of you—creation; and all because of
the invisible wine of
its own will, which is perverse and inclined toward everything
base.
{Augustine's mother Monica, a Christian, was worried about his
morals] ...
(7) Pity me! How do I even dare to say that you were silent, my
God, when I was the
one withdrawing from you? Were you really so silent toward me
then? Whose words
were they if not yours that you chanted into my ears through my
mother, who was
your faithful servant! From that age on, nothing penetrated my
heart deeply enough
to spur me to act upon it. My mother’s wish (and I recall how in
great distress she
warned me privately about it) was that I should not commit
fornication or, still worse,
adultery with a woman who was married. This seemed to me to
be mere women’s
nagging; it would be embarrassing to pay heed to it. But they
were warnings from
you, and I had no idea of it. I went on believing that you were
saying nothing. I
thought she was the one speaking, though all the time it was you
speaking to me
through her. So in rejecting her I was rejecting you—I who was

her son, I who was
the son of your handmaid, and your servant.
But I knew none of this. I rushed headlong so blindly that
among friends of my own
age I blushed over the slightest loss of prestige, for I would
hear them boasting of
their own scandalous deeds. The more discreditable the deeds,
the more they
bragged about them. So I began to take pleasure in such
behavior not just because
of the lust of the deed itself but also because of the kudos it
won me. What is more
deserving of disapproval than depravity? I faked the depravity
to avoid the
disapproval of my peers. If no actual wrongdoing took place
that I could boast of to
equal my peers in their abandon, I pretended to have done
something wrong, though
really I had not. I did not want my innocence to resemble
weakness nor did I want to
be scorned because of my sexual inexperience.
8. [Augustine's mother Monica worries about him] ... Now she
began to
realize that it was already unhealthy and potentially a future
danger too;
something to restrain within the bounds of a marital relationship
if it could
not be pruned back to the quick. The reason why she did not
take it more
seriously was her fear of damaging my expectations by
shackling me to a
wife: not, in other words, that hope for the world to come which
my mother
maintained, but the hope of an academic career, which (as I

knew) both
my parents were all too eager for. In my father’s case, this was
because
he gave virtually no thought to you and instead thought of my
gaining such
hollow achievements. My mother, though, thought that such
customary
academic study would not only be no hindrance but might even
be some
help in my striving to reach you. At least so I guess, when I
recall my
parents’ behavior as best I can. They gave me a loose rein,
rather than an
attitude of strict discipline, to indulge my volatility with
whatever pleasures
took my fancy—in all of which, my God, a mist was cutting me
off from the
brightness of your truth, while my wickedness was overflowing
in its
abundance.
9. (9) Your law, Lord, surely punishes theft; and that law is so
written in
human hearts that not even wrongdoing can efface it. For what
thief
willingly puts up with a thief, even if one has all he needs while
the other is
driven by need? I wanted to commit theft, so I did. I was not
driven by any
kind of lack other than the absence of righteousness and a
distaste for it:
and the fact that I was bloated with sin. For I stole what I had
already in

plenty, and of far better quality. I had no desire to enjoy what I
had aimed
to steal; rather, what I enjoyed was the theft and sin themselves.
There was a pear tree near to our vineyard, laden with fruit
which had no attractive
appearance or flavor. So we set out in the dead of night—a gang
of good-for-nothing
youths—to shake it down and carry off its fruit; up till then we
had prolonged our
sport in the usual vexatious fashion in the streets. We carried
off great loads, not for
ourselves to eat but for throwing to pigs—though we did eat
some of them, on
condition that what we were doing was something we enjoyed
because it was
forbidden.
Look, O God, and see my heart, see my heart! For you had
mercy on it even in the
depths of the pit. Let my heart tell you now to look upon it:
what was it searching for
there? And how was it that I became a wrongdoer for nothing,
and the cause of my
wrongdoing was none other than wrongdoing itself? It was
loathsome and I loved it. I
was in love with death, I was in love with my own failing—not
the thing in which I was
failing, but the actual failure itself was what I loved. My soul
was foul and, becoming
alienated from your firm foundation, it was disintegrating into
oblivion. It did not use
disgraceful means to achieve what it wanted; what it wanted
was the disgrace itself.
5. (10) Certainly beautiful objects have an attraction about

them, whether
made of gold or silver or the like. Also, the sense of what feels
right in the
physical act of touching has a powerful influence upon us, while
the other
senses are all proportionately adapted to particular material
objects.
Worldly honor and the power to rule and command have their
own dignity,
and from this the taste for vengeance arises. Yet there should be
no
escaping from you, Lord, and no turning away from your law, so
as to
obtain all these things. The life we live here on earth has its
own particular
attraction, because it possesses its own proper measure of honor
and is in
balance with all these things that are beautiful on a lower level.
Human
friendship is also sweetened by a precious bond on account of
the unity it
forges out of many souls. Yet it is in pursuit of all these things
and the like
that sin gains an entrance, while an ungoverned inclination for
those
things, even though they are only the lowest level of goods,
means that
better and higher ends are abandoned—which is to say you,
Lord our
God, and your truth and your law. For even these lowly things
bring with
them pleasures, but not like my God, who has made everything;
because
the righteous shall rejoice in the Lord, and he himself is the
delight of
those who are true of heart. ....

6. (12) I was pathetic! What was it that I loved about you, my
theft, my deed
of darkness done in the sixteenth year of my age? For you were
not
beautiful, because you were an act of theft. Then again, should I
be
addressing you as if you were an actual thing? The fruit we
stole was
beautiful because it was your creation, O most beautiful of all,
creator of
all, good God, God the supreme good, and my true good. Yes,
the fruit
was beautiful, but my pitiable soul did not desire the actual
fruit. I had
plenty of better fruit—I plucked these only for the sake of
thieving. For I
threw away what I had stolen. All that I feasted on from my
theft was my
own wickedness, and I was delighted to enjoy it. Even if one
morsel of fruit
passed my lips, it was sin that sweetened it.
Now, O Lord my God, I want to work out what it was about the
theft that gave me
pleasure. Look—it does not have a fine appearance. I do not
mean in the same way
as justice and wisdom, or indeed like human intelligence and
memory, nor physical
senses and organic growth; neither is it beautiful in appearance
and shining like the
stars in their courses, and the earth and the sea teeming with
new life being born
and replacing what falls into decay. My act of theft is not even

like those deceiving
vices that have a specious, shady illusion of beauty.
(14) ...So what was it about the theft that gave me pleasure,
and in which I imitated
my Lord, albeit in a wicked and perverse way? Was it pleasing
to contravene your
law at least surreptitiously because I was not able to do so in an
authoritative way?
Was it that I myself was like a captive, imitating a maimed kind
of freedom by doing
what was forbidden without being punished, in a shadowy
semblance of your
omnipotence? Just look at me—that slave fleeing from his own
master, and pursuing
a fantasy! What rotten filth! What a deformity of life, what an
abyss of death! Was it
possible to take pleasure in something just because it was
forbidden, and for no
other reason than that it was forbidden?
7. (15) How shall I make restitution to the Lord for the fact that
my memory
recalls these things and yet my soul is not afraid because of
them? I will
love you, Lord, and give thanks, and confess praises to your
name
because you have forgiven me my sins and all my wrongdoing...
8. (16) What fruit did I obtain back then, wretch that I was,
amid those
actions which I now blush to remember—particularly that theft
in which I
enjoyed nothing else but the actual thieving, both because it too
was a
nothing and because it made me even more wretched! For had I

been
alone I would not have done it (I remember thinking so at the
time), yes, I
would definitely not have done it alone. So what I loved about it
was
participating with others in doing what I did. Did I not love
anything, then,
apart from the theft? Surely I loved nothing else, because that
participation
was not something real. What was it, in actual fact? Who is it
who can
teach me, except the one who illuminates my heart and
penetrates its
shadows? What is this thing that has come into my mind to seek
out, and
investigate, and weigh up? Because if then I loved those fruits
that I had
stolen and was longing to enjoy them, I could have done it
alone. If it was
enough to commit that sin by which I achieved my pleasure, I
would not
have had to kindle the itch of my greedy desire through the
stimulus of
complicit consciences. Because my pleasure was not in the
pears, it was
in the actual crime that a fellowship of sinners committed
together.
9. (17) What were my thoughts and feelings? Certainly they
were
self-evidently shameful, and augured ill for me as I maintained
them. But
still, what actually were they? Who understands their faults? It

was for a
laugh, to give us a bit of a thrill, at the thought of cheating
people who had
no idea we were capable of such behavior and who would
strongly
disapprove. So why did I get pleasure from something that I
would not
have done at all if left to myself? Is it perhaps because no one
finds it easy
to laugh when alone? It is a fact that no one finds it easy, but
even so
laughter sometimes overcomes people when no one else is
present, and
they are solitary and alone, if something overwhelmingly silly
impacts upon
their senses or thoughts. Yet on my own I would never have
done it, no, I
definitely would not have done it on my own.
O my God, see the living memory of my soul in your presence! I
would not have
committed that theft on my own, a theft in which it was not the
stolen items that
pleased me but the very act of thieving. It definitely would not
have pleased me to do
it alone, nor would I have done it. What an extremely alien
alliance it was—an
unsearchable distraction of the mind! Out of a game and a lark
came an eagerness
to do harm, a taste for inflicting losses on others without myself
gaining anything, or
enjoying settling a score. Once someone says, “Come on, let’s
do it,” it is shameful
to be anything but shameless.
10. (18) Who is going to untie that tangled, twisted mass of

knots? How vile it
is—I have no desire to turn my attention to it, I have no desire
even to look
upon it. I desire you—O Righteousness and Integrity, both
lovely and
becoming to the gaze that is true, with an appetite that can
never cloy.35
With you there is deep peace and life which cannot be
disturbed. Those
who enter into you enter into the joy of their Lord and will not
be afraid,
and will abide perfectly in the One who is perfect. I deviated
from you, I
have wandered from the path, my God; in my teens I was too
inconstant in
your steadfastness, and I made myself into a barren land.
confessions_2014/2014/pb_LCL026.87.xml#note_LCL026_87_3
5
Mini Case
Delivering Business Value with IT at Hefty Hardware2
“IT is a pain in the neck,” groused Cheryl O’Shea, VP of retail
marketing, as she slipped into a seat at the table in the Hefty
Hardware executive dining room, next to her colleagues. “It’s
all technical mumbo-jumbo when they talk to you and I still
don’t know if they have any idea about what we’re trying to
accomplish with our Savvy Store program. I keep explaining
that we have to improve the customer experience and that we
need IT’s help to do this, but they keep talking about
infrastructure and bandwidth and technical architecture, which
is all their internal stuff and doesn’t relate to what we’re trying

to do at all! They have so many processes and reviews that I’m
not sure we’ll ever get this project off the ground unless we go
outside the company.”
“You’ve got that right,” agreed Glen Vogel, the COO. “I really
like my IT account manager, Jenny Henderson. She sits in on all
our strategy meetings and seems to really understand our
business, but that’s about as far as it goes. By the time we get a
project going, my staff are all complaining that the IT people
don’t even know some of our basic business functions, like how
our warehouses operate. It takes so long to deliver any sort of
technology to the field, and when it doesn’t work the way we
want it to, they just shrug and tell us to add it to the list for the
next release! Are we really getting value for all of the millions
that we pour into IT?”
“Well, I don’t think it’s as bad as you both seem to believe,”
added Michelle Wright, the CFO. “My EA sings the praises of
the help desk and the new ERP system we put in last year. We
can now close the books at month-end in 24 hours. Before that,
it took days. And I’ve seen the benchmarking reports on our
computer operations. We are in the top quartile for reliability
and cost-effectiveness for all our hardware and systems. I don’t
think we could get IT any cheaper outside the company.”
“You are talking ‘apples and oranges’ here,” said Glen. “On one
hand, you’re saying that we’re getting good, cheap, reliable
computer operations and value for the money we’re spending
here. On the other hand, we don’t feel IT is contributing to
creating new business value for Hefty. They’re really two
different things.”
“Yes, they are,” agreed Cheryl. “I’d even agree with you that
they do a pretty good job of keeping our systems functioning
and preventing viruses and things. At least we’ve never lost any
data like some of our competitors. But I don’t see how they’re
contributing to executing our business strategy. And surely in
this day and age with increased competition, new technologies
coming out all over the place, and so many changes in our
economy, we should be able to get them to help us be more

flexible, not less, and deliver new products and services to our
customers quickly!”
2 Smith, H. A., and J. D. McKeen. “Delivering Business Value
with IT at Hefty Hardware.” #1-L10-1-001, Queen’s School of
Business, May 2010. Reproduced by permission of Queen’s
University, School of Business, Kingston, Ontario, Canada.
76
Delivering Business Value with IT at Hefty Hardware 77
The conversation moved on then, but Glen was thoughtful as he
walked back to his office after lunch. Truthfully, he only ever
thought about IT when it affected him and his area. Like his
other colleagues, he found most of his communication with the
depart- ment, Jenny excepted, to be unintelligible, so he
delegated it to his subordinates, unless it absolutely couldn’t be
avoided. But Cheryl was right. IT was becoming increasingly
important to how the company did its business. Although
Hefty’s success was built on its excellent supply chain logistics
and the assortment of products in its stores, IT played a huge
role in this. And to implement Hefty’s new Savvy Store
strategy, IT would be critical for ensuring that the products
were there when a customer wanted them and that every store
associate had the proper information to answer customers’
questions.
In Europe, he knew from his travels, IT was front and center in
most cutting- edge retail stores. It provided extensive self-
service to improve checkout; multichannel access to information
inside stores to enable customers to browse an extended product
base and better support sales associates assisting customers; and
multimedia to engage customers with extended product
knowledge. Part of Hefty’s new Savvy Store business strategy
was to copy some of these initiatives, hoping to become the first
retailer in North America to completely integrate multimedia
and digital information into each of its 1,000 stores. They’d
spent months at the executive committee meetings working out
this new strategic thrust—using information and multimedia to

improve the customer experience in a variety of ways and to
make it consistent in each of their stores. Now, they had to
figure out exactly how to execute it, and IT was a key player.
The question in Glen’s mind now was how could the business
and IT work together to deliver on this vision, when IT was
essentially operating in its own technical world, which bore
very little relationship to the world of business?
Entering his office, with its panoramic view of the downtown
core, Glen had an idea. “Hefty’s stores operate in a different
world than we do at our head office. Wouldn’t it be great to
take some of our best IT folks out on the road so they could see
what it’s really like in the field? What seems like a good idea
here at corporate doesn’t always work out there, and we need to
balance our corporate needs with those of our store operations.”
He remembered going to one of Hefty’s smaller stores in Moose
River and seeing how its managers had circumvented the
company’s stringent security protocols by writing their
passwords on Post-it notes stuck to the store’s only computer
terminal.
So, on his next trip to the field he decided he would take Jenny,
along with Cheryl and the Marketing IT Relationship Manager,
Paul Gutierez, and maybe even invite the CIO, Farzad
Mohammed, and a couple of the IT architects. “It would be
good for them to see what’s actually happening in the stores,”
he reasoned. “Maybe once they do, it will help them understand
what we’re trying to accomplish.”
A few days later, Glen’s e-mailed invitation had Farzad in a
quandary. “He wants to take me and some of my top people—
including you—on the road two weeks from now,” he
complained to his chief architect, Sergei Grozny. “Maybe I
could spare Jenny to go, since she’s Glen’s main contact, but
we’re up to our wazoos in alligators trying to put together our
strategic IT architecture so we can support their Savvy Stores
initiative and half a dozen more ‘top priority’ projects. We’re
supposed to present our IT strategy to the steering committee in
three weeks!”

“And I need Paul to work with the architecture team over the
next couple of weeks to review our plans and then to work with
the master data team to help them outline their information
strategy,” said Sergei. “If we don’t have the infrastructure and
78 Section I • Delivering Value with IT
integrated information in place there aren’t going to be any
‘Savvy Stores’! You can’t send Paul and my core architects off
on some boondoggle for a whole week! They’ve all seen a Hefty
store. It’s not like they’re going to see anything different.”
“You’re right,” agreed Farzad. “Glen’s just going to have to
understand that I can’t send five of our top people into the field
right now. Maybe in six months after we’ve finished this
planning and budget cycle. We’ve got too much work to do
now. I’ll send Jenny and maybe that new intern, Joyce Li, who
we’re thinking of hiring. She could use some exposure to the
business, and she’s not working on anything critical. I’ll e-mail
Jenny and get her to set it up with Glen. She’s so great with
these business guys. I don’t know how she does it, but she
seems to really get them onside.”
Three hours later, Jenny Henderson arrived back from a
refreshing noontime workout to find Farzad’s request in her
priority in-box. “Oh #*!#*@!” she swore. She had a more finely
nuanced understanding of the politics involved in this situation,
and she was standing on a land mine for sure. Her business
contacts had all known about the invitation, and she knew it was
more than a simple request. However, Farzad, hav- ing been
with the company for only eighteen months, might not recognize
the olive branch that it represented, nor the problems that it
would cause if he turned down the trip or if he sent a very
junior staff member in his place. “I have to speak with him
about this before I do anything,” she concluded, reaching for
her jacket.
But just as she swiveled around to go see Farzad, Paul Gutierez
appeared in her doorway, looking furious. “Got a moment?” he
asked and, not waiting for her answer, plunked himself down in
her visitor’s chair. Jenny could almost see the steam coming out

of his ears, and his face was beet red. Paul was a great
colleague, so mentally put- ting the “pause” button on her own
problems, Jenny replied, “Sure, what’s up?”
“Well, I just got back from the new technology meeting between
marketing and our R&D guys, and it was just terrible!” he
moaned. I’ve been trying to get Cheryl and her group to
consider doing some experimentation with cell phone
promotions—you know, using that new Japanese bar coding
system. There are a million things you can do with mobile these
days. So, she asked me to set up a demonstration of the technol-
ogy and to have the R&D guys explain what it might do. At
first, everyone was really excited. They’d read about these
things in magazines and wanted to know more. But our guys
kept droning on about 3G and 4G technology and different types
of connectivity and security and how the data move around
and how we have to model and architect everything so it all fits
together. They had the business guys so confused we never
actually got talking about how the technology might be used for
marketing and whether it was a good business idea. After about
half an hour, everyone just tuned out. I tried to bring it back to
the applications we could develop if we just invested a little in
the mobile connectivity infrastructure, but by then we were
dead in the water. They wouldn’t fund the project because they
couldn’t see why customers would want to use mobile in our
stores when we had perfectly good cash registers and in-store
kiosks!”
“I despair!” he said dramatically. “And you know what’s going
to happen don’t you? In a year or so, when everyone else has
got mobile apps, they’re going to want us to do something for
them yesterday, and we’re going to have to throw some sort of
stopgap technology in place to deal with it, and everyone’s
going to be complaining that IT isn’t helping the business with
what it needs!”
Jenny was sympathetic. “Been there, done that, and got the T-
shirt,” she laughed wryly. “These tech guys are so brilliant, but
they can’t ever seem to connect what they

Delivering Business Value with IT at Hefty Hardware 79
know to what the business thinks it needs. Sometimes, they’re
too farsighted and need to just paint the next couple of steps of
what could be done, not the ‘flying around in jetpacks vision.’
And sometimes I think they truly don’t understand why the
business can’t see how these bits and bytes they’re talking
about translate into something that it can use to make money.”
She looked at her watch, and Paul got the hint. He stood up.
“Thanks for letting me vent,” he said. “You’re a good listener.”
“I hope Farzad is,” she thought grimly as she headed down the
hall. “Or he’s going to be out of here by Thanksgiving.” It was
a sad truth that CIOs seemed to turn over every two years or so
at Hefty. It was almost predictable. A new CEO would come in,
and the next thing you knew the CIO would be history. Or the
user satisfaction rate would plummet, or there would be a major
application crash, or the executives would complain about how
much IT cost, or there would be an expensive new system
failure. Whatever it was, IT would always get blamed, and the
CIO would be gone. “We have some world-class people in IT,”
she thought, “but everywhere we go in the business, we get a
bad rap. And it’s not always our fault.”
She remembered the recent CIM project to produce a single
customer database for all of Hefty’s divisions: hardware,
clothing, sporting goods, and credit. It had seemed to be a
straightforward project with lots of ROI, but the infighting
between the client divisions had dragged the project (and the
costs) out. No one could agree about whose version of the truth
they should use, and the divisions had assigned their most
junior people to it and insisted on numerous exceptions,
workarounds, and enhancements, all of which had rendered the
original business case useless. On top of that, the company had
undergone a major restructuring in the middle of it, and a lot of
the major play- ers had changed. “It would be a lot easier for us
in IT if the business would get its act together about what it
wants from IT,” she thought. But just as quickly, she recognized
that this was probably an unrealistic goal. A more practical one

would be to find ways for business and IT to work
collaboratively at all levels. “We each hold pieces of the future
picture of the business,” she mused. “We need to figure out a
better way to put them together than simply trying to force them
to fit.”
Knocking on Farzad’s door, she peeked into the window beside
it. He seemed lost in thought but smiled when he saw her.
“Jenny!” he exclaimed. “I was just thinking about you and the
e-mail I sent you. Have you done anything about it yet?” When
she shook her head, he gave a sigh of relief. “I was just
rethinking my decision about this trip, and I’d like your
advice.” Jenny gave her own mental sigh and stepped into the
office. “I think we have a problem with the business and we
need to fix it—fast,” she said. “I’ve got some ideas, and what to
do about the trip is just part of them. Can we talk?” Farzad
nodded encouragingly and invited her to sit down. “I agree with
you, and I’d like to hear what you have to say. We need to do
things differently around here, and I think with your help we
can. What did you have in mind?”
Discussion Questions
1. Overall, how effective is the partnership between IT and the
business at Hefty Hardware? Identify the shortcomings of both
IT and the business.
2. Create a plan for how IT and the business can work
collaboratively to deliver the Savvy Store program successfully.
Dr. Straw’s APA & Writing Checklist
Eric M. Straw, PhD 2019.12.14 Page 1
Compliance with the American Psychological Association
(APA)1 standards is required

in all your assignment submissions in this class. I know that
APA and writing compliance is
challenging. Please use this checklist to ensure you comply with
APA standards. I will mark but
not explain APA and writing errors in your papers. You will
need to refer to this document to
identify the correction to the marked items.
Abstract
Abstract #1: An abstract is included for any assignment where
the body of the paper is
over two pages.
Abstract #2: The word Abstract is used as the level one
heading.
Abstract #3: The abstract is on a page by itself right after the
cover page.
Abstract #4: The abstract provides a sufficient overview of the
paper in one paragraph of
250 words or fewer.
Citations
Citations #1: All ideas, concepts, and information gleaned from
a source include a proper

citation of that source.
Citations #2: All quotations include author, date, and page
number(s) citation. If a page
number is not available because of the format of the source, the
citation includes a section
name and/or a paragraph number.
Citations #3: All sacred text quotations include book, chapter,
verse, and version citation.
Citations #4: Quotation marks are only used for quotations.
Emphasis is shown by using
italics.
Figures
Figures #1: All charts, graphs, plots, and screenshots are
labeled as figures.
Figures #2: All programming code and mathematical equations
use single spacing and are
placed in a box and labeled as figures and placed either in the
body of the paper or in
appendices. All programming code longer than one page is
placed in an appendix.
Figures #3: All figures are full width, stretching from the left
margin to the right margin,
and the content is readable.

Figures #4: Labels for all figures are below the figure, left-
justified, and are formatted
correctly as shown on the next line. The X represents the figure
number.
Figure X. Descriptive title.
Figures #5: All figures taken from a source include a full
citation with the author, year, and
page number at the end of the figure label.
Headings
Headings #1: Headings are used as signposts that keep the
writer focused and guide the
reader.
Headings #2: The content under every heading is at least one-
half page.
Headings #3: All level one headings are the same font-size as
the text, centered, bold, the
first letter of each word is capitalized, and the headings appear
on a line by themselves.
Headings #4: All level two headings are the same font-size as
the text, left-justified, bold,
the first letter of each word is capitalized, and the headings
appear on a line by themselves.

Headings #5: All level three headings are the same font-size as
the text, left-justified, bold,
only the first letter is capitalized, and each heading is the first
sentence of a paragraph with
a period at the end of the heading.
Dr. Straw’s APA & Writing Checklist
Eric M. Straw, PhD 2019.12.14 Page 2
Running Head
Running Head #1: The title of the paper is used as the running
head.
Running Head #2: The words running head are not included in
the running head except on
the cover page.
Running Head #3: The running head appears left-justified, in
all capital letters, and is in
the header of each page.
Tables
Tables #1: All content that consists of rows and columns of
numbers and/or text is labeled
as a table.

Tables #2: All tables are full width, stretching from the left
margin to the right margin, and
the content is readable.
Tables #3: Labels for all tables are above the table, left-
justified, and and are formatted
correctly as shown on the next two lines. The X reprents the
table number.
Table X
Descriptive Title.
Tables #4: All tables taken from a source include a full citation
with the author, year, and
page number below the table as a note.
Reference Page
Reference Page #1: The word References is used as the level
one heading.
Reference Page #1: The references begin on a new page after
the body of the paper and
before the appendices.
Reference Page #3: References are sorted alphabetically by the
authors’ last names.
Reference Page #4: References include all sources cited in the
body of the paper and only

those sources cited in the body of the paper.
Reference Page #5: Each reference uses a hanging indent where
the first line is left
justified, and subsequent lines are indented five spaces.
Reference Page #6: Each reference is single-spaced, and there
is a blank line between each
reference.
Writing - general
Writing #1: 12-point Times New Roman is the font used.
Writing #2: The line spacing is double-spaced, and there are no
extra blank lines between
paragraphs.
Writing #3: All paragraphs are indented five spaces.
Writing #4: All proper nouns begin with a capital letter,
including all names of sacred
scriptures, places, people, companies, and products. If a
company or product is branded
with a lower-case first letter, then the branding capitalization is
followed.
Writing #5: All acronyms are spelled out the first time they are
used.
Writing #6: No contractions are used.

1 American Psychological Association (2009). Publication
manual of the American
Psychological Association (6th ed.).
Working in your teams, have each person choose one of the
following figures who
are important for understanding religion and philosophy in the
Roman empire. Read
the canvas page for that person, and write a letter in that
persona explaining a
difficult choice that you made and why you made it. You can
choose or invent the
recipient of the letter. 400-500 words. Try to show off things
you have learned about
the person's personality from the text associated with them, and
about the Roman
empire from the course materials in writing your letter. Post to
the collaboration, and
submit here as a Canvas assignment.
Marcus Aurelius Emperor and Stoic This Roman emperor's
Greek writings about the
Stoic philosophy of enduring what cannot be changed have been
inspirational to
many.
Thecla, bold convert to Christianity She carves out a new role
for herself in the

aftermath of her conversion to Christianity.
Perpetua, bold convert to Christianity. Her high-stakes embrace
of Christianity
seems unthinkable to her wealthy family.
Apuleius was the author of Metamorphoses, or The Golden Ass,
a Latin novel about
a man who turns himself into an ass and is later rescued by the
goddess Isis. Along
the way he hears the story of Cupid and Psyche, an ancestor of
the Beauty and the
Beast story. Oh, and Apuleius in real life was accused of
witchcraft and put on trial
for his life after he married his college roommate's mother.
You can write as
Apuleius or as his wife Pudentilla.
Augustine (354-430 CE). As part of recounting events in his life
before he became
Christian, he writes in his autobiographical work Confessions
about some trouble he
got into when his schooling was unexpectedly interrupted and
he had to return home
to his parents.
https://canvas.uw.edu/courses/1376004/pages/9-dot-4-marcus-
aurelius-meditations
https://canvas.uw.edu/courses/1376004/pages/9-the-acts-of-
paul-and-thecla
https://canvas.uw.edu/courses/1376004/pages/9-perpetua
https://canvas.uw.edu/courses/1376004/pages/9-apuleius
https://canvas.uw.edu/courses/1376004/pages/9-augustine-
confessions-selections

9 Augustine Confessions (selections) Augustine of Hi.docx

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