Review: The Executive's Guide To Information Technology
from the let's-try-this-out dept
We don't normally do straight book reviews here, unless we can tie them into to some sort of story - or link to someone else's review. For the most part, that's just a function of time. However, here's a case where someone not associated with Techdirt went out and wrote a whole review for us, so we'll try out this whole "reviewing" thing. The book being reviewed is The Executive's Guide to Information Technology, which (to be honest) sounds a bit pricey - but, as the review points out there's a lot of stuff in this book, so the price actually might be reasonable. The book apparently mentions Techdirt - which no one told us about. Perhaps that's because, while we're a "good source of unbiased customer experience information", they also find that, on most blogs, "the signal-to-noise ratio on a given topic can sometimes be low." Such is life. If you'd like to read the full review click on "read more" or "comments" below.Reviewer: Quentin WatkinsBook: The Executive's Guide to Information Technology Book author: Jon C. Piot, John Baschab
Overview:
The Executives Guide to Information Technology is book focused on the "business" pieces of managing IT, such tasks as IT organization design, vendor selection and management, communicating with business users, IT human resource management, establishing IT steering committees and managing the overall demand within the IT department. The book is interesting because it fills a well-known gap in current book offerings that address vocational issues, such as "how to program in java" and academic research such as the most effective data access algorithms.
In fact, it addresses some of the questions that have been asked over at Slashdot, where technology professionals are searching for books that are not about specific technologies, but about the overall good management of the IT department (Books on IT (not Project) Management, and Best Computer Books For The Smart, and General IT Books?).
Techdirt also gets mentioned inside this book (chapters 6, 7 and 10), so I wanted to review it here!
Review:
The book is targeted at IT managers, and also senior executives who want to better understand how IT can be effectively managed. Interestingly, it starts by analyzing the question "why have an IT department at all?" and answers the question with productivity statistics and other anecdotal evidence of the importance of IT. The premise of the book then emerges, asking "if IT is important, then why does it seem to fail so often, and cause so much trouble for companies?"
The answer, predictably, is that IT is often a poorly-managed function within a company. IT managers seldom receive the appropriate business training to manage a large, mission-critical function and budget, and non-technical executives get lost in the maze . The authors show that many of the symptoms of poor IT departments (overspending, overstaffing, project budget overruns and failure to complete) are caused by, or at least related to poor management within IT.
The remainder of the book covers the key topics that, according to the authors, are the key components to the effective management of IT departments. The table of contents for the book appears below.
Overall the book does a good job making the case that the key principles outlined are the best predictors of a successful IT department. The book is laced with real-life, and often humorous, anecdotes from the authors experiences in turning around distressed IT departments, and IT managers will quickly recognize many of the symptoms of an IT department in trouble. Many of the principles outlined in the book apply to the management of any corporate function, not just IT, and are also common-sense. However, the IT flavor throughout the book. The book is written in a fairly readable, conversational tone, and there are charts and graphics throughout to further explain key points.
At just over 500 pages, the book is lengthy compared to competing offerings however, it is written in a way that lets the reader pick and choose specific chapter topics, without losing much of the context. At $75, it at first seems a bit pricey for a general management book, but low for a textbook. Compared to other books on a price-per-page basis, the book seems more reasonable based on the large volume of content and page count.
The book also has a CD-ROM with documents, spreadsheets and links to the underlying research that went into the book.
Techdirt even gets a mention in a couple of chapters as a good source of "unbiased customer experience information" although the authors say that for many "it can take some effort to separate fact from opinion on the blogs, and the signal-to-noise ratio on a given topic can sometimes be low."
In all, the book is a relatively easy read, thought-provoking, and a great reference for IT managers (or aspiring managers) who want to learn to think like senior executives and ensure that their IT departments are running on all cylinders. Based on previous threads on Slashdot, the book fills a clearly-needed niche on the general management of IT.
The book also has a supporting website that has information on the book www.exec-guide.com.
Table of contents:
Section 1: The Effective IT Organization
Chapter 1 The IT Dilemma
Chapter 2 Sources and Causes of IT Ineffectiveness
Chapter 3 Information Technology Costs
Section 2: Managing the IT Department
Chapter 4 The IT Organization
Chapter 5 The IT Director
Chapter 6 IT Direction and Standard Setting
Chapter 7 IT Operations
Chapter 8 Application Management
Chapter 9 IT Human Resource Practices
Chapter 10 Vendor Selection
Chapter 11 Vendor Management
Section 3: Senior Executive IT Management
Chapter 12 Working with the Business
Chapter 13 IT Budgeting and Cost Management
Chapter 14 Effective Decision Making and Risk Management
Chapter 16 IT Performance Measurement
Chapter 17 IT Steering Committee
Highlights:
Opening chapters on "why MIS departments matter" and the symptoms of under-performing IT departments.
Vendor selection and vendor management chapters.
IT steering committee chapter why have one, what it can help IT accomplish.
IT budgeting chapter shows key components of IT budget , how-to’s and benchmarking information.
Nice forward by a Prof from Harvard
Lowlights:
Portion of chapters on IT organization describing in painstaking detail the exact roles and responsibilities for every position on the IT team. This stuff needs to be there to make the book comprehensive, but not new news for experienced IT professionals.
Book information:
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Format: Hard cover with CD-ROM
ISBN: 0471266094
Date: April, 2003
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