The Executive's Guide to Information Technology

WatkinsDore writes "The Executive's Guide to Information Technology is a 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." Read on below for more of WatkinsDore's review. The Executives Guide to Information Technology author Baschab / Piot pages 500 publisher John Wiley & Sons rating 9 reviewer Quentin Watkins ISBN 0471266094 summary A guide to the business aspects of managing IT with a focus on senior executives and IT managers

This book is interesting because it fills a well-known gap between 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 by slashdotters in the previous few months for books on the general management of IT, principally in these Ask Slashdot questions: Books on IT (not Project) Management?,Best Computer Books For The Smart?, and General IT Books?

The Executive's Guide to Information Technology 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 are 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.)

Review:

Overall the book does a good job making the case that the key principles it outlines are the best predictors of a successful IT department. The book is replete with real-life, and often-humorous anecdotes from the authors' experiences in turning around distressed IT departments. IT managers will quickly recognize many of the symptoms of an IT department in trouble. The book is written in a easily 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 (over 500 pages).

The book also has a CD-ROM with documents, spreadsheets and links to the underlying research that went into the book.

Slashdot 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 blogs "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 firing 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:

1. The Effective IT Organization
   1. The IT Dilemma
   2. Sources and Causes of IT Ineffectiveness
   3. Information Technology Costs
2. Managing the IT Department
   1. The IT Organization
   2. The IT Director
   3. IT Direction and Standard Setting
   4. IT Operations
   5. Application Management
   6. IT Human Resource Practices
   7. Vendor Selection
   8. Vendor Management
3. Senior Executive IT Management
   1. Working with the Business
   2. IT Budgeting and Cost Management
   3. Effective Decision Making and Risk Management
   4. IT Demand Management and Project Prioritization
   5. IT Performance Measurement
   6. 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 Professor Lynda M. Applegate from Harvard Business school.

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.

You can purchase The Executive's Guide to Information Technology from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Comments

How is OSS dealed in this book ?

[GerardM]

There is a chapter on how to select your Vendor. This implies that proprietary software is to be selected (hence the word vendor)

Does this imply that OSS is not on the map? If OSS is not dealt with, I would rate this book as not of this time. The challenge of IT is to make do and do well on a limitid budget. OSS does play a role in this. So does the choise for open standards; this allows for unhindered communication with the rest of the world.

Thanks,
Gerard

Purpose of an IT manager

[blinka]

Any IT manager needs to have exactly the following skills:

• Ability to listen and understand his techies. This usually means he needs to have been an IT grunt at some point in his career.
• Ability to take their advice and repackage it into something that he can present to the folks who sign the check
• Ability to prevent anyone outside IT from intruding directly into the IT employee's time. Act as a gatekeeper unless specifically requested not to by a techie.

While we techies know our shit, too frequently we don't know how to explain it to the people who we're helping out, and seldom can do so to those who are going to give us the money to by the equipment we need. A manager who can keep us working happily by filtering innane problems to us rather than having us spend 100% of the time helping people move their mouse is the only way to keep us from jumping ship. And having the manager communicate our needs in the marketing speak that we don't have is the only way to get us our toys so we are happy in our jobs.

A good IT manager knows enough to understand the geeks, figure out when we're lying, and protect us from politics and direct moron access.

Re:Purpose of an IT manager

[MilesBehind]

I think the really interesting times are still ahead of us in the IT/management relationships. When enough IT people get older and wiser, those that are not pidgeonholed in the basement, coding Cobol or something will rise through the ranks and enter management. This, in theory, should do wonders for productivity of IT departments and project teams.

The call shouldn't really be to try to introduce management to IT, and teach them how to treat the elusive, photosensitive and moody critter that the techs are, but to drag the techies out of their cages and have them apply their intellects to make broader decisions than those involved in coding. While these books are neccessary for the interim time, I think that techies would do well by grabbing some management/economics textbooks, and waiting for the management to retire and open spots for them.

Re:Purpose of an IT manager

[johannesg]

Although this explains how I ended up in a small office 10km away from my customers, it still does not make me very happy. I can communicate just fine, and I can handle interruptions to my work. What I *cannot* handle is being alone all day every day, with noone to talk to. I'm sure it is a different problem to what some people are experiencing, but let me tell you: it sucks.

Re:Purpose of an IT manager

[TopShelf]

I think the real difference here is between a support and development function. For day-to-day support needs, there needs to be a well-defined and understood communication process that only brings in the technical staff at the point where they're truly needed. On the new development side, however, there needs to be more direct communication between the business users and the technical staff to make sure that what is being developed is actually what the customers want.

Re:so in other words...

[FortKnox]

Heh... I get a lot of this, too.

You ONLY have a year and a half of struts experience?? I just interviewed a guy with five years, and a guy with three!
Umm... the guy with five is flat out lying (or the original author), and the guy with three must be a part of the struts open source development team, right (Struts 1.0 was released 6/01. I had this interview like 6 months ago)?