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.