Customer Reviews

IT's hidden face: Everything you always wanted to know about Information Technology. A look behind the scenes

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What a wonderful read - if you are in any size business and exposed to IT in any way whether a CEO, newly hired end-user, or in any phase of the IT world, you need to understand at least parts if not all of this book. Fortunately Claude Roeltgen has captured the essence of the IT world, from its exciting potential to improve our lives and processes to its ugly complex side that can cause friction and discontent. He does all this as others have noted with humor and utter frankness, but always in an easily understandable fashion.

Having had both business-side and IT (CIO) side of experience over 50 years, I believe I could write most of my auto-biography with passages taken from this book. From the first paragraph to the last I found a kindred spirit.

Having hired and mentored numerous IT folks, many directly out of college, I heartily recommend they read this in its entirety. It can help sustain them in the exciting, ever-changing IT career field by better understanding the difficulties they "will" face and why from the business side.

On the business side, several sections should be required reading for business students, and CEOs, to new end-users to help them better live and function in an environment that continually embraces IT equipment, software, and methods to help meet their business goals and objectives.

THANKS CLAUDE!

As the Director of Information Technology (IT) for the Kansas City Board of Public Utilities (BPU), I have been a participant in the IT industry for twenty plus years. During that tenure, I have work closely with numerous IT employees, vendors, contractors, and consultants. These professionals know their technology craft - at least to the point of yesterday's last press release, technology white paper or Claude Roeltgen's book, IT's hidden face.

It is a very different situation for the non-IT, the unenlightened - what we call "users." Claude Roeltgen's premise for the book is that "IT users" should participate in the total IT solution by getting a better understanding of IT and that IT professionals should lighten up on the tech-speak and help educate the users about what is really all involved in delivering an IT solution.

The book, IT's hidden face, is a well written book that in layman's terms distinctly explains the many facets of IT in a sequence that helps the reader wrap his mind around the whole of IT, albeit those IT users who should read it probably won't. IT users will read it if we, IT professionals, take Claude's advice and communicate with our users. Taking the cue from Claude's un-complicating descriptions of IT's technologies and processes, the reader is provided with a simple straight forward explanation of IT that I expect will certainly help me better communicate with my IT users.

If you are familiar with the old shoemaker's shop sign, "We can do things quick, cheap, and well. Pick two." I highly recommend Claude Roeltgen's book, IT's hidden face without reservation as a must read for why your users can only pick two.

This book is what I wish I could get all "Users" to read. Specifically management who don't seem to grasp the incredible complexity of the IT environment. For them it's often just a "punch some keys on your keyboard and get it done" mentality, in terms of both ease and speed.

Claude Roeltgen had captured the essence of the IT environment and presented it in a way that is understandable, and indeed insightful, to technical and non technical readers.

Claude uses excellent, relevant, and often humorous, life anecdotes to drive home the points he's making which really makes you look forward to the next topic and anecdote.

In addition, I found many insights that I had not had the opportunity (or misfortune) to experience thus far in my career. I hope that when the time comes, I can reflect on this book and by virtue of the knowledge gained from its reading; avoid some significant pit falls.

I highly recommend this book to those who wonder "what does IT do all day", to Business Management and also to those of us in the thick of the IT world. It's a wealth of fantastic information for experienced and inexperienced IT professional alike.

WOW!!! Is the one word that came to mind when reading this book. As the Corporate Director of IT in the hospitality industry, I was thoroughly impressed with this book. I seem to never have time to think about reading books and especially IT Books, but this book sheds light in areas of IT that you may have wanted to avoid. I began reading this book at the right time; directly at the beginning of a New Project. I can say, that it seems that everything discussed in this book, has happened to me during this implementation. IT's Hidden Face sheds the right light on a project. Everyone seems to think that a project should always go perfectly, but that's them looking in to IT behind a metal glass. I have yet to find a project that went 100% smoothly. Reading this book helps you explain why a project doesn't go as smoothly as everyone thinks it should. As the book states, it sheds light on "project dependencies". I have always been that IT person that knew that just because you're in IT doesn't mean you should skip learning about the Business ins and outs of the company in which you are employed. This book also brings the Business side of a project into the forefront. As that's where IT has to go back to, asking for funding. So I recommend this book to my team, my boss, as well as my colleagues. This is a very exciting book from cover to cover!

Basically I am not really attracted by technical books. This is why I hesitated to read this one. After a first glance and two more chapters I realized that finally an author had the simple (but genius) idea to describe in simple words what IT is really about, all day, everywhere, at any time. The added examples and anecdotes are presented with plenty of humour so that you do not even notice time flying by.

Finally a book that avoids trying to explain technical details when talking about information technology. This is definitely a book that you understand if you are a technician AND if you are not.

The author seems never to be tempted by becoming boring or too theoretical. As if he simply was telling a bedtime story, he easily provides an image of what all those persons working in "IT" are doing all day. No big slogans ("IT is very hard", "too complicated", "resolving all problems" etc.etc.), only comprehensive, structured images completed by facts and explanations, just if he had written this book for his parents who, for years, had been asking:"Son, what are you really doing all day at work? Please explain again!"

This one book covers practically every issue I have faced in my 30 plus years of working in I.T.

I highly recommend Claude Roeltgen's book to anyone that is using a computer right now. Claude covers issues that both business and home computer users face. I really enjoyed that he provides advice, as well as, insight on how to address many of these issues. Backuping up your computer is such a basic thing. I am amazed at how often I am asked to recover data from a 4 year old computer that was never backed up. Claude's suggestion of using one USB memory device for each day of the week is a simple, yet inexpensive, solution to what can be a very costly problem for the home computer user.

Claude uses a lot of analogies that I believe will allow the average computer user to understand the difficulties faced by the I.T. department. Additionally, he discusses our common frustration with the current level of acceptance of software problems as well as explaing just complex an integrated system can be.

Claude does a wonderful job explaining the world of Information Technology (IT) in terms that a non-technical person can understand. There were many times while reading this book I was laughing because the situation described was what we faced in our IT department.

The quote of "one million or one year" is very valid. Projects take time and are more costly than business professional believe. Business professionals need to take the time to understand the world of IT and that it is not just a click of a button. This connection is imperative to help create the efficiencies in business processes and drive out costs through technology. Businesses that can create a bridge between business and technology will pull ahead of their competitors. Technology is the way of the future.

This book is very well written. I would recommend this book to every business professional that wants to embrace change and gain a competitive advantage.

I have been in the IT industry for over a quarter-century, and have been a part of IT operations at large and small companies in a variety of verticals. I like to stay current on trends and technologies, and it is a real challenge finding sources of information that bridge the gap between best practices and the reality of the working world.

Claude does a superlative job not only of clearly and succinctly describing the IT corporate world, but also does so in a pragmatic and straightforward manner. I wholeheartedly recommend this book to anyone who would like a fresh, informed look at the reality of IT, straight from the trenches.

Claude Roeltgen does a great job of describing the intricacies and the complexities of the IT environment, and he does so in a way that intrigued both myself (a CTO) and my 13-year old son. Quite a feat.

His basic premise, that business needs to enact an understanding of IT at the same level of seriousness that IT needs to understand business, is something that the IT world has needed for quite some time.

I may not completely agree with Mr. Roeltgen in every way. I take issue with some of the text -- be it an issue of translation or not (I read the book, twice, in the translated English version). There are some basic premises that I disagree with, and there are some statements that I raise my eyebrow when I read [ In Chapter 7, he writes "A programmer's source code is, by principle, never checked by someone else -- only the result of what the program does is checked." Mr. Roeltgen clearly has not been involved in agile programming methods and cross-unit testing) ]. I also see several "stabs" at the American business ethos ("As some American companies don't seem to know that computers are being used in the rest of the world as well and don't imagine that there are also different ways of doing things ...).

Regardless, Mr. Roeltgen is right on the point in his basic approach, and he does it with an almost hilarious sense of humor. His ability to describe the complexity of the IT world such that a business user (or my 13-year old) can understand is outstanding. I have already used his "CEO's son" example multiple times with my senior executive team.

All-in-all: a great read, right on the point, and funny. Highly recommended.

This book removes the simplicity and magic created by living in a googleized world where all information is a short phrase and MOUSE click away. The reality of Google or any IT service is much, much more complicated than you may imagine.
From an opening salvo against software publishers with 'cheatware' to closing remarks about how IT might like a simpler and quieter life Claude Roeltgen covers the topics extraordinarily well.
I have recently been party to a vendor using 'cheatware' so the opening chapter particularly struck home with me. How, wonderful the system performed, how excellent that they integrated extraneous data, such as the weather and demographics, with our sales data. My system is of course slow and only integrates data from the customer with our own ERP data. Yes, my system would be very quick with only a few hundred lines of data too. Oh, and they don't provide the extraneous data , on and on. Only to see disappointment by the business users and again be considered negative and contrary.
To continue this simple example, if the business users had read the chapter "One Million or One Year", my life would have been much simpler. To implement the expected solution required introducing another database system that we had no training on, adding to the backup systems, writing interfaces to the ERP system, testing, etc., my 'biotop' was going to be poked, prodded, and shoved around. The things people in IT see intuitively and put on a mental punch list during these meetings are now laid bare for everyone to see.
A good portion of the book also reminds me of when the business users would ask why they could get Hotmail on their mobile, but not corporate mail. To the business user this should be simple and they didn't understand why I cringed every time the subject came up or why I was asking for additional training and hardware. Claude's book again is straight forward on security, mobile devices, and the headaches that can follow.
On top of all the solid material required to understand the day-to-day life of IT, Claude has included enough humorous real-world stories and quotes to keep me laughing.
The only down side to the book is the possible uncomfortable conversations that may occur if your boss read the book and suddenly began asking about the disaster computer center that you should have, or any other subject but don't because the project wasn't funded. I'm sure you will have a great place to start the conversation though.
I would highly recommend this book, not only for business users, but for anyone who is trying to relate it IT, spouse, friend, colleague, Mom with a computer, etc. You won't regret the time you spent reading it.