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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great book for the aspiring IT manager, April 14, 2003
This review is from: Manage I.T.: A Step by Step Guide to Help New and Aspiring IT Managers Make the Right Career Choices and Gain the Skills Necessary (Paperback)
Manage IT is a well-written, well-organized book that will help the aspiring IT manager or the newly promoted IT manager be more successful in their new job. Manage IT highlights the critical skills, techniques, and key learnings required to avoid the pitfalls made most by new IT managers. The book walks through the demands of the IT management role, how to align your team with key business objectives, how to motivate and manage your team, how to build a staffing plan, how to give feedback, and how to let go of your previous job so it does not impact your new role. Two core skills are discussed in-depth including buying IT products and services and how to deal with outsourcing that are very instructive to those who have not built those skills. I found the chart in Chapter 2 on aligning the IT strategy with business objectives to be very useful. Additionally I liked the "Action Items" at the end of each chapter that help drive home important points in the chapter and get the reader started on analysis pertinent to his/her specific situation. Manage IT at 150 pages can be read quickly and provides great information that will help anyone stepping into an IT management role.
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Highly recommended!, November 8, 2002
This review is from: Manage I.T.: A Step by Step Guide to Help New and Aspiring IT Managers Make the Right Career Choices and Gain the Skills Necessary (Paperback)
There is a common misconception that successful IT employees naturally make successful IT managers. In reality, being a manager requires a completely different skill set from that needed by a programmer, a technician, a network admin or any other IT professional. Many of us who work in the IT industry have found ourselves at the proverbial fork in the road of our careers. Do we take the promotion to manager we've just been offered or do we continue on in our technical career? The first section of this book walks you through an exercise in soul searching that will help you make the right decision. The sports team analogy is used in the book to help illustrate this: do you want to give up being a player to become a coach? There is no shame in saying "No, I love playing too much to give it up to coach others." If you've searched your soul and found that the management track really is for you then this book will be invaluable to you as you prepare to take on your new career. You'll learn about what it means to be a manager and what skills you'll need to grow in order to be successful. The importance of getting to know your employees and their strengths and talents; and then managing those people and those talents, is covered in the book. This book is an excellent resource. The authors provide numerous real-life examples and share their own experiences as ways to support the topics covered. Each chapter ends with action items for you to complete to help reinforce the material. Also, do not overlook the bonus chapter at the end of the book. As a manager, you will have to deal with change, especially when it comes to your employees. You will inevitably hire new employees into your team and transition others out. Dr. Couture's Employee Lifecycle HR Model will help you and your organization ensure that your employees are fully supported from recruiting through succession planning for each stage of their careers with you. I strongly recommend this book for anyone in or considering getting into IT management.
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Does "Manage I.T." help one manage I.T.?, March 6, 2005
This review is from: Manage I.T.: A Step by Step Guide to Help New and Aspiring IT Managers Make the Right Career Choices and Gain the Skills Necessary (Paperback)
This book takes on a noble goal- to try to bridge the gap between information technology practitioner and manager. It properly identifies that most I.T. managers are tossed into management positions as a result of doing well in subordinate positions with little or no guidance as to the requirements of their new positions.
While the book starts off with solid advice, advising would-be managers to first consider whether they want the new position and detailing many of differences. Unfortunately, as the book details the responsibilities of an I.T. manager, it misses some very big ones including training the team, innovating to improve existing processes, and generating synergy within the team.
As the book continues, it gets worse as it espouses bad advice including dropping out of recurring meetings attended as non-manager (in many cases the manager will attend the same meetings but in a different role) and ensuring employees do not carbon copy the manager on emails where the manager does not need to take an action (the manager should be copied on many of subordinates' emails to observe the interaction between the manager's employees and others. In the worst advice, it goes on to say how outsourcing is usually a good thing and that good managers support it. In all my experience and that of those I've talked with, I have not heard of a case where outsourcing has not led to both higher costs and poorer service.
In summary, if one reads the first five-six chapters and keeps in mind that it only covers some aspects of a technology manager's job, this book can be helpful. But if one reads beyond the sixth chapter, any good is outweighed by the poor advice that follows.
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