Customer Reviews

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

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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.

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.

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.

Reading Manage I.T. is like having a transitional coach walk you through the process of moving from an indivudual contributor into an IT management role. Even people who have been managers for a number of years, but who've skipped learning the important lessons in this book will benefit. This book should be part of every IT managers library and every IT management training program.

I have to admit, I'm an aspiring IT Manager that purchased this book as a "look out for.." and clues to develope my managment skills.
I was a little disappointed when I found out that the first 3-4 chapters cover how to manage people and how to hire people. The last 2-3 chapters were the only things that applied to me (since i do not manage a staff). I guess I'm more looking on the how to manage your users then the staff.
Otherwise, for those that are entering into managing an IT staff, I would definitely see how you could benefit from this book.

If you are going to buy one book to guide you during your IT management transition, this book is not it. Instead use this book as a supplement to other materials, such as First, Break all the Rules or the HR Scorecard. The concepts in those books are transposed in the quick read. Instead of getting a brief overview, get the full version of each topics discussed elsewhere. The book does provide some good insight in employee development and stress management (great yoga breathing technique enclosed) but lacks in depth overall. Also, at times I felt the book was an informercial for the Employee Lifecylce HR model.

Whether you are a new IT manager or an experienced one that wants to gain some of the new competencies required for success in today's environment, you will find that this book has all the essentials - in a compact easy to digest format. I also highly recommend it for people who are looking for an alternative to IT management books that are loaded with the same-old metrics.

Manage I.T. is very useful and timely book. It addresses two big concerns that IT professionals face today. Avoiding a career change that may result in career disaster and quickly coming up to speed in the role of the manager if they do decide to make the move. In our current economic environment where people are pushed into new jobs as companies downsize and quickly judged as successes or failures in these new jobs, the Manage I.T. book can be a lifesaver. Thank you Joe and Jim.