Customer Reviews

Managing It at Board Level: The Hidden Agenda Exposed (The Financial Times/Pitman Publishing)

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When this book was first published in 1991 it presented a viable approach to getting IT under control. The 1995 second edition contained refinements and was even more valuable because it came out in the aftermath of the industry-wide movement to decentralize, which only reinforced the central theme of the book: IT needs to be managed centrally. Although this book is as valid today as it was when first published, others with a fresher approach have been published in the ensuing 7 years since the second edition. However, this book is still invaluable as a secondary text for a number of reasons:

(1) It is focused on business control of IT, and centralized control at that. This message needs to be reinforced, in my opinion, and the book provides compelling reasons for doing so.
(2) Chapter 3's discussion of the IT director's job is really an examination of politics and challenges that still doggedly remain in IT in spite of being exposed year after year. The case studies in this chapter alone make this book worth buying and reading. Chapter 4, The Culture Gap, is also invaluable and shows that after 7 years since this edition came out that we're still grappling with the same old issues.
(3) The book's anecdotes, case studies and pull-no-punches comments about pitfalls and challenges are sanity checks that should be revisited by pulling this book from your shelf, dusting it off and turning to a random page - you are sure to spot a phrase or illustration that will influence you. Think of it as high-tech I Ching.

If you want a more up-to-date text on managing IT methodically and quantitatively I recommend anything written by Dan Remenyi. However, if you want deep insights and a book from which you can find inspiration or ideas by turning to a random page, this will serve you long after the more technical tomes have lost their appeal.