Customer Reviews

The IT Value Stack: A Boardroom Guide to IT Leadership

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The book is aimed at a fairly high-level audience and makes a case for better integration, or "entwinement", of technology into businesses. Ade can come across somewhat opinionated but he gives you fair warning of this right up front and he has clearly put his ideas into practice enough to feel confident in them.

Ade's premise is that IT is often viewed through a cost-focus lens or with a view to assigning blame for problems. As such, its ability to positively impact business is limited and IT can seem to be an immature business function. In particular it can be hard to assign value to IT so as to correctly manage investments in IT. Ade lays makes his case, details his process and then wraps up with a nice "to do" list at the end. The 7 steps in his model (in order of adoption) are:

1. Strategy Entwinement
2. Process Entwinement
3. People Entwinement
4. Technology Management
5. Service Management
6. Circulation Management
7. Value Management

Ade's perspective is that these must be addressed in order and that each builds on the previous. There is lots of good stuff in the book and he lays out each chapter consistently. He is clearly trying to make each chapter reach coherently stand-alone, and he succeeds, but it gets a little repetitive if you read it quickly end to end. Each chapter also has some comments on the importance of the concepts written by external experts and colleagues of Ade's, which adds some nice color.

Many business people think their information technology colleagues are geeks who speak a language no one else understands. Conversely, many IT people think they are above their technologically ignorant business colleagues. Ade McCormack, IT advisor and columnist for the Financial Times, is convinced that bridging the gap between IT and business is crucial if you want your company to be able to compete in the future. He says IT will continue to become a more and more important competitive factor. He urges business people to learn more about IT and vice versa. getAbstract recommends this step-by-step plan for integrating your company's IT functions into its strategic and tactical business operations. In every chapter, McCormack analyzes the status quo, the obstacles and the steps you need to take and includes contributions from leading players in the end user, technology and advisory arenas. Meanwhile, he sets a good example by writing in a style - including some tongue-in-cheek asides - that IT and non-IT people will find equally accessible.

Overall the value of this book can be derived solely from it's distinction of the 7 layers of The IT Value Stack (as you may have derived from the aptly chosen title) in cooperation with some key, simple terms that it defines in a concise manner.

Unlike many monotonous tomes that speak of IT management and incorporation of IT value into the overall system, the author does not try to shock you with vocabulary and odd or strikingly difficult terminology. Sticking with the basics and providing verbose but simple explanations and reasoning provides the reader with something that is easily communicated to others.

But why not 5 stars? I have two reasons for this: slight problems and no citations. The problems involve many of the perspectives of PURE entwining of IT into the business decision making process. As the author suggests, it seems as though ALL personnel must be involved, seemingly dissolving the proven usefulness of advisory committees between layers. A "newbie," for instance is a good adviser to the development lead, but should be far from the board and have limited exposure to customers until oriented into the business.

The lack of citations could possibly be the cause of the current implementation of such methodologies into the corporate systems of the world. For this reason, you could say that there aren't many case studies. However, what makes up for this, is the inclusion of external perspectives and information that is provided in a wonderfully cheerful and informal manner while still providing a very intense look into the issues at hand.

Quick, easy to read and light-hearted, this text provides a wonderful addition to the boardroom and general libraries. I recommend this for everyone to read from low-level to C-level. Overall a winner that will take you from repetition of things you already know and into inspiration and contemplation.

Sorry, but I found parts of this book awfully silly. The notion that a company should create a new C-level position with executive power based on their IT expertise is just wrong. What this book advocates can be accomplished by hiring your CEO, in part, because of their IT mastery relevant to your company's industry. The book points out the benefit of hiring a CFO with IT and financial expertise rather than just the accounting end of things.

The author does get right the value and necessity of IT to current business. He is also right in the importance of healing the IT / business divide. However, unlike the author, I do not believe it can be healed by giving IT more power over the business. To the extent that the author advocates eliminating IT as a separate function and building it into the fabric of the firm I think he is spot on.

But you don't have a company to have an IT department any more than you have a business so you can employ administrative assistants.

Reviewed by Craig Matteson, Ann Arbor, MI