Managing It as an Investment: Partnering for Success

by Harris Kern and Ken Moskowitz

Shows how effective use of technology is the key, to the success of an enterprise. This work offers a plan for building IT environments that exceed strategic goals, while nurturing levels of... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 013009627X
• ISBN13: 9780130096272
• Release Date: January 2002
• Publisher: Prentice Hall PTR
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 7.2" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

Keep the Focus on What it Takes to Achieve IT Success

This book was suggested reading for my masters degree in business management. As a former project leader and current manager in IT this book is priceless. Making technical, leadership and communication work together in partnering IT is the key. All too often IT is seen as a separate entitity as opposed to the vital asset that it is. Getting that handshake between IT's role and the business end of your corporation is an investment all successful IT centers make.

Best practices in customer-focused IT management

Although the title implies a focus on IT portfolio management, the book goes into the core of IT management. For the IT manager or CIO this book is one of the most coherent and practical guides to what you need to do in order to deliver service and support in a cost-effective, mature manner. The underlying theme is developing a value-based partnership between IT and the business process owners that IT supports. This is introduced and developed in Chapter 1 (Introduction), and is placed within the context of Porter's value chain. This chapter also covers value alignment as a guiding principle. Chapters 2 through 4 expand upon the concepts by explaining consequence-based thinking (a powerful technique for examining initiatives), organizational factors and issues in the form of matrixed resources and business/IT alignment, and value management.Chapter 5 is particularly valuable because it shows how to transform the goals and objectives from the first four chapters into a strategy. The tactics that support the strategy are discussed in the subsequent chapters: drilling down into the small picture (Chapter 6), organizational details (Chapter 7), human capital management (Chapter 8) and investing in values (Chapter 9).The final chapter, CIO responsibilities, and the appendices provide a strong foundation of guidelines and tools. I thought the appendices were particularly valuable, especially A (Sample Business Case Template) and (C) Desktop Development Standards and Procedures). Other material in the appendices includes (B) Personal Productivity Services Organization Overview and (D) Systems Development Contract. There are two additional books that will nicely complement this one, and I recommend reading them after this one in the following order: Smart Business by Dave L. Chapman and Barry Sheehy, and Building Operational Excellence: Strategies to Improve It People and Processes by Dale Kutnick and Bruce Allen.