IT Savvy: What Top Executives Must Know to Go from Pain to Gain

Received used book in good conditions plus excellent learning material.

This is an excellent, easy to read book that sets out a blueprint for getting value from your IT investments, in turn growing the company.The book is based on empirical knowledge built from studies of over 1800 companies in more than 60 countries.The classic scenerio for IT is the problem of a piecemeal approach to system design that creates inflexiblity and reduces the ability to enable IT's value proposition: automating and standardising repeatable processes - doing what IT is good at.Incremental point solutions can never result in a foundation for effective business processes - instead processes rely on the instinct, judgement and attention of the person completing it, introducing variablity and inconsistent outcomes. Your Enterprise Architecture becomes a noodle soup of tangled technologies managed by shifting political alliances throughout the business.Peter and Jeanne go on to outline how to "Transform IT from Strategic Liability to Strategic Asset".To start its suggested you need to go about fixing whats broken about IT. You do this in two important steps: 1 Defining your Operating Model: Two questions to consider: how much to standardize business processes, and how much to integrate business processes. Put a stake in the ground as deciding your operating model will be the foundation for all IT decisions in your firm. 2 Revamping Your IT Funding Model: make sure business cases demonstrates Return on Investment, and that your IT purchasing decisions are based on transparent and understood priorties and critera, as defined in the operational model. Everyone should know how prioritization works. They make the excellent suggestion that CEO approval be obtained for exceptions, forcing the requester to spend some political capital to get approval - this reduces the amount of requests to ones really worth fighting for.Watch what happens on projects, make sure your balance of new growth vs refresh expenditure is right for your company and you understand the risk return profiles of your projects.Moving towards standardizing processes is a key area of the book and a lifecycle for IT in companies is described in 4 sequential stages:1. Localizing (establishing unique business value propositions),2. Standardizing (seeking efficiency, reducing costs),3. Optimizing (discipled process based on operating model - gains world class predictable enterprise business processes, consistently getting the basics right),4. Reusing (recycle services for new initiatives and opportunities, increased agility)The point is made that this is hard work, and can only be achieved with effective governance - The CIO cannot do this alone and Executive buy in is needed from the CEO and senior management team. When you have that you are able to allocate decision rights and accountability. Mechanisms to enable this are described, from individual roles, committess or teams, and formalised processes such as post implementation reviews. The idea is to promote desirable behaviour in the management and use of IT and formalize the lesson's learned processes.The governance structure should be easily understood by all and used to communicate the decision making accountablity. Senior Exec's should be able to describe how key IT decisions are made.By clarifying IT decision rights and accountabilty you create capabilityThe last chapter on enabling this process is about using your new standardised platform to grow the company.Being IT Savvy pays off. The research demonstrates that firms that are above average on both IT Savvy and IT spending have margins 20% higher than industry average. In contrast firms with less than average spending and savvy have margins 32% lower than their industry. Being IT savvy puts you in a postion to take advantage of future opportunities.This is a thoughtful, well researched book that I highly recommend. It is a blueprint for successful use and reuse of IT for any company, you will not regret buying this one. Enjoy

I just finished reading: IT Savvy - What Top Executives Must Know to Go from Pain to Gain - by Peter Weill and Jeanne W. Ross. This book is about transforming IT from a Strategic Liability to a Strategic asset. It covers a wide array of topics ranging from defining your operating model, the funding model, driving value etc. to assist in building a true digitized platform. Regarding the operating model for example, the business needs to define what it expects from its IT department in terms of two axes: standardization and integration. This generate four distinct operating models: Diversification, Replication, Coordination and Replication. Each model poses its own challenges that require IT to address. Once the model is defined, IT will embark on a journey consisting of four stages: Localizing, Standardizing, Optimizing, and Reusing. Note however that the return on investment made in each stage will not be the same. Particularly as a company shifts into stages 3 and 4, companies will have to make significant investments which will only pay out on the longer term. A lot of companies struggle with stage 2, as it requires significant changes on the business side. One cannot hope to standardize IT systems if the underlying business processes diverge. A number of examples are given of companies that have made this successful transition, and how they managed to overcome the obstacles. Note that this journey is an on-going one which requires constant effort and refinement to ensure the company is always moving forward.This book is a good read for business and IS folks alike, as it helps bridge the gap that exists between them. The criticism I have is around the way the book is written. It may have been better to write it as a collection of case studies, which would avoid the duplication in discussing the same example companies and how they employ each aspect discussed. Overall though, an easy to read informative book about IT execution and how it can be leveraged to build a truly leverage-able IT platform that would give its underlying company a competitive advantage.

Great Book & Speedy Delivery!

In this practical book from Harvard Business Press, Peter Weill & Jeanne W. Ross, authors of "IT Governance" offers some valuable guidance on the subject of Information Technology in the Enterprise. CEOs, CFOs, COOs, CIOs, Senior Management IT Professionals and serious Technologists can benefit from the advice offered by the two researcher/authors in this book. This is the first piece of literature that I have come across which really outlines the need to have a clearly defined "operating model". This is extremely important for organizations that are serious about the role of IT in the business. IT Governance is the next key piece of the equation, the business must be a partner in all IT initiatives. The ultimate position for the CIO is to become a "trusted advisor". The opening chapter sets the message for the entire book, "Transforming IT from a Strategic Liability to Strategic Asset". Every serious IT professional should consider reading this book.

I did not find this book very helpful. It might be worth reading for managers who really have no idea of how to build an efficient companywide IT infrastracture, but the information provided is so limited that I doubt anybody may have risen to a management position without already knowing it. The style is boring and academic. Not recommended.

Musste das Buch leider fuer die Uni lesen und war nicht besonders begeistert.Die Konzepte sind keineswegs neu und es liesst sich eher wie eine Zusammenstellung von Erfahrungen und netten Geschichten und Beispielen. Also nichts wirklich weltbewegendes und auf jeden Fall nichts was man nicht schon vorher weiss. Fuer so ein kleines Buch mit so wenig lehrreichem Inhalt so viel Geld zu verlangen ist meiner Meinung nach nicht angebracht. Enttaeuschend.

This is a must have book. It is useful for both technical and non-technical Executive. The book makes a very effective link between business and technology. It shares several models on how to analyze your business and evaluate your technology needs for the digitized economy - which are simple and intuitive.