This book is a practical guide to the key things you need to do right to successfully manage Information Technology (IT) in today's business world. It is intended for both new managers of IT organizations and seasoned managers from other areas who have management responsibility for IT in their company. This means discussion focuses on pivotal strategic issues such as budgets, staffing, systems, relationships with end-users and senior management, etc., and gives specific advice for each.
Concentrating on strategic issues is sometimes thought of by harried IT managers as too general to be of much use. Yet paying attention to strategic issues is just paying attention to the basics. If you get the basics right, the rest follows. If you don't, no amount of cleverness will keep you from failing. When you are done reading this you be able to create and maintain your own strategic focus on IT management challenges. You will also be better equipped to approach the immediate (tactical) challenges to your plans.
Every book has its words to live by and this book is no exception. The two phrases you'll see most often are "Do The Basics" and "Live by these Four Principles: on time, on budget, no surprises, tell the truth." These will be repeated because they make all the difference between success and failure.
This book is intended for people who either are starting a new position as an IT manager or who want to update their knowledge of IT management fundamentals. Their title may be IT Manager, Director, Vice President or Chief Information Officer. The fundamental tasks are much the same, but the scale and scope of their application grows. This book assumes that you have the chair behind the desk where the proverbial information "buck stops" in your company.
Your background may be from within the IT field or you may be a line manager who has assumed control of an IT organization. In the latter case this book will be especially helpful because it avoids "techie" discussions and concentrates on the core issues and so-called best practices of good IT management. If you know how to deal effectively with core IT issues you'll be way ahead of your peers.
The focus of the book can be summarized in the phrase Do the basics. The basics in this case are how and when to apply four easy principles of successful IT management, namely getting the job done on time, on budget with no surprises and telling the truth.
What you won't find in this book is a detailed guide to managing difficult people or to the techniques of computer benchmarks. Nor does it pretend to show you how to read the minds of your management. There are dozens of good books on managing difficult people, drafting budgets, financial planning, strategic vision, and so forth. This book concentrates on how and when to use those skills and why.
What you will find in this book is both strategic and tactical advice. The first four chapters can be applied to management generally by substituting "accounting," "marketing," or the like for "IT." The rest of the book focuses upon issues that are essential to IT in particular. The goal of the whole book is to deliver a concise outline of the key things you need to know to succeed as an IT manager: coping with end-users, Senior Management, budgets, control of resources, people, and the occasional crisis among other things.
Many management books are written in an effort to fire up managerial zeal for new ideas and methods. This book takes a different tack. We're more interested here in what works than in what generates discussion, smoke, and noise. For example, this book tells you that you will occasionally meet some problems that simply cannot be surmounted by any practical means within your power. Some situations are not in your control and never will be (unless, perhaps, you own the company). Rather than raise false hopes about "surmounting all obstacles" this book points out these "
