Reviews
IT Savvy: What Top Executives Must Know to Go from Pain to Gain by Peter Weill, Jeanne W. Ross
wolvereader's review
3.0
IT Savvy is a book written by a group from MIT's Sloan business school that surveyed companies that have high-performing or "savvy" IT. The authors analyzed those firms and have come up with common traits and a path for becoming IT Savvy yourself. This book is aimed at senior management (and often seems to be pointed directly at the CEO) and is specifically about how to turn IT from a business cost into a business asset.
The first step to defining your business is to determine your operating model. As the authors state, your IT department can't be part of a strategic solution if no one knows what the firm's strategy is. The authors state that IT has two things it's good at: standardization and integration. Different firms need different amounts of the two (and like all good business school people, they represent this as a 2x2).
The next step is to determine a proper IT funding model. This is divided into three parts. First priorities from the operating model must be established and communicated. Secondly a transparent funding process needs to be put in place. Third, a post-project review process needs to be implemented to provide feedback on funding decisions.
Once you have your operating model and funding process squared away, you need to begin building a platform. There are four stages of this: Localizing, Standardizing, Optimizing, and Reusing. As businesses (and IT) mature, you move from one to the other, and as you move through each stage, you get greater value.
The book goes on to discuss IT governance models (at a high level), how to leverage your platform to gain greater business value, and finally, how to lead your firm toward this utopia. These later chapters were much lighter on detail and heavier on stories of success at companies .
In general the book is liberally sprinkled with examples from such as Seven Eleven Japan, Proctor & Gamble, Dow Chemical, and CEMEX. The book is a quick read, and the framework for thinking about IT governance and transformation is a useful one. This book is worth a read for anyone looking for thoughts on organizational strategy, or IT governance. It's light on a lot of the "how", but that's why we're paid the big bucks.
The first step to defining your business is to determine your operating model. As the authors state, your IT department can't be part of a strategic solution if no one knows what the firm's strategy is. The authors state that IT has two things it's good at: standardization and integration. Different firms need different amounts of the two (and like all good business school people, they represent this as a 2x2).
The next step is to determine a proper IT funding model. This is divided into three parts. First priorities from the operating model must be established and communicated. Secondly a transparent funding process needs to be put in place. Third, a post-project review process needs to be implemented to provide feedback on funding decisions.
Once you have your operating model and funding process squared away, you need to begin building a platform. There are four stages of this: Localizing, Standardizing, Optimizing, and Reusing. As businesses (and IT) mature, you move from one to the other, and as you move through each stage, you get greater value.
The book goes on to discuss IT governance models (at a high level), how to leverage your platform to gain greater business value, and finally, how to lead your firm toward this utopia. These later chapters were much lighter on detail and heavier on stories of success at companies .
In general the book is liberally sprinkled with examples from such as Seven Eleven Japan, Proctor & Gamble, Dow Chemical, and CEMEX. The book is a quick read, and the framework for thinking about IT governance and transformation is a useful one. This book is worth a read for anyone looking for thoughts on organizational strategy, or IT governance. It's light on a lot of the "how", but that's why we're paid the big bucks.
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