From IT Governance to Hacking

Recent management books provide tips on IT governance, CIO survival, agile project management and understanding hackers.

By Thomas Hoffman

August 30, 2004 12:00 PM ET

Computerworld - IT Governance: How Top Performers Manage IT Decision Rights for Superior Results, by Peter Weill and Jeanne W. Ross (Harvard Business School Press, 2004; 269 pages, $35).
IT governance is a pressing issue these days, particularly since technology spending accounts for up to half of all capital expenditures at many companies. But few managers can accurately describe IT governance within their companies, much less quantify the impact of good governance on their bottom lines.
Weill and Ross, research scientists at the Center for Information Systems Research at MIT's Sloan School of Management, do just that and more. For instance, a CISR study of 256 global companies reveals that the profits of companies with top-notch IT governance practices are 20% higher than those of companies with poor IT governance.
More important, the authors thoroughly describe what IT governance is, classify the approaches used to govern IT and offer advice on how to set up an IT governance committee.
While the authors acknowledge that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to effective IT governance, their research finds that companies that are focused on either profits or growth tend to have similar governance models.
The book is aimed at for-profit companies, but it has a chapter devoted to government agencies and not-for-profits. This is highly recommended reading for anyone who's struggling with these issues.
Agile Project Management: Creating Innovative Products, by Jim Highsmith (Addison-Wesley, 2004; 277 pages, $34.95).
Although agile software development has been practiced for several years, many companies continue to be hampered by process-laden, top-down project management approaches. Enter agile project management, a more responsive and flexible approach to project management. This approach places more authority in the hands of project leaders and line workers who are doing the executing while concentrating on delivering customer value.

Agile Project Management: Creating Innovative Products

Don't assume that agile project management is "PM lite." In Highsmith's view, agile project management doesn't dismiss the importance of effective quality assurance, documentation or testing, but it does de-emphasize them as core principles.
Instead, Highsmith effectively cites forward-thinking project management principles that have been espoused by his peers and pulls them into a cohesive, usable approach. He also goes to great lengths to explore the single most critical component of effective project management: people.
CIO Survival Guide: The Roles and Responsibilities of the Chief Information Officer, by Karl D. Schubert (John Wiley & Sons, 2004; 294 pages, $45).

CIO Survival Guide: The Roles and Responsibilities of the Chief Information Officer

This up-to-date how-to book is useful for seasoned CIOs as well as newcomers who have recently transitioned into the role.
Schubert, a former chief technical officer at

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