From IT Governance to Hacking

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.