Each chapter is filled with so much information, it begs the reader to slow down and soak up the surprising and insightful statistics about IT.
What's so unique about John's book is that he's writing to thousand of IT professionals, and yet it feels as if he has spent time in your department interviewing your staff and clients personally. That's how poignant this book is.
John's ability to explain complex and dynamic problems in easy to understand language using anecdotes and allegories is uncanny. The book is founded on fundamental truths and principles that have been around for ages. It's John's ability to bring these principles to life by practically applying them to the circumstances we face very day. This makes the book both practical for the here-and-now as well as the IT professionals of tomorrow.
I have used many of the templates suggested in this book and find them easy to understand, quickly deployable, and readily accepted by team members and clients. It's surprising, but it is the simplicity behind the templates that makes them so usable and effective. As mentioned many times in the book, applying complex technological solutions to simple requests is a common problem within IT.
This book is like an IT bible. It's not something you read once and put on the shelf. It's something that should be referenced often. Whenever you feel you might want to consult with Booz.Allen or McKinsey... reach for this book first.
Based on my personal experience, many of their recommedations are on target. Most small- and many medium-sized organizations can benefit from their recommedations, although not without modification. It can only benefit an IT manager whose department is growing to be alert for instituting the ideas Baschab and Piot discuss, especially concerning controls, risk and organization.
One final note: it would have been interesting for the authors to discuss how small IT departments should implement their recommendations as they grow.
I found out about the book on Nicholas Carr's website where he recommended it...
see: related readings
Two texts from Michael Porter, the book Competitive Strategy and the article What Is Strategy?, are essential for understanding the relationships among industry structure, firm strategy, and competitive advantage. An extremely lucid overview of the current state of thinking about business strategy can be found in Richard Whittington's What Is Strategy - and Does It Matter? Gary Hamel and C.K. Prahalad provide insight into the relationship between corporate capabilities and competitive advantage in their classic article The Core Competence of the Corporation.
On the technology side, Porter's Strategy and the Internet diagnoses the failures of e-strategy. Carl Shapiro and Hal Varian take a cold look at the economics of digital business in Information Rules. For a lively account of the commercial and social impact of the telegraph, see Tom Standage's The Victorian Internet. For a solid, practical overview of corporate information management today, consider Jon Piot and John Baschab's weighty The Executive's Guide to Information Technology.
Hope this is helpful...