Adventures of an IT Leader

I am not afraid to state that M. McDonald is right with some (not all!) of his criticism about "Adventures...", even at the risk of being the only one doing this. However, I rate the book with a 5-star as it has undoubtedly more than one merit. The sheer fact that there is a book explaining the world of IT in an easy-to-read style without using technical jargon is an achievement in itself. The major aspects of a CIO's life are covered and this has been summarized by other reviewers. But there are important shortcomings. At no place is there a word about the fact that a CIO is mainly managing dependency, due to the fact that he deals with an incredibly immature computer/software industry. Faulty software (leading to crashing projects and later to system instability) and unripe technology (with especially dramatic consequences when it comes to IT security) haven't found their way into this book. A corrupted database is not necessarily the consequence of a renaming of a table; a database can achieve corruption all by itself.
There's another recently published book (that I somehow prefer) with the similar intention to explain IT to the business: Roeltgen's "IT's hidden face". This one takes a different approach as it doesn't have a story-line but works a lot with descriptive examples. Both books have things in common though: the starting point is an IT department in the financial sector; N. Carr's ideas are widely rejected; "IT is different"; the CIO's job being the most volatile one in the business; a CIO can't do his staff's job by himself, just to name these.
"IT's..." proves that these days the IT world can by no means be managed entirely, whereas "Adventures..." makes the reader believe that IT is perfectly manageable by having the right communication, the right governance or by throwing more money at the problem. The example with the DoS is to my opinion described inaccurately (as a life-threatening event for the company) when we all know that these things are daily business and should be managed quite differently than described in the book.
Being myself a business executive in the financial industry, I don't think that it can be stated that Barton did an overwhelmingly good job. He was pushed much more than he was driving.
"Adventures..." presents an ideal world, taking a somewhat academic approach. But that's fine as long as the reader keeps this in mind, whereas the other book is written by a long-term experienced CIO who describes the day-to-day challenges with concrete examples.
It is undoubtedly true that we should head towards a better manageable world in IT, but as long as we have to deal with an immature software industry, this is a dream that will not be achieved soon. "Adventures..." describes exclusively from the perspective of the CIO and his interaction with the business, but leaves out the daily challenges of the ordinary IT staff. "IT's.." offers more details in this respect as it digs much more in the "dirt".
In any case, both books read very well; "IT's..." having on top a touch of humor and "Adventures..." offering a story-line.
Both books explain the IT-world to non-IT-experts and they have the intention to close the communication gap between those incompatible worlds. There's no excuse anymore now for anyone to say "I understand nothing about IT" or "IT is for me a grey monster I want to stay away from". I suggest reading both books. The picture of what IT is about these days should be rather clear after that.

What an excellent book! It has a structure unusual for a business book: it gets better and more interesting as it develops. None of the old one idea followed by 200 pages of filler that's so unfortunately common in the field. The use of named fictional persons undergoing a recognizable passage in a recognizable business context to stand in for the usual pomposities and scholarly apparatus works wicked well. And when was the last time you read a serious book on business and found yourself reading faster and faster in reaction to real suspense? The story of a DoS attack on the Leader's company gets downright exciting. In the manner of Harvard cases, Adventures of an IT Leader doesn't offer answers to presented questions or resolutions to the problems encountered by characters in the narrative. This has a twofold effect: it allows readers to have a substantive discussion of the ideas presented in a chapter (guided by a list of shrewd questions at each chapter's end); and it creates in the narrative an authentic feel for the untidy hurly burly of real world business. Finally, the authors demonstrate an uncannily wide, knowledgeable, detailed grasp of IT issues and their business implications. Again and again I'd be satisfied that they'd covered everything, and Wham! here come three more sneaky realities I hadn't thought to consider. Their presentation of complexity in an orderly, coherent, and sometimes pell-mell narrative beats anything I've ever read. Outstanding. Full disclosure: these authors are pals of mine. But when you read Adventures of an IT Leader, you'll see that I'm not exaggerating on that account.

I have a huge issue with the start of this book. It sends the wrong message to professionals. Basically, you can be a "leader" in IT without any prior knowledge of IT. It's well written (that's why I'm giving it 2 stars) but the protagonist basically weaseled his way into a job (my opinion) by being "vocal" on issues he has no understanding of... then gets that same job and has to do the same things he was "vocal" against. It tells young professionals to speak loudly even if you don't know what your talking about.... it really burns my hide!

This book gets a five and the review by M. McDonald [who rated the book a 2] gets a zero.

The authors stand at the top of the list of 'people who know' IT - and yet they carry their erudition lightly. A generation of IT leaders and scores of CIOs have benefited from the work of these scholars. This book packages all that knowledge in a ready-to-go and easy-to-consume 295 page thriller.

In writing Adventures the authors innovatively and courageously stepped outside the box of academic 'yawnness' and comic-book clever business best sellers to create a dramatic narrative arc powerfully depicting:

what IT is really like;
why IT is harder than one might think;
why IT costs as much as it does; and
why IT is misunderstood by the 'Suits'

Rather than portraying IT as incompetent -as reviewer McDonald contends - Adventures does a fine job showcasing the various 'tribes' of IT. The non-IT reader comes to sympathize with and start rooting for the IT 'heroes' in the story.

This book lacks pretention. The prose is crisp [ala Hemingway] and evocative [ala Churchill].

As a futurist I predict this book ending up on many C-Suite nightstands.

You will enjoy reading the book and actually learn something at the same time.

Isn't that what a business best seller is supposed to be?

This book is not only very educational, it's a great read. It does a fantastic job of explaining that IT management is about business management. It describes how IT must align itself with it's business strategy so as to bring value to it. Communication is critical. Project spending to provide competitive advantage as well as comparative advantage is discussed. Mapping, planning and correcting techniques, chargeback options, and IT services are just a few of the other topics discussed throughout the book. This book is informative and interesting. I recommend it highly.

This book is very good for non IT managers. It reads like a novel and pretty much covers the issues that a CIO will face over the lifetime of her/his career.

This book does a great job detailing the many challenges of running a successful IT department. It reads a lot easier than most computer related books. Taking all the normal complexities inherent in IT departments and aligning them with the overall business strategy is a requirement in today's business world. The authors did a nice job detailing this struggle while also providing a great model for how IT professionals should handle it. The authors do however highlight the large gap and/or deficiency that appear to exist with promoting a career IT employee to the CIO position. In the real world and in this book, I continue to see countless companies turn to non-IT professionals to run the IT department to help render it valid and to re-connect it with the rest of the business. All IT professionals should be required to read this book as part of their career development plan. The IT professionals that figure out how to bridge this gap will be in high demand and be able to put an end to the commoditization of the IT professional that I believe exists in a large portion of today's business world. I highly recommend this book.

As an assistant controller for Fortune 200 company, my path usually intersects with IT frequently. I was originally skeptical that this book would be beneficial to me. However, once I began to read it, I could not put it down. I devoured it! It is an essential piece of the bridge between IT and the rest of the business. Congrats to the authors, you have hit a homerun!
The book is logically designed, without being too "geeky". In my opinion, in order for IT professionals to bridge the gap to being IT leaders, they must lose their "geekiness". This book goes a long way toward bridging that gap. Some IT people might find fewer details about IT architecture, etc. in this book than they would expect. However, it seems that the purpose of this book is to bridge the gap between business leaders and IT leaders. I found the technical descriptions in the book to be like Goldilocks and the 3 Bears; not too geeky and not too hip-hop, but just right!
I found this book helpful in walking through leadership principles (it just happens to be in the IT group). Barton did not always know the next step, but relied on principles such as "doing the right thing". Even though I'm not an IT leader, I gained insights into leadership that I will be able to apply.
I was very impressed with the graduate level concepts (for example, leadership types on page 81, Moore's law on page 84, Parkinson's Law on page 99 and being useful vs. being real on page 261). The reason I was impressed is it was actually fun to read and understand. I became connected with Barton, and wanted him to succeed.
Nicely done! I found this book to be truly beneficial.

I want to give this book 5 stars. The story held my interest and I know first-hand how difficult it is to write a business book that keeps readers' interest.

I like the premise of Jim Barton, with no IT experience, thrown into managing an unfamiliar IT Department. One reviewer said only IT pros should manage IT Departments and compared it to somebody with no finance background acting as a CFO. I've made the exact same argument - a CIO with no knowledge about IT could be a recipe for disaster.

But this book makes a persuasive case that an appreciation of IT might be even more important than knowledge about IT. Perhaps the important factor isn't a lifetime of IT experience. Maybe wisdom and a willingness to listen, learn, build a good team, and evaluate fact from fiction are what makes a good CIO. Or a good CFO. Or a good CEO. After all, CIOs don't usually configure routers or write code or place servers into production or take help desk calls. Perhaps appreciating those skill sets is more important than possessing them. Jim Barton is a smart manager with a good team. He starts out shaky, but learns quickly about not knowing what he doesn't know and he grows into the position. The story works.

But I can't give this book 5 stars. It has problems. Some of the scenarios Barton faces are too contrived and some are unrealistic. And the proposed solution to a possible security event - shut down the whole company for a week and rebuild everything from backups? No way. Doesn't make sense. And doesn't solve the problem.

Don't get me wrong - the concerns using that event as a vehicle are real. And it's a good premise. But if there's a database problem, go through the database and fix it. IT pros in the real world do this every day. The problem could be a hardware glitch or a bunch of other factors. Security breaches are real, as we've all seen from recent headlines, but assuming a security breach because of every unexplained problem is not justified. This company is a Microsoft shop - the problem could have just as easily been a bad patch from a Windows Update. How many times have we seen those mess up systems?

My jaw dropped when the new CIO recommended to the new CEO to shut down the whole company for a week while they rebuild everything from backups. Nobody in their right mind would recommend or do that. It just didn't make sense.

My other problem with the book was the HR issue. Several months into Barton's tenure, a subordinate manager asks Barton's advice on retaining a valuable employee. That part makes sense and the chapter presents the right issues and tradeoffs. But what doesn't make sense is, Barton had never heard of this employee and didn't know anything about the retention issue until the subordinate manager talked to him. What?!? You're running the department of a few dozen people and you don't know who the people are? Doesn't work. Barton is too smart of a manager for that.

So that's why 4 stars instead of 5 stars. It's a good book. If a subsequent edition comes out and fixes those problems, it could be a great book.

- Greg Scott

This is an excellent book for business and IT professionals - perfect for the MBA class. The story is about Jim Barton, who is head of Loan Operations and has now been selected as CIO of IVK Corporation. Book describes Barton's adventures in running the IT organization and does a great job in providing insights about the workings of an IT department that will be extremely beneficial to the business world.

Furthermore, being an IT professional myself, this book was extremely interesting to me and a page turner. This book provides a roadmap for IT professionals of how to navigate within organizations, things that they should be thinking about, tools they can use to bridge the communication gap between business and IT professionals, and the process to create value for their teams. Finally, it has a good story line and at the same time provides some high level concepts without too much of the IT jargon. I highly recommend this book.