Blind Spot IT

Despite the critical role IT plays in the success of the organizations in the 21st century, many business executives still struggle to understand the value it provides or the role it can play to transform business. There are numerous books written to address this challenge at all levels, explaining how to bridge Business and IT gap, effectively communicate value of IT, and become strategic partner.  "Blind Spot IT" covers this topic in a very simple and impactful way for C-level Executives.

The author "Charlie Feld" (an ex-CIO himslef) offered a management framework that he successfully used in multiple companies for IT-enabled Business transformations.  The framework has four planks,

1. WHY (Why do anything?)
2. WHAT (What will we do?)
3. HOW (How will we do it?)
4. WHO (Who will lead and manage the change?)

These planks are bounded by 5 time-boxed phases which set the pace and cadence of the business transformation. The how part of the framework is close to Steven H. Spewak  Enterprise Architecture Planning approach to capture current state, evaluating transformation drivers, defining target state (Business, Data, Application, and Technology), and setting a multi-year road map.

Few insightful quotes from the book,

"Separating organization from process is the key to lasting architecture."

"The principle is that if your systems are standardized and processes commonized, then your decision making can easily flow between centralization or decentralization-or some hybrid in between."

 "The more standardized your processes and systems are, the more flexible you can be."

The book is very readable, insightful, and takes a story like theme from author's real life experience to explain a complex subject in a simple way.