The Boardroom IT Brief

I'm currently re-inventing all three books with an eye to release later this fall. Meanwhile:

From the working draft:


Brief'sintended audience is the board member or senior executive who occasionally has to vote yeah or nay on information systems related decisions. Readers are envisaged as non technical, facing decisions in a governance context, and willing to spend some time getting those decisions right.

Brief has four main sections:

  1. Chapter one introduces two critical "conceptual complexes" - terms that are widely used in IT but whose meanings are little understood and become subject to hot dispute among members of the key IT communities when explored.

  2. Chapter Two focuses on Evaluating IT Proposals. It looks at the major kinds of IT decisions board members face, and focuses on helping readers recognize and understand the "tells" that distinguish certain losers from possible winners.

  3. Chapter Three: focuses on hiring systems management. It looks at the problem of who to trust in the context of hiring a CIO and helps readers assess the impact a candidate's ideas and behaviors are likely to have if set loose in their organizations; and,

  4. Chapter Four discusses some key questions your IT management should be able to answer to your satisfaction.