Achieving Business Value from Technology: A Practical Guide for Today's Executive

Overall this book introduces a framework of IT investment with accurate definitions, sound practical advices, strong focus on value measurement of IT. I think it is a good reference for IT Strategic Consultant. The framework is so called 3P: five Pillars, Process, People. The five Pillars are Strategic alignment, Business Process Impact, Architecture, Direct Payback, Risk. Weighting and scoring method is heavily used at the planning and analysis stage while quantitative measurement of each of the five Pillars is extremely emphasized by the author.

Achieving Business Value from Technology was an insightful and interesting book to read. It gave a lot of information pertaining to implementation information technology systems. This book is really good for someone who is in the information technology field, or who is looking to gain knowledge and expertise in this area. In particular, I believe this book is good for someone who has a working knowledge of information technology system, but is looking to gain an edge as to the strategies that should be used when implementing this type of system. I felt that this book is going to be hard to read by someone who has little or no knowledge or experience in the information technology industry. On occasion, this book used large and sophositicated IT jargon that a college student such as myself had a hard time following. However, for someone who already has experience in the IT profession, this would be no problem at all. In particular, I feel this book is great for anyone who works for an enterprise that is considering implementing a new IT system, such as ERP. This book walks the reader through step by step as to how to be most effective in implementing a new system. In particular, the book is also very helpful because it discusses the ways in which an IT investment project should also be measured to determine the successfulness of the project. This book is helpful for those in large and small enterprises alike. It gives suggestions and examples of organziations of all sizes. Overall, I felt that this book was a great read for anyone interested in implementing a new IT system because it helped set parameters for implementation as well as gave advice to help maximize the value from any IT investment projects.

Clearly written, this book debunks some myths and sets a modern path towards pursuit of business value. We need plain talking books that bridge the business/IT divide and tell it the way it is.Great reading and immediately useful.

I was leary when I saw the words "practical guide" in the title as I find that the phrase is often far from the truth. I guess I was in a gambling mood because I took a shot and found that this is a rare case where the advice here is actually implementable. The book includes detailed case studies, very specific advice on appropriate measures or "pillars" as the author calls them of IT project value, and lists of sample questions and metrics for each pillar. All in all this is a very useful book for justifying IT projects particularly in today's environment when your pal the CFO is squeezing every penny trying to get blood out.