Overview

I believe that the vast majority of IT departments do not work particularly well within their organizations, and it is time they did. They seem to work really hard, but their frenetic activities often seem to miss the point of business. I know that most business executives hold that belief in some part as well.

When I discussed the title of this book the IT people would invariably ask: Shouldn t it be What business needs from IT rather than wants ? However, when I talk to business people they never raise the distinction between needs and wants. I believe that the business that pays the bills for their IT has a right to want certain levels of performance and activity from IT. Yes they may need security, IT capacity, forward compatibility and all those IT things but they want something quite different. So I have approached this book from the business wants and expectations of IT, not from what they need. I really need to exercise more, drink less coffee and perhaps take more time off but my wants are something quite different. This book is about what business wants.

I have asked well over 50 CEOs what their expectations of their IT functions are, and their response can be summarized as follows:

Deliver IT without fuss, get involved in business activities and give us good leadership.

The problem is that IT people see only the first two words of that sentence: Here are some real IT department s...