World Class IT: Why Businesses Succeed When IT Triumphs

It is rare that an IT strategic advice comes in a recipe wrapped with a framework and a methodology, but this is exactly what Peter High has done in his well-written and insightful book World Class IT.In this seminal and timeless book, Peter High offers a framework with five principles and a detailed methodology that is presented in an easy way to follow and to execute. Under each of the five principles, Peter High offers a detailed set of subprinciples and relationships between them that end up creating a coherent approach to establishing an IT department that is World Class. Each of the principles is covered as a chapter in the book with a set of performance indicators, step-by-step processes and flowcharts that end up molding these five principles into a well-developed methodology. This makes the book unique, valuable, a must-read and a reference for IT leaders, managers and practitioners.The five principles are well articulated and presented in such a simple way that they seem so familiar and obvious. Peter High’s 5-principles framework is the IT equivalent of Michael Porter’s revolutionary and well known five-competitive forces framework. In my opinion, the understanding of these two frameworks is essential to any IT leader to practice excellence and produce tangible business results from IT investments.As Aristotle said excellence is not an act but a habit and only a methodology like World Class IT can make the delivery of excellent IT services, products and projects a habit. And the habit to excellence is well presented in the World Class IT book, a must read for IT leaders, managers and practitioners.

I'll skip to the conclusion. This review is more of a 4.75 out of 5 stars, but I think my professional life in IT would have been a whole lot more enjoyable if more of the upper and executive ranks under whom I've worked would have read it and taken its advice to heart.I have a few quibbles with details here and there. PCI is not only for retailers, and HIPAA is not only about health insurance data. The quibbles are pretty minor and don't really detract from the book.The book is well-written and informative. The anecdotes are all on-point and supportive of the general themes. The book really is a condensation of consulting practice, industry experience, and wisdom that's hard to gain elsewhere. It could have been 10 times as long and not really covered the material better.I would have preferred a more Deming-eseque take on employee "evaluation" and management in some ways, and a bit more focus on intrinsic versus extrinsic motivators might have been nice. Of course, that may not be what's worked in some of the IT shops Mr. High has advised. I would have liked to see a discussion of the positive and negative effects of buying into overarching frameworks such as APQC, COBIT, ITIL, Lean, Six Sigma, or TOGAF. Any of them could compliment the ideas in this book.I definitely agree with the author that "Blue Ocean Strategy" is a very good book to read along with this one.

Of the many books on IT that I've read in the past years, this is one of the few I fell in love with immediately. While there are many books that describe models and approaches to improve the IT-organisation, this book trumps them all.The main reason I like this book is the fact that it doesn't put 'business-IT alignment' at the center of attention. In a seminar, a professor indicated that to his surprise, 'business-IT alignment' had been at the top of all CIO priorities for as long as the research ran. This is not strange: books about perfect marriage also keep on being hugely successful. Business-IT alignment and perfect marriages are worthy to strive for, but they should be a result, not a priority.It illustrates that success with IT and recognition of its value is the result of hard work and the only way to create better relationships is to mature yourself. Don't focus on the relationship, focus on what IT has to bring to the rest of the organisation. This book serves as a great guide on the path towards IT maturity and as a result, better relations.IT is a broad and extensive field of duty and a strength of this book is that the author was not tempted to go into all kinds of side issues. In 150 pages he describes in clear language the five principles he sees as necessary to create a world class IT organization. This book is a great addition to the library of all IT executives.If you are a business manager, buy two copies of this book: keep one to read (you will understand the challenges of IT) and give one copy to your CIO or IT-counterpart (the book is great discussion material). Are you an IT-manager? Also buy two copies and read both of them.

I met Peter High early one winter morning at a local Hotel in downtown Toronto as he moderated a CIO panel on Innovation. As the audience asked questions, he would skillfully direct them to the various panelists and confidently inject his wisdom into the responses. He referred to areas in his book where he had covered certain topics which eventually led me to later go buy the book and read it. The subtitle for the book says it all, "why businesses succeed when IT triumphs". Peter lays out five principles that a CIO and his team of leaders should master, then he goes deeper into sub principles to these principles and offer prescriptive guidance on how to implement these and with the appropriate metrics. Follow these and you will realize "sustainable IT excellence". The five principles are quite simple and if taken seriously and practiced diligently will yield exceptional results. I have worked in various organizations where some of these were done well and some not so well. We recieved accolades in those areas recommended in the book when we did them well and sometimes felt shamed in the other recommended areas that we did not do so well. Without giving away the detailed theme of the book, four out of the five recommended principles and their resulting subprinciples can be used in the business. Therefore as he indicated, "today's World Class IT leaders will be tomorrow's successful CEOs". Peter High has written an excellent reference that IT leaders can use to become world class in their own right.