Real Business of IT: How CIOs Create and Communicate Value

I got this book as a freebie at some Microsoft conference, I believe, so I was surprised to find that there was some real substance here. I particularly liked the parts about benchmarking and measuring services using a unit cost vs quality grid, recognizing that not all companies care about the same things.

The fundamental message of this book is about finding ways for CIOs to demonstrate and communicate value, which is critical for any IT organization looking to do anything more than be seen as just another cost center that needs to be kept to the minimum budget possible.

Demonstrating value in business terms helps connect the typically geeky world of IT with the hard-headed world of business, and if you want to be taken seriously and get a seat at the leadership table, you have to be able to communicate in these ways – this has never been more true than in this day and age, where digital transformation is aggressively impacting traditional companies and turning them into technology companies. If the CIO is not part of that drive to change the business model and demonstrate value, then they are already largely irrelevant.