Book review: IT That Matters. Business porn.

itSMF have published another ITSM pocket-book in conjunction with TSO: IT That Matters: An Executive's Guide to maximising [with an "s"!] the strategic value of your IT investment by Dennis Ravenelle (ISBN 978-0117080614). I'm an intellectual fan-boy: I recognise and respect superior intellect. I'm also a writer, and respect fine writing. On both counts I liked IT That Matters. And quoting Nirvana is cool.

In the end though, this is "business porn" like almost all ITSM books. I crave something I can use.

The advice boils down to "do everything really well". Well, yes. Like so many best-practice books, not least of them ITIL, the organisations it describes are not something to aspire to. They are beyond that: they are airbrushed fantasies, as anatomically perfect and impossible as the pictures in the porno magazines. Or even when they are arguably real, they are the intensively selected poster-children of the IT industry, as unrepresentative of the rest of us as a catwalk model or movie star.

I don't find reading books like this terribly constructive. It feels like whacking yourself on the head with it. The book tells you all the things you aren't doing, most of which your organisation isn't going to be doing in the next decade unless magic happens. (I could have done without the distasteful misogyny of Sun Tsu too).

IT That Matters is a masterful exposition of the theory, but I'm left wanting something I can use down here in the mud and blood of the real world, where everything is broken, where people don't always do their professional best, where management don't always lead, where executives don't support.

Syndicate content