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Make IT Work

Make IT work; this is by the way the title of a book that was written at the end of the 90’s by 16 senior students of Business Economics associated to the Erasmus University in Rotterdam and supported by Arthur D.Little consultancy under the umbrella of a Management information technology project. During this project, an extensive research was carried out over a period of more than one year in Netherlands and United States. Companies such Pepsico, IBM, 3M, Unilever, Shell, Singapore Airlines, HP and many other big corporations were visited and assessed by the project team.

As a result of this extensive exercise the team ended up defining an IT framework that is supporting any IT organization to develop and implement an IT strategy in clear alignment with the business. Furthermore, the book describes in detail every stage of the processes, comparing with best practices observed in the organizations that were visited during the research project. 



Although recognizing there are other interesting readings you can make over the IT strategy subject, the “Make IT Work” is the one that in my experience better support the complex path from the definition of an IT Strategy to the point you can operationalize it. Starting from the McFarland theorem and the related systems evolution matrix, moving to the Mackinsey 7s Framework, the Canvas Framework for IT value proposition and more recently the COBIT framework, all of them supporting in a certain degree the different needs you might have regarding the definition, control and follow-up of an IT Strategy and related management processes.  

The “Make IT Work” is a very interesting reference document for any IT Director / CIO searching for a practical and straight forward management tool that helps the organization to improve the way IT has understood the business needs and its positioning towards a better strategic alignment.

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