Information Technology and Organizational Learning: Managing Behavioral Change through Technology and Education

IT management is a tedious process, primarily caused due to the dynamism of IT as a whole, resulting in schedule slippages, cost overruns and projects being shelved. IT Governance addresses these problems to a large extent, however every organization is different, in terms of it's culture, resources, processes, etc. etc. Adapting to each such organization's specific needs and tailor the governance model is fine, but the very dynamism of IT is not a very "fitting" solution to such static governance model. Also, the mindset of business stating IT to be mode of a commodity product rather than a revenue generator (as expounded upon in Nicholas Carr's book) generates it's own subset of problems, where the value of IT is not appropriately realized by an organization. Langer addresses these issues, excellently by proposing a more dynamic model of IT mangement through adaptive organization learning techniques. The very dynamic nature of such management fits "hands-in-glove" with the dynamic nature of IT itself. Consequently, realizing the true potential of IT, to an organization, which drives the mis-conception of IT being just a supporter to more of a driver. Along with this, also very case-centric approaches on how to implement IT management within an organization where business starts to appreciate IT having more revenue generator roles. Maturity arcs, balance score-cards, etc. - which are known organization models to create a mature organization are covered in much detail w.r.t. IT management and how they can all be used and adapted, with their respective constraints and benefits are explored. All in all, a very good book which helps ANY IT manager to think FORWARD and try to achieve a mature and extremely adaptive management strategy towards IT. The language, is however a bit academic in nature thus requires some re-reading to fully comprehend the topic and analysis being covered.