It occurred to me that it has been a while since I blogged about some notable books that I've recently read. So let me focus on 3.
"Accidental Billionaires" by Ben Mezrich . Quick read about the early days of "TheFacebook". College meets entrepreneurship. I was particularly engaged because my son was an early pariah of Mark Zuckerberg - got banned because he used Facebook as a marketing tool for an election campaign. Today that wouldn't be frowned upon; BTW - my son has been reinstated.
"The Future of Management" by Gary Hamill. Now about 3 years old, this is destined to be a classic. Me thinks Gary goes a bit overboard about the impact of social computing/crowd-sourcing/democratization...but his points are valid. For anyone interested in management strategies - this is a must-read.
Finally, "The Opposite of Luck; Achieving IT Service Quality" by Chris Oleson, Mike Hagan, and Christophe DeMoss. Scorecards, SLAs, OLAs, Goals Matrices, managing maintenance. A pretty good primer on IT service best practices, comprehensive, lots of examples. I have read a similar self-published manual on IT management from a good friend (Bill Davis - former CEO of Cabletron, called "The Foundation Guide - Management Tools for the Serious Executive"). Along with other, similar, books (Like "The First 90 Days", or "The CIO Handbook"), I found this manual to be detailed, and a good desktop reference for ITIL-like efforts. Through the examples, it provides some really good insight into ways of addressing metrics and the day to day operation of an IT department.
From amusing, to high level, to detailed...Happy reading!
Hello Jack,
I am one of the three co-authors of The Opposite of Luck. I wanted to thank you for your review of the book! (and for the other great recommendations, I'll be ordering them).
Also, I wanted to mention that if your readers want more information about The Opposite of Luck, they are welcome to check out our blog at ooluck.com
Cheers,
Christophe
Posted by: Christophe DeMoss | March 20, 2010 at 10:29 PM