Mark Schwartz, A Seat at the Table: IT Leadership in the Age of Agility (Book Review)

By jgn on Wednesday, January 16, 2019 in Reading, Reviews, and Technology

This is a fantastic book that attacks the silo-ization of IT (and its leadership) in a business. I am going to have to write a longer review, but for now I'll just say that a remarkable feat is accomplished in chapters 5 ("Requirements") and 9 ("Governance and Oversight") where Schwartz essentially derives the OKR system from "Agile" first principles. He comes up with a system that has much of the thinking of OKRs without all of the baggage.

Elsewhere the book expands on his deep skepticism -- as expressed in his earlier book The Art Of Business Value (a much more difficult "read") -- about whether it makes sense to have the "business" represent value to IT teams, rather than collapse the very distinction between the business side and the IT side.

This should be required reading for CIOs, CTOs, wannabees for those roles, and, I would say, CEOs.

Originally reviewed on Goodreads on 16 January 2019.