There's No Such Thing as an IT Project: A Handbook for Intentional Business Change

Learn how to stop pouring vast sums of money into technology projects that don't have a lasting impact by closing the communication gap between IT and leadership.

Too many businesses miss opportunity after opportunity to design, plan, and achieve intentional business change. Why? Because they charter projects focused on delivering software products: IT projects. But as this groundbreaking book points out, there's no such thing as an IT project—or at least there shouldn't be. It's always about intentional business change, or what's the point?

It's time to stop providing simplistic, one-dimensional, all-you-gotta-do panaceas. When the only constant in business is change, truly useful IT has to help you change instead of build solutions that are obsolete even before they are completed.

IT consultant Bob Lewis, author of the bestselling Bare Bones Project Management, has joined forces with seasoned CIO Dave Kaiser to give you the tools you need. It's a multidimensional, relentlessly practical guide. Condensed to handbook length and seasoned with Lewis's trademark sardonic humor, it's an enjoyable and digestible read as well.

Lewis and Kaiser take you step by step through the process of building a collaboration between IT and the rest of the business that really works. Insisting on intentional business change takes patience, communication, and courage, but it has a huge payoff. More to the point, insist on anything else and every penny you spend will be a wasted dime and a waste of time.

About the Author

Since the 1996 launch of his "Survival Guide" column in InfoWorld, Robert Lewis has been in the forefront of a guerilla consulting movement that rejects the orthodoxy of "running IT as a business" that has "internal customers." Instead, he advocates integrating IT into the enterprise, where it actively collaborates to improve how the business functions.

The award-winning author of 12 books and more than 1,600 articles, Mr. Lewis is one of the most respected advisers and commentators in the IT industry. He has held a wide variety of executive, management, and staff positions in information technology, manufacturing, product development, and business planning ... he was a practitioner before becoming an author and adviser, one source of his reputation for providing a unique blend of vision and pragmatism.

In 2001, Mr. Lewis founded IT Catalysts, a consultancy specializing in business change, IT organizational effectiveness, and IT/business integration. Currently, he serves as a senior consultant with a major international consulting and services firm.