A great reference source for all information technology (IT) professionals who need to acquire practical knowledge, this book draws from the author’s five years of experience with IT management. The book starts by sharing the author’s experience in the complex management of a corporate IT department, combining two main interdependent IT components as two of the most important chief information officer (CIO) functions: strategy, including long-term vision and planning, and operations and maintenance (O&M) processes, which are short term.

Thus, the content is directed at the separate presentation of strategy from “routine day-to-day operations, as well as projects from operations.” The support of these main directions for managing operations versus projects is revealed via detailed descriptions of the IT service management (ITSM) principles and by the best practices of project management used in specific IT projects. Taking into account the two mentioned main IT components, the content is structured over nine chapters and an appendix. After a short introduction to the book’s purpose, the second chapter outlines IT areas and functions, emphasizing the differences between projects versus operations, as well as the roles and responsibilities in projects and O&M. Then, it deals with three main IT components--systems, processes, and people--and how they must be commonly managed through the IT department framework.

The organizational and functional structures of an IT department and the human resources (HR)-specific teams are the subject of the third chapter. Their roles and functions, detailed in later chapters on the O&M environment activities, are performed under the four tiers of management: technical management, application management, ITSM, and user support. Managing operations represents the topic of the fourth chapter, which describes in detail the ITSM functional components for IT operations, together with formerly mentioned team members’ roles and responsibilities. Next, the four IT services’ life cycle phases are separately analyzed through the end-user vision of receiving value, including examples for each.

Project management (PM) is the purpose of chapter 5, the longest in the book. It details PM principles, the purpose and the ways for managing project documentation, the implementation strategy, software testing types and result types, test script automation considerations, and people change management analysis--an area that is different from ITSM change management. One of the most important and risky aspects happens when IT projects are finished and their products or services must guarantee their long-term quality and project success through a proper handover. This process is detailed in chapter 6, devoted to cut-over into operations, which is described through O&M team performance activities with real-life specific IT examples about how it should be performed with success. The chapter describes procedures for system backup and restore, as well as for release management related to how performed changes are to be replicated in quality assurance testing and subsequently in production environments. Further considerations are done for business processes, data migration, transactions, and data quality.

Project governance is the subject of chapter 7, analyzed as a component of IT governance and aside from IT operations governance. It defines and details 18 project policies, the four basic documents of a project, and the roles and responsibilities for IT project team members. The next chapter introduces the reader to the Agile Scrum methodologies compared to the waterfall methodology. It emphasizes the three main characteristics--product backlog, sprints, and the burn-down chart--used in Agile Scrum, as well as the eight basic criteria for choosing Agile.

Chapter 9 deals with the continuous process of the IT portfolio management life cycle, including the centered phases of portfolio planning and design, measuring/assessment and communicating, and portfolio rebalancing, which are managed in accordance with portfolio governance, and portfolio monitoring and control.

Each chapter includes real-life examples, many figures, practical checklists, references, and further reading. The final appendix presents sample terms of reference for a proposed virtual machine (VM) backup solution. The author successfully reveals real-life examples, procedures, and projects for IT management and how to apply them in IT departments. I highly recommend this book, which represents a seamless practical reference for CIOs, IT managers, IT portfolio managers, IT project managers, ITSM teams, and other IT professionals.

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