Information systems management in practice

This book deals with the management of information technology (IT) as it is being practiced in organizations today. Successfully managing IT has become crucial for several reasons:
-IT is now a strategic asset that is being used to mold competitive strategies and change organizational processes.
-The situations in which organizations are applying IT have increased in complexity, including more interorganizational environments.
-The capabilities of IT and the complexities of using the technologies are also growing at an accelerating rate.
As IT and its uses become more complex, developing strategies and systems to deliver the technology has become more difficult.
The net result is a growing need for guidance on the issues, strategies, and tactics for managing the use of information technology. To partially satisfy this need, universities and colleges have developed courses that focus on the management of IT. Textual material for these courses has been sparse for two particularly troublesome reasons.
First, IT is changing so rapidly that textbook authors, practitioners, researchers, and academics have a difficult time staying current. For example, in the past couple of years, two major developments stand out. One has been the surprisingly fast uptake of business uses of the World Wide Web. This dramatic shift appears to be a precursor of a coming revolution-wireless handheld computing-which is touted to change how we all work, live, and play. So while information systems (IS) departments are busily creating an Internet-based platform for their enterprises to become e-corporations, they must also be experimenting with yet another anticipated computing platform: small wireless devices.
The second major development, which is much more subtle but equally profound, is the movement toward knowledge management-which is a far different task from data management or information management. The concern these days is for managing intellectual assets because they provide true competitive advantage. Enterprises are delving for ways to leverage the knowledge in people's heads by fostering fast and efficient sharing, globally. As a result of these and other changes, courses have often had to rely on periodicals to stay up-to-date.
Another reason for the paucity of IT textual material for these courses is that the principles and strategies of effective management are evolving out of the experiences of practicing managers. Merely collecting reports from the current literature fails to provide the interaction needed to decipher principles from the lessons learned in practice.

Contents

• The importance of information systems management
• The top IS job
• Today's Strategic Imperative : E-Business
• Information systems planning
• Distributed systems : The overall architecture
• Managing telecommunications
• Managing information ressources
• Managing operations
• Technologies for developing systems
• Management issues in system development
• The expanding universe of computing
• Decision support systems and executive information systems
• Group support systems
• Leveraging the world of information
• The challenges ahead
• Glossary
• Index