Technical Impact: Making Your Information Technology Effective, and Keeping It That Way

I approached this book with some trepidation! I've read many books by successful CIO's that somehow fall short of their promise. But this book did not disappoint at all!First, Al is a great storyteller! He has a rich experience, going back to roles in IT operations, through programming, systems programming, IT management, CIO and management consulting. He's learned many powerful lessons in each of these roles, and is able to share these lessons through interesting and entertaining stories. Real life situations that anyone in IT can relate to make for great drama and a helpful backdrop against which to draw out challenges, tensions and leadership lessons.The book is structured and organized to be approached in any sequence that makes sense to the reader. It contains a "Book Map" that outlines areas of interest, such as "Aligning Expectations", "Best Practices", "Careers", "Innovation", and so on. Under each area of interest are typical questions the reader might be looking to answer, with Chapter references. I appreciate how useful the Book Map concept could be to someone dealing with real fires they wanted to focus on at a point in time.Al's advice is pragmatic and drills quickly to root causes. He brings a great balance of "quick fix" ideas that buy you time, with longer term approaches for continuous improvement. I very much appreciated the ways Al makes politics real and accessible--something that new IT leaders often struggle with.I'm generally suspicious about advice that divides the world into `two kinds of people'--I find life far more complex and nuanced, so when I came to the chapter that distinguishes between what Al calls "performers" and "operators" I was skeptical. But I actually found Al's treatment of this material to be valid and quite helpful.Originally published in 2010, with revisions in 2011 and 2012, this book will have a long life--most of the issues are perennial, and will be applicable across industries, countries and cultures.

Kuebler's experiences throughout his career make the content of this book very relatable to his readers. The majority of readers will already know the content of the book from their own experiences, but Kuebler states the issues facing IT managers, directors, VPs and CIOS in a way that makes them translatable to business leaders. This is a good read.

Prior to purchase, I was looking for a book offering practical advice that I could apply to my role in IT. After a bit of searching, I came across “Technical Impact: Making Your Information Technology Effective, and Keeping It That Way” by Al Kuebler. The purpose of the book was perfect for my needs. That is, its central idea is to guide IT professionals and managers with ways to make their contributions more beneficial to the businesses they serve. Furthermore, the book intrigued me because of the author’s impressive career in Information Technology and the interesting topics outlined in the table of contents. Each chapter focused on a different lesson learned from the author’s thirty-plus years of IT management experience at companies like Computer Sciences Corporation, Alcatel-Lucent, McGraw-Hill, and Citibank.Now that I have read the book, I can highly recommend it. Throughout the text, Kuebler imparted his knowledge and experience from his impressive career through clearly communicated stories. Many of these stories outlined in the book’s thirty lessons provided insight and value to me. Some of his experiences got me to see a number of concepts in a new light. In others, they provided validation that some of my current practices are on the right track. Overall, many of the topics I was hoping for were contained in his core teachings that focused on communication, being proactive, continuous improvement, best practices, and lifelong learning. It is one of those books that I will refer to again and again, which is made easier because of the way each lesson is broken out into its own chapter.In summary, I found Technical Impact to be a valuable book for IT professionals and is recommended reading.

As an IT Professional, I find this book by Al Kuebler a great resource to give some overview of what the IT department should be functioning.This book serve as a true testament of Al Proven business experience in the business so far which he carefully detailed in a Q&A and also meaningful diagram in each chapter.What I like is that Al has prepared the waypoint or chapter to read based on specific needs so that it is categorized based on what challenge I need to know or help from this book.In the newly updated chapter about Business Relationship Management, you can learn about the importance of the needs to attract business unit to involve and create demands in IT so they can realize the potential of IT as the enabler rather than the cost center which is getting more relevant in the era of cloud computing.In overall, I really enjoy reading this book due to its size and the way Al convey his message and sharing his experience.In summary: This book has deliver the best bang for the buck and truly well worth the money to spent compares with the other thicker and more expensive book in IT management.

As an IT professional of 20+ years I found this book dated and biased. IT is a disruptor for nearly every industry and it’s capabilities should be understood and integrated at all levels of “the business”. If you do not understand technology then you are simply not competitive in today’s market.Nearly every position uses some form of technology yet the user presents “the business” as aggressive, confused and frustrated towards IT and it’s jargon. The IT professional is encouraged to accept this and approach and understand “the business”, never the other way around. And then the author says to treat others the way you expect to be treated yourselves..Generally speaking it feels like this book is stuck in the 90’s and I would not be surprised if the author advocates putting IT back in the basement. If anyone feels like they are in companies such as these I would advocate leaving, if they are not embracing technology and people with alternative viewpoints more readily the company is doomed to fail and you should be looking for another opportunity already.

Technical Impact - Making your Information Technology effective and keeping it that way !! Purchased this book last week and loved it !! Read the chanpter on the buy-in just yeasterday and it really made so much sense to me. Still dreaming of the day where every IT professional gets the important of all the concepts in this bbok. Thank you Al Kuebler for writing such a useful guide that is so easy to read !!

A good book to learn how to convince naive CTO/CEOThis book gives good convincing techniques with clear, simple and basic ideas to head towards a step ahead.There is nothing like innovative ideas, simplification of technical complexities or solution concept.The book shows the important stuff to start with in order to convince the management heads but actual solution or impact of technology is beyond the scope of the book.