Managing Information Systems in IS Successful Strategies and Appropriate Action

The person who runs the company sees IS as being the provider ofsolutions. "Don?t tell me about function point productivity. Whatwe want is faster turnaround time for systems and we?re not gettingit!" The person who runs the IS division recognizes that it has astrategic role. "The management is locked into a 1980s timewarp ?how do I persuade them that IS has more to offer than in the past?"The aim of the book is to step into the middle ground. Itemphasizes the important role an IS manager plays in thedevelopment of the company strategy. It will show how the everydayproblems need to be seen in a fresh perspective ? that of balancingthe competing pressures of business and technology. Get too farfrom the technology and too close to the business, and technologywill pull you back. Get focused on technology and lose sight of thebusiness, and the business will make sure you know about it. Thegoal of this book is to provide IS managers with balancedinformation to guide them. Why does it matter? Because, in manyways, the future of our organizations is in the hands of today?s ISmanagers. Management Challenges in IS will help them make wise andthoughtful choices.

James D. McKeen and Heather A. Smith say that they never planned to write a book. When they started the Queen’s IT Management Forum, their interests were purely academic. They wanted to find out what was happening in the front line of the "IT wars" in organizations. They quickly discovered that if there was a need in academia to learn more about IT in organizations, then there was an equal need in organizations to learn more about the big picture trends in using IT. Their work, and this book, is the outcome of a new form of scholarship. It bridges the gap between the practical, everyday knowledge of the IS manager and the measured thoughtful knowledge of the academic researcher. The former is anecdotal and incomplete — the latter is methodologically sound and thorough but often of little practical help to the IS manager.