Organizational executives must change the way they think about how to invest in and manage IT if they want to get lasting value from computer-based innovations. The old way of thinking has not served organizations well. They continue to experience high levels of technological and operational failures even though they apply a wide variety of industry best practices. The rapid pace of technological advancement has tended to hide some fundamental problems that have existed from the start. These involve, not the technology only, but also the management and application of that technology. The human and organizational factors have not kept pace. They have remained relatively static and, to a shocking degree, ineffective.

As a result, the IT department in many organizations has remained a breed apart. Communication between IT and the rest of the organization is fraught with misunderstanding. This leads to failures, recrimination, and, sometimes, wholesalechanges which fall well short of their goals. The authors wrote this book because they wanted to help both business  and IT to shift their focus from technology project implementation to that of value realization.