IT Governance: How Top Performers Manage IT Decision Rights for Superior Results.

• Author: Marshall, Jeffrey
• Position: BookShelf - Brief Article - Book Review

IT Governance: How Top Performers Manage IT Decision Rights for Superior Results. By Peter Weill and Jeanne W. Ross. Harvard Business School Press, 269 pages. $35

It's axiomatic that relatively few corporations maximize their use of information technology, and tales abound of companies whose enterprise systems were poorly conceived or poorly implemented.

IT Governance makes a case that companies with superior IT governance--that is, control over budgeting and spending--have profits at least 20 percent higher than those with poor governance. Authors Weill and Ross--director and principal research scientist, respectively, at the Center for Information Systems Research--studied 250 companies around the world with an eye toward understanding how the more profitable ones managed the IT infrastructure.

Using examples from companies such as Delta Air Lines, Metropolitan Life...