The Accidental CIO: A Lean and Agile Playbook for IT Leaders

The Accidental CIO is a guide for IT leaders to balance innovation and exploration with exploitation and operational reliability. It provides hands-on advice for tackling challenges and paradoxes, such as creating an aligned IT strategy, defining a target architecture, designing a balanced operating model, and leading teams and executing strategy.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 528 pages
Publication date: 02 May 2024
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Inc

In today's rapidly evolving digital landscape, IT leaders face a critical challenge: balancing the needs of innovation and exploration with exploitation and operational reliability. While many books on modern IT leadership emphasize supporting innovation and disruption, it is equally important to address the need for waste reduction in existing processes and capabilities while maintaining the foundation's operational, secure, compliant, and cost-effective nature.

Enter "The Accidental CIO," a comprehensive playbook written by veteran software developer-turned-executive Scott Millett. This invaluable guide is designed to empower IT leaders at every stage of their leadership journey, from aspiring individuals to long-time incumbents in director and C-suite roles. Within its pages, readers will discover a treasure trove of hands-on advice for navigating the myriad challenges and paradoxes that confront technology leaders. From crafting an aligned IT strategy to defining a target architecture, designing a balanced operating model, and leading teams to execute strategy, "The Accidental CIO" provides a roadmap for success.

After an insightful foreword by Simon Wardley, the book delves into the core concepts and frameworks that will guide IT leaders on their journey. It introduces the Cynefin decision-making framework, which helps leaders understand the problem contexts they will encounter and how the philosophies of agile, lean, and design thinking can be applied to manage them effectively. Readers will learn how to design an adaptive and strategically aligned operating model by applying the appropriate ways of working and governance approaches, tailored to each unique problem context.

Furthermore, "The Accidental CIO" offers practical guidance on organizing a department using a blend of holacratic and hierarchical principles, leveraging modern approaches such as Team Topology and Socio-technical patterns. It teaches leaders how to develop and deploy an effective and aligned IT Strategy using Wardley mapping, based on a deep understanding of their business architecture. With this knowledge, IT leaders will be well-equipped to create an empowered IT organization that drives innovation, enhances operational efficiency, and ensures compliance with regulations.

In conclusion, "The Accidental CIO" is a must-read for IT leaders who seek to navigate the complexities of modern IT leadership. By providing a holistic and practical approach, this book empowers leaders to balance the needs of innovation and exploration with exploitation and operational reliability. With its wealth of insights and actionable advice, "The Accidental CIO" is the key to becoming an impactful, strategic leader in the ever-evolving digital landscape.

Weight: 748g
Dimension: 234 x 188 x 33 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781119612094