September/October 2007 Book Review

CIO Wisdom II: More Best Practices

Authors: Phillip Laplante, Thomas Costello
Hardcover: 480 pages
Publisher: Prentice Hall PTR (October 31, 2005)
ISBN-10: 0131855891
ISBN-13: 978-0131855892

CIO Wisdom II is based on contributions by members of the CIO Institute community of practice from the greater Philadelphia Metro and forms a complementary sequel to the book, ‘CIO Wisdom’.

As Test Managers and consultants we need to know our testing profession well, but also need to understand and know the needs and challenges of business leaders and the technical needs of Chief Information Officers (CIOs). This book is aimed at mature testing professionals with 5+ years experience, or those aspiring to understand the complex technical and other CIO-relevant contexts in which testing takes place.

The book is of a practical nature but tends to discuss the needs and challenges of IT from a high-level perspective – the typical level at which CIOs discuss IT challenges. The chapter contents vary widely and the topics are as much a barometer of market trends and issues, as they are about information in general. Savvy CIOs, and their strategic council from the business, development, project management, testing and vendors will need to understand these topics and how their own specialties (service offerings, products or solutions) integrate and fit into the solution space suggested by each topic.

The language is straightforward and the chapter information as simply put as one could expect from complex business-technology-people scenarios that CIOs have to face on a daily basis. This does not make it an easy read. I imagine that CIOs and readers might prefer to buy and use this book as a reference, perhaps initially glancing at the chapters and selecting the 5 most relevant at the time.

A reasonably comprehensive 23 page index completes the book and helps to make it a handy reference source.

None of these chapters even mentions software testing and maybe as testers we deserve this because we have never considered the CIO’s challenges and how our discipline can integrate and make the work life of a CIO easier. The changing role of a CIO also has the pressure of him/her being considered less of a mentor to business than in the past. Now if they only knew how software and system testing could help to change this….

Wayne Mallinson