Cooper shares humorous stories from her twenty plus years as a technical consultant addressing the elephant in the room in the business sector—why no one tells the truth in IT. Focusing on how company missions often impede the effectiveness of IT issues, the purpose of Cooper’s practical guide follows a fourfold purpose. Aside of demonstrating how to ward off preventable IT deployment problems, Cooper also identifies and addresses types of behavior and processes that cause the majority of IT issues. There is also another aspect of IT work that is often not mentioned in troubleshooting and that is telling the truth about Fortune 500 companies. Lastly, Cooper demonstrates “how IT leadership is fundamentally different from the typical chief ‘x’ officer (CXO) function and why it requires a different kind of CXO than your typical “thought leader.”
Cooper is not one for mincing words. Speaking from experience, Cooper explores the common situations that create more problems than solutions, and they are not necessarily hardware, software, or firmware issues. Her straightforward narrative takes a stark look at the non-technical issues–people, processes, and business problems that “overshadow and block efforts to complete effective IT projects, implementations, and goals.” For examples, Cooper describes the misbalanced structuring of companies, such as deployment (local versus outsourcing), as well as the lack of diversity among gender, race, and qualifications. Each chapter follows a step-by-step approach keeping to a threefold design that presents destructive and counterintuitive situations followed by storytelling and then closing with realistic solutions. Backing up factual information with plenty of sources that also dubs as additional reading material, Cooper wraps up her quick and user-friendly read by summarizing topics into a practical checklist intended to be used and shared widely.
IT AIN’T ROCKET SCIENCE is eye-opening, entertaining, and highly educational look at technology.
~IndieReader