IT Best Practices: Management, Teams, Quality, Performance, and Projects

Consistent success does not happen by chance. It occurs by having an understanding of what is happening in the environment and then having the skills to execute the necessary changes.

Ideal for project, IT, and systems development managers, IT Best Practices: Management, Teams, Quality, Performance, and Projects details the skills, knowledge, and attributes needed to succeed in bringing about large-scale change. It explains how to incorporate quality methods into the change management process and outlines a holistic approach for transformation management.

Detailing time-tested project management techniques, the book examines management skills with a focus on systems thinking to offer a pragmatic look at effecting change. Its comprehensive coverage spans team building, quality, project methodology, resource allocation, process engineering, and management best practices. The material covered is validated with references to concepts and processes from such business greats as Dr. Deming, Jack Welch, and Henry Ford. Readers will learn the history behind the concepts discussed along with the contributions made by these great minds.

The text supplies an awareness of the factors that impact performance in today’s projects to supply you with the real-world insight needed to bring about large-scale change in your organization. Although it is geared around change, most of the concepts discussed can be directly applied to improve efficiencies in your day-to-day activities.

Tom Witt has a B.S. in mathematics, with a minor in coaching, from the University of Wisconsin–Platteville. He has worked in the information technology (IT) environment for almost 30 years. Early in his career, he moved into management for 14 years before entering the project world, in which he has held the titles of office automation manager, project manager, technical manager, technical lead, architect, and system analyst. Most of Tom’s experience has been in the insurance industry in addition to three years in the magazine fulfillment business and three years at an institute of higher education.

Tom has worked on a wide range of projects; he has been a part of the development of new mainframe systems, new web systems, and vendor-purchased imaging systems and system remote workers across the country as well as part of a small team that reengineered a business division for a major insurance company. Many of the projects on which Tom has been involved have affected changes―as many as 200 different systems―throughout the entire enterprise. Tom has acquired knowledge not only through personal experiences but also from outside sources such as external consultants, seminars, books, and a personal network of people. More importantly, he was put into many different types of project and situations that allowed him to apply the many different concepts and knowledge acquired to see the results from a front-line perspective.