Review: Six IT Decisions Your IT People Shouldn't Make by Jeanne W. Ross and Peter Weill

I would have to agree with Ross and Weill: The six points they put forward are more for heads of companies because they have a broader view of the company. Ross and Weill put forward the idea that the following six questions should be tackled by a head of office with minimal input from the IT department:

• "How much should we spend on IT?"
• "Which business processes should receive our IT dollars?"
• "Which IT capabilities need to be companywide?"
• "How good do our IT services really need to be?"
• "What security and privacy risks will we accept?"
• "Whom do we blame if an IT initiative fails?"

This doesn't mean that there is no input needed; it means that the head and the IT department should work together to sort out these problems. Otherwise, if no action is taken, the following problems could arise (respectively):

• "The company fails to develop an IT platform that furthers its strategy, despite high IT spending."
• "A lack of focus overwhelms the IT unit, which tries to deliver many projects that may have little companywide value or can't be implemented well simultaneously."
• "Excessive technical and process standardization limits the flexibility of business units, or frequent exceptions to the standards increase costs and limit business synergies."
• "The company may pay for service options that, given its priorities, aren't worth the costs."
• "An overemphasis on security and privacy may inconvenience customers, employees, and suppliers; an underemphasis may make data vulnerable." 
• "The business value of systems is never realized."

The reason why I agree with Ross and Weill is that IT professionals do not have the scope of  a CEO, or COO or other heads of command, and the heads of command don't have the IT expertise that the professionals have so they need to work together to answer the questions that Ross and Weill proposed.