Peter Wheatcroft, author of World Class IT Service Delivery has little time for those who moan about a disconnect between IT and the rest of the enterprise: the problem, as he sees it, is that for too long, IT leaders have failed to embrace the idea that what they deliver is a service.

In this book, he sets out to rectify that failure and help IT professionals hunt out the secret sauce that will enable them to deliver a truly world class service.

What follows is a well-considered, if at times one-paced, text focused on the process of building a team capable of delivering such an IT service. Wheatcroft eulogises on the benefits – both organisationally and professionally – that result.

The book maps out a linear path to this IT nirvana, with Wheatcroft providing a walkthrough of tried and tested approaches for improving the reputation of the IT department that involve the acceptance that service-orientation is not just a neat architectural technique, but a mindset for how IT should engage with business. The book is peppered with case studies, highlighting instances where IT departments that understand this paradigm have been able to lithely adapt IT to business change, and consistently deliver business-enhancing services.

There are some workaday steps to those lofty goals – benchmarking, standards accreditation and best practice frameworks such as ITIL. Nevertheless, Wheatcroft also offers novel approaches to improving IT service delivery, for example exhorting readers to learn from the supply chain software they may have installed, and apply the principles of supply chain management to project delivery.

Only 5% are ever likely to attain world-class status in service delivery, says Wheatcroft, but a high enough proportion of the UK’s IT departments are today failing to adequately engage with the business, that shooting for those heights can produce huge benefits.