One of the most challenging tasks I undertake as an information technology (IT) consultant is developing organizational models that are designed to optimize IT service delivery to the business process areas that IT is chartered to support. Often I have found myself crossing boundaries between IT processes and the domain of expertise owned by HR. Ultimately HR is responsible for reviewing and approving my findings and recommendations, so this book is especially valuable in that it has enabled me to see the problems and challenges through the perspective of HR.

Among the unique perspectives that this book has provided me are: (1) there are vast differences between organizational and individual competencies. Both aspects need to be carefully examined before a viable solution that meets organizational and individual needs can be crafted. This is especially important for IT consultants because the workers remain in high demand and retention in the face of aggressive recruiting has to be factored in or your IT corporate knowledge and skills will migrate to competitors. (2) Determining whether the goal is quality or excellence. They are two different things and the definitions are hard to pin down. For example, is customer satisfaction a quality or excellence goal? In IT it can be both. (3) The fact that competency can be modeled and measured. Prior to reading this book I went on past experience and narrowly focused books such as IT Organization by Kern, Galup and Nemiro. While that book addressed IT organization from IT's perspective, it was missing the techniques and processes used by HR professionals. As such, the competency modeling and reporting (CMAR) process and associated techniques in Effective Competency Modeling & Reporting have enabled me to approach my analysis in a manner that is consistent with HR practices and produce findings and recommendations that an HR professional will understand.

Some of the other strong points about this book are: (1) it employs a coherent process that is augmented by software tools (Competency Coach® for Windows, whish is also provided on the CD ROM accompanying the book - the version that comes on the CD ROM has a limitation on the save function); (2) step-by-step procedures for performing competency modeling, (3) assessment procedures used to measure your results. In addition, the book includes a sample 72-item model that covers common competencies, a sample position standards spreadsheet, a sample skills-based assessment instrument and other files and artifacts that add considerable value to this book.

Bottom line: while this book is aimed at HR professionals, the information and approach provided is not limited to HR. As a reviewer who is not an HR professional I rate this book at five stars and give it my highest recommendation. I suspect HR professionals will do the same.