[Company Logo Image]

Home Feedback

IT Governance
 

[Under Construction]

Home

Under Construction

When people talk about IT Governance, they normally talk about COBIT, some software solution or some vague ideas about basic principles and values.

The word Governance has different meanings, but the one I will concentrate on, will be Control and Power. Control of the IT environment is handled to a large extent within COBIT, while the Power of IT has not really been addressed.

The IT Governance Institute has the following definition:

It is a board or senior management responsibility in relation to IT to ensure that:
  • IT is aligned with the business strategy, or in other words, IT delivers the functionality and services in line with the organisation’s needs, so the organisation can do what it wants to do.
  • IT and new technologies enable the organisation to do new things that were never possible before
  • IT-related services and functionality are delivered at the maximum economical value or in the most efficient manner. In other words, resources are used responsibly.
  • All risks related to IT are known and managed and IT resources are secured.

PriceWaterhouseCoopers conducted a market research survey on the status of IT Governance in 2004. More information is available at:

IT Governance Institute

3701 Algonquin Road, Suite 1010

Rolling Meadows, IL 60008 USA

Phone: +1.847.590.7491

Fax: +1.847.253.1443

E-mail: info@itgi.org

Web site: www.itgi.org and www.isaca.org

I would like to highlight some interesting findings:

  •  Although more than 93% of business leaders recognized that IT plays an important role in delivering the organization's strategy, it is surprising to see how few boards include IT specialists. They are normally represented by the CFO who is expected to know and understand how IT can contribute to the strategy of the company. It is therefore no wonder that IT does not feel it plays such a significant role in this matter.
  •  Operational failures, incidents and an inadequate view of IT performance was mentioned by 40% of the respondents.

Now keeping this in mind, consider outsourcing IT to an IT business partner that has conflicting requirements to those of the company it is servicing.  Having operational failures in 40% of the cases while delivering an organization's strategy and the performance cannot be measured creates distrust, disappointment and anger. Now you can understand why serious problems rises in outsource deals where sales people created a version of the truth that is totally separated from the operations view.

We were stunned in one instance where a director was stating that they were doing Problem Management with Root Cause Analysis. When asked for the objective evidence of that, he could not provide it and even went as far as saying that if the auditors asked for it, it could be created in a short period of time!

 

 

[ Home ]

Send mail to johan@maartenspro.com with questions or comments about this web site.
Last modified: 09/05/07