Portfolio, Program and Project Management, what are the differences?
January 16, 2019FLX Solutions chose Governance.Business PSA
April 29, 2019
IT Governance is a common theme of conferences and seminaries, on the workday of CIO’s and all organization managers. It is discussed when the theme is IT risk and investments, align IT and Business, and, sometimes, business transformation.
What is IT Governance? How can we define IT Governance?
IT Governance is defined as collection of tools, processes, and methodologies that enable an organization to align business strategy and goals with IT services, infrastructure or the environment. IT governance is a formal framework that provides a structure for aligning IT strategy with business strategy, and for organizations ensure that IT investments support business objectives.
How important is IT on business to need an IT Governance framework?
Today, most of the organizations depended on the IT and have a high investment in IT infrastructures and initiatives to get in line with market innovations and digital transformations. All departments, roles, and business levels are supported by IT. IT is central to organizational success – effective and efficient delivery of services and goods – especially when the IT is designed to bring about digital transformation or business transformation. The innovation and digital transformation are a challenge for organizations, a disruptive attitude offers many rewards and competitive advantages, but it is synonymy of risks and unintended consequences. Also, the market and regulations exigences, like to protection of confidential information, financial accountability, data retention and disaster recovery, and among others, are a pressure factor for organizations that require a high control of internal and external information, and the IT support.
What is IT Governance?
IT governance (ITG) is defined as the processes that ensure the effective and efficient use of IT in enabling an organization to achieve its goals. IT demand governance (ITDG — what IT should work on) is the process by which organizations ensure the effective evaluation, selection, prioritization, and funding of competing IT investments; oversee their implementation; and extract (measurable) business benefits. ITDG is a business investment decision-making and oversight process, and it is a business management responsibility. IT supply-side governance (ITSG — how IT should do what it does) is concerned with ensuring that the IT organization operates in an effective, efficient and compliant fashion, and it is primarily a CIO responsibility.
This scenario is frequent on public and private sectors, in any industry. They share the same dilemma - how to balance risk and rewards when using IT to enable an organizational transformation and support the business.
IT Governance is a potential solution to resolve this dilemma and other business challenges. IT Governance ensure that investment in IT generate value-reward-and mitigate IT-associated risk, avoiding failure. A good IT Governance aligns your business strategically to support the evolution of an enterprise architecture allow it delivers consistent and scalable business value. It focuses on performance and risk management, with special attention for the metrics definition, rigorous process, costs transparency and objectives control. It helps you measure your business growth and success, including its financial health.
To implement an IT Governance framework is a huge transformation on an organization. It is not just a process change it is about attitude, culture, and leadership. IT Governance is for all type of organizations, large and small. Small organizations need to adjust the structure and control points to their size and operations.
If your organization decides to implement an IT Governance framework, according to CIO.com, “the easiest way is to start with a framework that's been created by industry experts and used by thousands of organizations. Many frameworks include implementation guides to help organizations phase in an IT governance program with fewer speedbumps”.
To decide the best IT Governance solution for your organization you need to determine your IT department structure and functionality, the key metrics management, and the IT returns and impacts on your business. The most popular solutions, on the market, are designed according to the most common frameworks.
- COBIT – Focus on governance management and management of enterprise IT, particularly on risk management.
- COSO – Focus on enterprise risk management (ERM) and fraud deterrence.
- ITIL – Focus on IT services management.
- CMMI – Focus on business performance.
- FAIR – Focus on cybersecurity and operational risk.
Please, visit the official website to learn more about each one.
An organization needs to consider its corporate culture to choose one or more frameworks that best answer its needs. It is very frequently the organizations complement frameworks to improve IT Governance.
IT Governance will improve the rigor, transparency, and control of your organization. A well-defined set of performance metrics provides management with the means to measure success and determine what areas need to be focused on in order to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of IT projects. The most popular metrics are: IT costs by category and by activity; IT staff numbers and cost analysed by activity; Outsourcing ratios; It -related operational risk incidents.
IT Governance aims the whole end-to-end business process, so you need to involve all organization, from the customer at stockholders. A successful business transformation will affect high-level framework, resource management, risk management, strategic alignment, value delivery demonstration, independent assurance, and performance management reporting.
IT Governance is not only about IT. It is about all organization, the capability of control and improves the business with the right performance, right business decisions, successful projects, and innovative initiatives.
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IT Governance solution offers end-to-end IT governance capabilities so IT can be managed as a business. The solution enables a structured approach to managing IT portfolios, including formulating strategy and business priorities, monitoring implementation of project portfolio investments, and managing operational and financial aspects of IT.
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