Why focus on IT Governance?

You may wonder why a service management framework, or service lifecycle, would be built on the foundation of IT Governance.  After all, governance isn't one of the sexiest or most enjoyable topics for the average IT pro.  Yet, it can't be denied that corporate governance is critical for both establishing and maintaining shareholder trust.  And as IT has become an increasingly significant part of the business' bottom-line, there is an increasing need to demonstrate transparency in such areas as decision making, performance, and ROI.  Further, IT Governance becomes an even more significant topic in light of the rising pervasiveness of business process automation and the need for IT to attest to these automated controls.  Whether or not the IT pro is enthused about the idea, they are being impacted through a top-down imposition of governance related tasks and activites that they often struggle to understand how to deliver against. 

Regulatory pressures and compliance measures are other drivers of the IT governance discussion. Often, IT is faced with the dilemna of needing to respond, but lacking the clout or capability to do so, perhaps because they are unable to frame the issues in terms the business cares about. One possible mechanism for communication is a risk management methodology. Perhaps by helping IT and the business approach risk and mitigation as part of a governance discussion using a common vocabulary could be an effective approach?

 

Two other questions we'd love to see some specific feedback on:

  1. What does IT Governance mean to the IT Pro?
  2.  In what ways are IT Pros addressing internal controls?

Thank you,

Jason Osborne

Frameworks PM

Comments

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
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  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
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  • Anonymous
    August 10, 2007
    I have to agree with Kevin, but...  (always a but, otherwise no reason to comment) I think they must do it otherwise they undermine their own existence . Why do I make such a bold statement? well for one thing I love to discuss, but also because I think it holds a true factor in it. First let’s see what does Governance mean: Governance: The collection of mechanisms that allows the organization to make the best decisions as fast as possible. [1] That sounds reasonable to me! Sounds like Root cause analysis to me and that sounds like something all IT people like, resolving problems as soon as possible, or in a more theoretic mindset: close the incident as soon as possible. So why do IT guys then not like Governance? It sounds to me Governance helps them do their work in a better and faster way. I want to go back to the meaning of Governance: "that allows the organization ..." directly includes both the SAN guy as well as the Server guy from Kevin's example. “Organization is everyone”. This brings me to the conclusion of my initial statement: If the SAN guy or the Server guy is trying to sneak out the corporate goals of managing a service instead of a server they are in fact acting in contradiction to what they believe in, Solving problems as soon as possible. [1] http://blogs.ittoolbox.com/pm/hertzfeld/archives/simple-definition-governance-11569?rss=1

  • Anonymous
    August 13, 2007
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  • Anonymous
    August 15, 2007
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  • Anonymous
    August 15, 2007
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  • Anonymous
    April 24, 2008
    after reading all this i still cannot describe how IT governance will solve the problem that is faced by organizations.