AUSTRALIA: Implementing The Best Practices of IT Governance In Your Company

What Leading Companies Are Doing To Improve Their IT Governance Beyond Their Competitors

Notes from Week 6–7 FIT3174 IT Governance at Monash Univeristy

We know the stats, IT Projects fail, a lot. In fact, there are many projects that start off in the wrong direction, and, in the end, do not fully fulfil the user’s requirements, or worse, crash in the middle of the last phase of the roll out.

What is IT governance?

IT Governance is the process by which decisions are implemented. It is responsible for ensuring IT goals align with those of the business. For effective implementation, a company should partake in resource allocation and risk mitigation exercises to increase performance, as well as meet the legal and other obligatory requirements.

What are Policies and Procedures?

• Policies are requirements of management. They show how work should be done.
• Procedures are detailed steps for how to do the work.

What Areas Should I Focus My Governance Efforts On?

Every business needs to focus governance efforts of connecting IT and business. Otherwise, disasters like the NHS will become commonplace. Here are a few areas to focus on:

• Strategy alignment between business and IT. Make sure that
• Value delivery: IT should deliver promised benefits at the budgeted cost
• Resource management: management of IT infrastructure and applications
• Risk management: software risks and compliance requirements

All business managers must be focused on IT so that partnerships, agility and globalisation can take place in the organisation.

The 8 Characteristics Of Good Governance

• Governance Should be Participatory: people should be free to express themselves and form associations. They should also be an organised civil society
• Rule of Law: all relevant laws are followed
• Transparent: all rules followed and information is available for those effected by the decisions
• Responsive: serve stakeholders within a reasonable time frame
• Consensus oriented: should take all views and get to an answer
• Equity: all members included
• Effectiveness: meet business needs using avail resources
• Accountability

Supply and Demand Governence

Suppliers and customers require different forms of governance. The main difference is that Supply Governence focuses on how should IT do what it does, whereas demand Governence highlights what IT should work on.

The key steps in any governence endeavour is to Plan, Implement, Manage and Monitor. Here is how this is done in a supply or a demand setting:

The 4 Questions To Ask To Determine Overall Business Goals

You now know the different domains of IT governance, but how do you put these reports into perspective for the rest of your business. Answer these 4 questions and see for yourself:

• Goals: why do we need governence?
• Domains: what needs governence?
• Principles: how should we view governence?
• Decision rights: who does governence?

For Decision Rights, consider making an accountability table for high level management at your organisation.

So Which Business Are You?

It is crucial to start thinking about corporate governence, no matter your business type. We all need more frameworks to manage the risky nature of IT projects and governance gives us that framework so our business works more efficiently, and there are fewer projects that go awry.

Action Steps

What should you do now? If you have read this far, you are definitely keen to establish corporate governance at your company. This is why it is recommended you establish a council focused on different stakeholder groups at your organisation. Each council talks to the different stakeholders in the business and then are able to drive governance in the company.

Be careful though, you may find that:

• Each business unit doesn’t collaborate with the other, instead each individually go to IT
• BU management has no power, so is unable to prioritise the requirement of each BU for IT resources
• IT ends up prioritising the Business units themselves, which leads to no corporate power on what needs to be addressed first.

This is why the council is important. It is only by establishing a technical council that you can get a centralised communication system going with solid outcomes.

Conclusion

If you are a business owner, and you need to measure how your organisation is going. When implementing governence, it is crucial to keep an eye on these metrics to see if the result is desirable. Here are some things to measure:

• Outcomes: reports produced/processes changed
• Success measures: KPIs for sales/customer satisfaction/other
• Identify effective/ineffective areas of governance

Overall, governance is an important part of any business and whether you are following an already in place governance infrastructure or are just starting out, its important to keep these tips in mind as they will keep another disaster at bay, especially one close to home.