IT Governance
Featured Research
IT Governance Suffers when Critical Pillars are Weak or Missing
IT governance determines how the IT function manages demand, delivers value, and protects against risk. There are many people, processes, and technologies that play a role in keeping IT running. The broad nature of IT governance can make it difficult for IT leaders to know where to focus their efforts to have the greatest impact.
Why Is It Important?
Organizations that lack effective governance suffer from low performance, heightened risk exposure, and resource allocation that may appear inappropriate, arbitrary, or political.
What Successful Companies Do
Organizations should excel in four areas of governance to be effective. For other governance activities beyond these critical pillars of success, we believe IT leaders should assess their organization’s maturity to identify the greatest opportunities for improvement relative to peers.
Four Pillars of IT Governance
- 1. Enterprise Architecture
- Effective architecture governance reduces long-term support costs and enables IT to be responsive to business need. The longer-term strategic benefits, however, are often out-of-synch with project-specific goals and near-term pressures to deliver capabilities. Successful EA groups break this tradeoff by moving from red tape stage-gates to a toolkit that is integrated into workflows and accelerates design and development.
- 2. Portfolio Management
- All IT organizations must manage high project demand with limited resources. The key is to create a process that builds a portfolio that will generate the most business value. The process must do this quickly and with little overhead. Too little process prevents decision makers from getting the information they need, while too much can cause stakeholders to disengage. Leading IT organizations establish portfolio governance that effectively balances rigor and responsiveness on an ongoing basis.
- 3. Project Management
- On average, IT delivers only a third of its projects on time, on budget, and with the required functionality. Effective project-level governance improves project success rates. Key factors include establishing a PMO, driving the right level of project methodology, and over-involving business sponsors and end users in specific stages across the project lifecycle.
- 4. Information Risk and Security
- The “consumerization” of IT and the emergence of cloud technologies means that more and more information is located outside the enterprise firewall. Governance of plans, policies and frameworks is critical as organizations experience an explosion in the number and diversity of risks. The way organizations structure the information risk function and its governance mechanisms helps protect technology and information from both internal misuse and external disruptions.