Thursday, May 24, 2018

WHAT IS IT GOVERNANCE?

         The discipline of IT governance is a subset and very important element of overall enterprise governance issues.
IT governance means different things to different people:
• IT governance is often used to describe the processes for deciding how money for IT resources should be spent. This IT governance process includes the prioritization and justification of IT investments. It includes controls on spending such as budgets and authorization levels.
• IT governance is often used to describe many different aspects of IT changes. At the low level, it is sometimes used to describe project management and control of a portfolio of IT-related projects.
• IT governance is used to make sure that IT change processes comply with regulatory requirements, both governmental laws and rules as well as professional standards.
• IT governance is the process of aligning IT change and expenditure to business requirements and expenditures. Sometimes it also covers the deployment of IT staff.
• IT governance is also used to describe the management and control of IT services.
• IT governance makes sure that day-to-day problem solving and support of all IT resources are aligned to business needs.

       IT governance deals primarily with the connection between an enterprise’s business focus and the IT-related management and operation of the enterprise. The concept highlights the importance of IT-related matters and emphasizes that strategic IT decisions should be owned by the most senior levels of corporate management, including the board of directors, rather than just IT management such as the chief information officer (CIO). Rather than arguing which is the correct definition of IT governance, enterprise senior managers should look at the similarities.

     Governance involves a mix of the following:
• Control of all aspects of IT work.
• Coordination between different pieces of IT-related work—such as new systemsdevelopment and IT infrastructure support.
• Measurement of the outcomes of IT systems and processes.
• Compliance with internal IT policies or regulations.
• Justification of the spending for all IT resources.
• IT and enterprise-wide accountability and transparency.
• Strong connections with the needs of IT customers, the broader enterprise, and other stakeholders.

      All of the IT governance objectives fit into an overall model, as shown in Exhibit 2.4. IT governance is bounded by performance management, strategic alignment, risk management, and value delivery concepts. In order to implement these, there is a need for strong policy and compliance practices, performance and risk management processes, and an overall understanding of appropriate value delivery. Exhibit 2.4 shows these concepts at a high level, but they will be referenced further in later chapters.





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