Sound IT governance enforcement makes complex things less complex, improves the management effectiveness and eliminates risks.
Information Technology is the linchpin to run a contemporary organization. IT is an integral part of the business “the business” and “IT” are inextricably linked in the 21st century. IT governance evolves the leadership, organizational structures and processes that ensure the IT organization sustains and extends the enterprise strategies and objectives.
The management capability: IT management and IT governance mutually reinforce each other. IT management focuses on building a unique set of business capabilities. IT GRC enforcement makes complex things less complex, focusing on monitoring of IT service/solution delivery, cost optimization, availability of talents, scalability of operations, ensuring people, processes, technologies, culture, etc, working in harmony, and driving IT-driven business initiatives to increase revenues. In order to improve IT manageability, IT governance should include not only IT solutions but also IT PMO, IT policies, IT processes, IT change management, etc. It all depends upon the complexity, size, maturity of the organization.
IT governance enforcement starts with understanding business as a dynamic, complex and adaptive system. Identify IT pain points (Delayed Projects, Cost Overrun, No Innovation, No business involvement). Senior leaders need to ponder: How would you model different value propositions to different customer segments yet developing and offering the product and services using the same or similar business capabilities? How is governance needed to manage risks in capability development? Etc. From capability analysis, to re-engineering existing capabilities to designing new capabilities, a strong governance discipline helps executives and management perform a risk analysis, oversee IT strategy which as an integral component of business strategy, harness cross-functional connectivity (communication, coordination, and control), raise visibility and awareness for many things that are captured at the different levels of the organization, to accelerate IT performance.
Generally organizational maturity: IT maturity is proportional to overall organizational maturity. Organizational maturity is assessed based on the overall business effectiveness, efficiency, operational excellence, responsiveness, performance, innovation, intelligence, resilience, and people-centricity. Gauging IT organizational maturity has a multitude of focuses such as customer satisfaction, the fiscal health of IT organization, the success rate of IT delivery, and overall IT capacity and capability. IT governance should be looked at more holistically in an enterprise, and follow the logical steps to improve organizational effectiveness and maturity.
The strong IT governance makes sure IT systems run according to plan, schedule, and performance standards. Control costs to the greatest extent possible, including resource, equipment, and facility costs under the CIO’s purview. IT investment is usually expensive, so most of the time, IT ends up living with current technologies and standards rather than investing. Advanced technologies are really good and more helpful to drive business demands. adopting and realizing the benefits requires investment. With strong IT governance discipline, look for and assess new technologies, determine viability and alignment with the organization’s strategic direction, calculate return on investment, and improve IT investment effectiveness.
The degree of interdisciplinarity and level of people-centricity: It is reasonable to understand anything that has strategic or operational implications should thus not be taken solely by IT. In reality, IT-business gaps and frictions are the reality, neither business nor IT knows the full picture on these two pieces of the puzzle until they work together. Either for strategic IT management or governance practice, cross-functional collaboration is crucial. There are both hard and soft components in business governance. Governance as a multi-disciplinary approach is an enabling vehicle that provides a platform for determining sound corporate attitude, behavior and structured decision-making for improving business maturity.
There is an ongoing problem with highly structured GRC approaches that seem to overlook the very human and social behavioral factors that underpin real GRC success. Take an interdisciplinary, people-centric IT governance approach, including engagement and motivation, to improve cost optimization, availability of talents, scalability and nonstop global operations, on-demand products/services delivery model, or other sourcing solutions. Under strong IT governance, the well-defined KPIs will help to measure business performance results qualitatively and quantitatively.
Sound IT governance enforcement makes complex things less complex, improves the management effectiveness and eliminates risks. Governance isn’t just about putting restrictions on what you can do, it is also about monitoring and knowing when things are not going to plan so that you can take appropriate actions at the right time. Sound governance is part of eliminating risk and doing the right thing. Governance practices need to be sufficiently informed and able to keep pace with what is going on. Governance improves resilience by enhancing self-organizing and self-regulating, and improves the overall organizational maturity.
