Sample IT Governance Process
posted by John Spacey, August 20, 2011Businesses depend on IT for their sales, operations, reputation and competitive advantage. IT governance is a critical tool for aligning IT with business strategies and goals. Governance is about maximizing value for IT spending and meeting legal and contractual obligations. It is no longer an optional activity for most organizations.
Simplicable's IT Governance Process is a high level reference process. It includes four phases that represent maturity levels.
IT Governance is not just another IT project. Think continuous improvement — each level in the IT Governance process is ongoing.
Level 1 - Enterprise Architecture
Enterprise Architecture is the foundation of IT Governance: vision, strategy, blueprints, best practices, standards, frameworks, roles, organizational behaviours, processes and success factors.Level 2 - Governance Planning
The first step of planning is where most new governance initiatives go wrong: scope and maturity level. There are two common errors during this activity:1. A big bang approach. Organizations require both resources and maturity for governance to succeed. IT Governance is a challenge that should not be underestimated.
2. A scope that provides little value. Planners should list potential governance areas, assign values to each area and rank by value. The highest value areas for governance should be addressed first.
Level 3 - IT Governance Implementation
There are three primary activities in this phase:1. Integrating governance controls into operational processes.
2. Ensuring key personnel are accountable to governance and value commitments such as project timelines and budgets.
3. Alignment of solution and enterprise architecture. (project oversight)
Level 4 - Process Completeness
Full scope and maturity are reached. This means implementing comprehensive processes for Quality Assurance and Project, Infrastructure, Data, Operations, Change, Service and Risk Management.Other Standards Related to IT Governance
- Australian Standard 8015 - Corporate governance of ICT
- ISO/IEC 38500 - corporate governance of IT
- ISO27001 - information security
- Capability Maturity Model (CMM) - software engineering
- The Balanced Scorecard (BSC) - organizational performance
- Six Sigma - quality assurance
- TOGAF - enterprise architecture
- IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) - a high-level framework
for IT service management, development and operations.
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