GovernIT

Today has been a good “thinking” day for me so far. First, I read a great post by Peter Kratzman on Mending Wall: Matches and Mismatches in IT stakeholder expectations

Then I got to watch this great interview of Gartner’s Daryl Plummer on Youtube

While I agree and understand Business’ frustration with IT, there are a few things that make IT behave the way it does. It cannot be a coincidence that most IT shops behave this way, right?

Some thoughts:

• Do Less with More – Supporting the same or increasing number of applications with less personnel, less money, outsourcing headaches, at a time when costs are going up is forcing IT to think about survival and not about innovation! If you are firefighting everyday, where is the time to think long-term?
• Technology Innovation and Adoption cycles don’t match – While new mobile platforms can come up quickly, supporting them in the Enterprise is a nightmare with untried devices
• Security Risks are discounted – with the qualification that the discount is valid till a breach occurs. For example, giving mobile support to Enterprise applications seems the way to go, but supporting Blackberry, iPhone and Android phones increases security risks manifold. There is very less experience out there on how to do it safely. Social Media, Cloud Computing/SaaS,  Data Storage are some other examples where security breaches can cost the company dearly
• Business still does not want to “own” decisions concerning IT. Moving to the cloud vs staying in-house is not IT’s sole responsibility. After all, if IT systems are down, the Enterprise is down!. In short, Business must move away from the “Get IT done somehow and don’t tell me about it” (pun intended!) mindset
• Like Business, IT has some processes and while they can be flexible, there are some constraints. Everyone has to live with constraints these days, so why be unreasonable only towards IT?
• Finally, the most important thing (at least, it seems that way to me) – the thinking that IT is a magical system that can bend however needed while Business processes are fixed in stone must be changed. I am reminded of my teacher in school, who admonished me – It can be done as long as the doer is someone else. When you have to do something, you get all the problems in the world!

So, who will bell the cat? (That’s just a saying, don’t take it literally folks)

IT. We must do a better job at communicating these to the Business. Much has been said about how to align IT with Business, but how should this alignment happen? Some case studies are listed here.

• Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s CIO does a good job of Governance in this CIO.com article
• This CIO’s team congregates to discuss every business project that has an IT component (I like that) – Read here
• This paper from SAP America discusses the challenges and offers some solutions (Needs free registration) – Link here

I wrote some shorter posts on this here and here last year, but this seems to be a perennial subject.

Do you have other things in defense of IT? Or are you, perhaps, from the Business? Me, you ask? I believe in this quote (I have quoted this earlier too on this blog):

None of you are in IT; all of you are in business.

-Andy Kyte, vice president and Gartner fellow

   Send article as PDF   

A long title, but that is because I couldn’t find a shorter and apt one.

In this blog by forrester research (posted on CIO.com, by the way), CIOs have identified a few things they would like to see in their organizations in 2010.

I’ll summarize the basic points here, while you can read the rest of the article(rather small, actually) here – CIOs spoke, We listened. The basic idea is to improve Business-IT relationship, which as we know is being tried since IT was considered an industry.

How do we get closer to the Business? Lets try some of these:

1. Future trends in IT:  How the next generation of technologies can change the way people interact in and with our business using technology. The Cloud (that sounds like a horror movie), social media, knowledge management etc are the areas which can rock the boat – the boat being Enterprise Architecture in this case.

2. Talent Management – Every industry is grappling with this question – How to find the best people and keep them. Of course, it is heartening to note that IT is slowly realizing that IT is still about people and not about technology.

3. Where do we stand on the scale – Like it or not, humans have reference frames which they use to judge things around them. Corporations are no different. Every senior manager wants to know how he is doing vis-a-vis the competition. This could be in terms of people, services, products etc.

4. IT Governance – Phew! I was afraid this would not be listed. Nothing need be said here, except to note that IT Governance is still considered IT’s headache. Let me reiterate, IT Governance is the Business’ Governance of IT. IT Management is what CIOs do.

5. Communicate value – Everyone needs to market their contributions and value-adds or risk being outsourced. IT still has to do better job in communicating business value, which will come only when IT is one way of doing business, which will come when business realizes the true value and potential of IT and… You get the point.

   Send article as PDF   

I was witnessing an interesting discussion today on what IT Governance is all about. There were a lot of quotes, including definitions from ITGI and CIOs of large corporations.

I had an “aha” moment when I heard a wonderful definition – IT Management is within the IT function, whereas IT Governance is outside it.

In other words, IT Governance is better termed as Business governing of IT to ensure IT is an enabling partner for meeting organizational goals.

Do you have a different take on it?

   Send article as PDF   

Out of all the major mistakes you can make when embarking on an IT Governance program, 3 stand out for their impact – complete failure of the program!

1. IT driving IT Governance

Business has to own and drive IT Governance. IT Governance is the business of governance of IT and hence business has to ensure that IT is aligned to the short and long term needs of the business. A simplified example of doing it wrong is when IT is asked to cut costs and and it cuts in places where long term strategic advantages are affected.

2. Thinking IT Governance is solved by a Process Framework or model

No single framework can work in establishing true IT Governance – as most models are focused on solving problems in one area of IT. COBIT is the most suitable framework for an overall Governance structure, but it only talks about the “what” – for the “how”, you will have to look at specific models for detailed guidance. ITIL for service management and CMMI for application development and maintenance are excellent choices (and industry standards!).

There are other areas, such as managing the portfolio of IT projects and their value to the business. There are no formal standards for such things and you might have to bring in reputed consultants to help you draft one for your organization.

3. Thinking that deploying a tool will give you IT Governance

There are a large number of organizations where improper deployments have become white elephants. Often, management confuses reporting with a working system – leading to deploying tools that can churn out good-looking reports and dashboards, but not really actionable information.

Tools can automate your processes and bring in consistency and effectiveness, but only after you have thought through the controls, defined processes and trained people.  

In short, full IT Governance is only for those who can stay the distance, investing time, effort and money. There are no quick-fix solutions here.

   Send article as PDF