Governance

Introduction

IT governance, a vital element of overall corporate governance, is simply defined as the rules and processes mandated (either internally or by legislation, vertical market directive, or other body) to which the day-to-day operations must adhere. Governance provides the structure you need to meet business goals and the parameters of how they can be achieved. 

For IT, this means challenging operational aspects including best-practice provision, audit trailing, documentation, fact-based decision making, repeatability and standardization must all be considered, reviewed, and implemented where needed. Each facet may affect existing processes, almost certainly will be affected by and have demands on technology, and importantly it will have a notable impact on the actual roles of the people doing the work.

CIO / Executive

Governance is not dissimilar to compliance in that while it is an operational imperative, a must-have, it has no direct tangible bearing on the usual measures of business success (profits, reduced cost, shareholder value). For the CIO, this means finding budget to implement Governance programs without being able to construct a meaningful ROI. Therefore the need for an effective Governance program that can be implemented without major upheaval or IT investment is going to be paramount.

Application Portfolio Management is a technology led solution that, in promoting and supporting an effective change culture internally, can be utilized and exploited for Governance issues. The headache of investment considerations is removed where Change - and technology to drive it - is supported as part of the organizational cultural framework.

Architect

The Architect and CTO office will find Governance, an all-pervasive impact that touches all corners of the business, a major implementation headache without technological assistance and scientific planning and control. Finding Governance impacts, analyzing the affects of change, establishing a verification and audit process, implementation new procedures on best-practice, internal documentation, training, storage – significant effort across the entire IT landscape. Managing that portfolio through detailed understanding, assessment, planning, estimation, impact analysis, documentation, reporting will be key to the success of the governance project.

Technical

Clearly much of the governance work is in the guts of the IT systems themselves, making much of the effort one of a technical nature. Technology to discover information right down to the very heart of core systems is critical, as is the ability to report findings in a real-time, summary level. Managing the impact and providing clear documentation of findings and the systems interrogated will also be a major element of the technical work and without software assistance this is an arduous and resource-intensive task.

Conclusion

Governance – "Vital, but it mustn’t cost a dime!"

Major corporations can not ignore Governance issues. Too many have already fallen foul of tougher measures of their business processes. But this work costs – and it is often seen as having no real benefit, so is funded accordingly by the business. Somehow, IT simply has to cope. 

Application Portfolio Management resolves this paradox by providing a solution to the whole issue of effective management of change within the organization, Governance being only one example of which, and spreads the bottom line impact across all of these change ‘projects’. This way, the funding can be offset against other more directly beneficial efforts as well as the mandatory housekeeping exercises.

Implementing and supporting good business process is ultimately a business benefit because it keeps the business in a position to compete effectively and meet its obligations. APM will manage the steps towards this without undue burden or risk.