IT governance is a broad topic involving multiple disciplines, including information technology, risk management, project management, strategy, intellectual property, business design and compliance. Pity the poor IT governance professional trying to draw together the various responsibilities and tools relating to each area. Up to this point no single tool has provided a full picture of IT governance. In fact, collectively, existing tools have often given a confusing impression that actually hinders the purpose of IT governance: to equip boards with information and levers for directing, evaluating and monitoring how well IT supports their core businesses.
To address this problem we have just launched a new IT Governance Framework. It isn’t yet another tool – there are more than enough of those. Instead, it sets out an end-to-end process for integrating the IT governance roles and tools that apply to an organisation’s boardroom, executive and IT department functions. To our knowledge this is the first framework of its type in the world and should significantly help IT governance practitioners communicate to their colleagues what has to be done. Being generous souls we are making this available free of charge.
The IT Governance Framework is based upon our popular management book ‘IT Governance Today – A Practitioner’s Handbook’. It provides the basis for the forthcoming IT Governance Toolkit, which will provide a comprehensive suite of policies, procedures and task sheets to enable organisations to implement a comprehensive IT governance system that genuinely aligns IT with corporate strategy. We plan to release this in Q2 2006 so watch this space.
