Ads by TechWords

See your link here
Receive the latest technology news and information.
IT Management
Computerworld Daily News (First Look and Wrap-Up)
Computerworld Blogs Newsletter
The Weekly Top 10
Cloud Computing
View all newsletters




Privacy Policy
 

Charting a Course to Achieving World-class IT Governance, One Step at a Time

November 28, 2005 12:00 PM ET

Computerworld - Governance has become a critical element of effective IT management. While it's clear that well-defined practices and mature processes deliver many benefits to an IT organization, it's less clear how an organization achieves mature IT governance processes. Without a well-defined IT governance implementation plan, many organizations become overwhelmed by the complexity of implementing new IT governance practices, tools and processes. The implementation project slows down, results are slow to materialize, and participants may become frustrated and discouraged with the lack of progress. Ultimately, many governance initiatives fail.
There is another way to approach an IT governance project, however. By taking a phased approach, organizations can tackle small steps successively -- and far more successfully. Within each phase, the IT organization can choose to focus on specific goals that will deliver the highest value for the least amount of effort, while moving the organization further along the path to mature IT governance processes.
Creating Visibility -- First Understand What Exists
A common mistake that many organizations make is trying to quickly introduce new procedures or assess the return on investment of proposed IT initiatives without an accurate understanding of how existing projects in the IT portfolio contribute to enterprise goals. For example, many companies have no way to align their IT investments with the enterprise's overall business strategy. Therefore, as demands from various business units increase, the inability to prioritize IT investments results in intense competition for resources and proliferation of projects within the application portfolio that overlap or become redundant. Valuable IT resources become overburdened and can't be used most effectively, and soon the majority of IT resource capacity is consumed by work that simply keeps the lights on instead of advancing the company toward its strategic goals.
By gaining visibility into the current mix of IT projects and applications, IT organizations can examine their portfolios and begin to prioritize projects by importance. A phased approach that uses a simple modeling framework can help the IT organization separate project work from nonproject work and gain information about each project that will enable projects to be aligned with business strategy.
Gaining visibility is a baseline level of IT governance maturity. By proceeding through a modeling framework, the IT organization should be able to achieve milestones that lay the groundwork for being able to address resource supply and demand mismatches. With visibility into the existing project portfolio, the organization can:

  • Eliminate duplicate and nonstrategic initiatives.

  • Model and view the effect of changes in the portfolio.

  • Gain data required for measuring capacity and prioritizing projects.

  • Identify areas where resources are overallocated or underutilized.

  • Increase the availability of resources for strategic initiatives.



Jump to comments

IT Management

Additional Resources

Xerox
By using solid ink technology only from Xerox, you could save up to 65% by printing color for the cost of black and white. Enter for a chance to WIN a PhaserTM 8860 network color printer!
Microsoft
Save time and mitigate security risk. Deploy it now.
Sybase
In this white paper, IDC analyzes the role of next-generation mobile enterprise platforms as organizations seek a more strategic deployment of mobile solutions.

Learn the important issues you must consider before starting your next mobility initiative. Get your mobility white paper from IDC now, compliments of Sybase.

White Papers & Webcasts

Top 10 Habits of Highly Effective PMOs
Download This Whitepaper Now!  

The Commercialization of ITIL: Lessons Learned
Register for this event today!

Your Solution for Delivering and Optimizing Applications Across the Enterprise
Download this whitepaper. Brought to you by Citrix.  

Key Strategies for Managing Data Growth
What are you storage challenges?

Application Delivery Solutions
Download this whitepaper. Provided to you by Citrix.  

8 Must-Have Features to Handle All of Your Network Demands
Download this whitepaper. Provided by Citrix.  

Data Manager Report Excerpt: File System Inventory
Cut storage costs and boost operational efficiencies.  

 

Putting the Right Model in Place to Better Balance IT Supply and Business Demand
IT leaders manage business demands and IT resources in many ways, but which methods are most effective? Tom Welsh, senior consultant of Cutter Consortium, compares two approaches and outlines their pros and cons in this Compuware-commissioned white paper. Get objective appraisals and real-world examples for both.

Download this white paper 
CIO best practices: Optimizing your Project Portfolio Management solution for greater business value
A Project Portfolio Management discipline goes beyond ordinary project management to link IT with the business and help IT leaders better understand the benefits, cost, risks and value of all projects. Download this Compuware white paper and learn how to boost the business value of your IT organization.

Download this white paper 
Exclusive eBook: Six Project Metrics Every CIO Should Know for Application Delivery Success
Most IT organizations spend their time measuring whether projects are on time or on budget. Read this IT executive guide to learn what key data tells you the degree of quality, client satisfaction and how well requirements were met. Make these metrics part of your overall application delivery management process - and your software can't fail.

Download this eBook 
IT Planning and Control: Unveiling the Interrelationships between ALM and PPM
Listen in as Gartner Analyst Matt Light discusses two hot topics-- Project Portfolio Management and Application Life-cycle Management--and how you can bring these disciplines together to improve application quality and delivery. Get recommendations on merging the two methods and learn what type of results you can expect.

Download this podcast