CIOs Running IT Governance: A Lose-Lose Scenario
Should CIOs be responsible for both IT governance and IT management? Of course not. But corporate reality begs to differ.
I thought I was having one of those Lost-inspired flashbacks when I read the year on a Forrester report I had just received. I triple-checked the date: April 30...2010.
Print
The report's title was what threw me off: "IT Should Not Own IT Governance."
Hold on a sec. The wisdom of this business stratagem seems (to me, anyway) as obvious as: "Do Not Stick Your Hand or Foot Under Lawn Mower While Engine Is Running." Or: "Wiring Money to Deposed Nigerian Businessmen You've Met Via E-Mail Should Be Avoided at All Costs." Not the basis of a brand-new report in 2010, but something companies and boards had figured out years ago.
Sigh. Alas, we press on.
Let's dig a little into the report and see why Forrester Research's well-respected principal analyst, Craig Symons, decided to write this.
Symons spends the opening portion of the report justifying how critical IT is to today's enterprises: IT empowers business. But IT investments are risky. Thusly, good IT can be the difference between business success and failure. Agreed. (Those statements wouldn't sound so oddly commonplace if the report were for non-IT executives. But the report is for CIOs.)
Nevertheless, after that section one can sense the "But..." approaching in the report. And here it is: "Yet IT governance practices don't reflect this."
It appears that in many companies "technology-related decisions have been either delegated or abdicated to the IT organization that 'understands' it," according to Symons. He blames this thinking on older, less technology-inclined board members (think: Matlock) who have little interest in IT—never mind having to take responsibility for governing it.
I find it hard to believe that today's top executives and board members view IT as something to relegate to the "island of misfit functions," one that can be easily forgotten. That seems wildly irresponsible—like "violating Sarbanes-Oxley" irresponsible. But perhaps that's just me and the view I've got from this very high horse.
Symons' next point seems obvious, but if this predicament is as prevalent as he intones, then his spot-on statement should be taped to the walls of boardrooms everywhere:
When IT is responsible for both IT governance and IT management, it is often in a lose-lose situation. When IT wears its "governance hat," it must make decisions about where and when to invest in IT without sufficient knowledge of the enterprise, business units, and functional strategies. It must also make decisions about how to prioritize the projects in its active portfolio, again without a complete understanding of all the various strategies and dependencies.
Again, I'm surprised by this deficiency, especially after hearing from CIOs such as CVS's Stuart McGuigan and Bayer's Claudio Abreu about their governance strategies. Boards and line-of-business execs need to have skin in the game, too. Survey data shows that CIOs are aware of the problem: According to the 2010 State of the CIO survey data, IT governance came in third on CIOs' top priorities list (behind aligning IT and business goals, and controlling IT costs).
The Forrester report then offers strategies on how CIOs can engage boards to share decision-making and accountability, and ultimately raise the IT IQ of members as IT governance permeates throughout the executive and board ranks.
Good luck with that.
Do you Tweet? Follow me on Twitter @twailgum. Follow everything from CIO.com on Twitter @CIOonline.
Previous Post: Apple's Supply-Chain Strife in ChinaNext Post: How Much Is a Simple User Interface Worth?
Most Discussed Posts
Cloud computing has emerged as one of the most significant game changers to hit the technology landscape in the past 20 years. With this massive expansion of the cloud, the perception of the IT organization is shifting from a utility player to a change agent. This eBook breaks down five ways progressive organizations are using cloud-based IT Management solutions to help drive innovation and become more strategic, including: adding visibility and analytics, speeding up time-to-value, lowering costs, improving prioritization, and providing a blueprint for future cloud deployments.
Read the white paper to see how IBM helped Citigroup deliver new services and enhancements to their 200 million customers faster.
There are 3 ways to modernize legacy applications: rewrite completely, acquire packaged solutions or migrate existing code. This paper explains why it's best to migrate and how IBM® Rational® software can help.
Accommodating specific lines of business can result in a hybrid ecosystem of applications and servers. The resulting complexity of this architecture makes for an environment that is costly to maintain and difficult to change when addressing new challenges.
This whitepaper will help you to define a mobile device passcode policy. Security managers must attempt to reconcile two opposing goals. They must: 1) create a passcode policy that is strong enough to protect the device if it is lost or stolen, while: 2) not annoying users with needless length or complexity.
This whitepaper, authored by The Radicati Group, looks at the key reasons organizations should consider moving to a cloud-based archiving solution. Email archiving solutions enable organizations to store, monitor, and collect electronic data exchanged by their users to comply with internal policies and regulations.
ATERNITY will showcase a 30-minute demo on how Fortune 500 companies are leveraging its award-winning FPI Platform to deliver a user-centric approach to Proactive IT Management.
For businesses to move forward and tap into the ever-expanding universe of Internet users and network-enabled devices, it's critical to learn how to make the transition to IPv6. Learn the critical steps your organization must take to make a seamless transition-and keep your business world connected.
Learn how IT teams can protect against spear phishing tactics. Harry Sverdlove, chief technology officer of Bit9 offers a frank discussion about spear phishing - the most common technique used in today's advanced attacks.
Learn how to build a solid business case for your migration to Red Hat Enterprise Linux so you can run leaner, innovate faster, be more flexible and own the New Now.
Social media isn't about you; it's about everything around you. As you consider how your customers want to communicate with you, social media is something that can't be ignored. But what should your strategy be? Is social media "just another channel?" What kind of a plan makes sense for your contact center and for your customers? Join our experts as they share their insight and research results.
Hardware tokens were a popular method of strong authentication in past years but the cumbersome provisioning and distribution tasks, high support requirements and replacement costs have limited their growth. The additional log-in steps that hardware tokens require and the resulting user frustrations have limited adoption and make them impractical for larger scale partner and customer applications.
Sponsored Links
