OVERVIEW...

What is IT Governance?
As stated in the IT Governance Institute’s report, IT Governance is "the responsibility of the board of directors and executive management". IT is an integral part of business governance. For senior IT directors, this means managing and organizing entities and processes in line with the company’s strategy and objectives, with a goal of creating value.

What does it mean?
IT managers must implement methods, tools and processes to improve their results, and simultaneously optimize their budget.
Knowing that IT management represents one of a company’s largest expenses (between 10% and 40% of total operating budget), IT departments must be able to justify their expenditures and their place in the company’s strategy.

Where is the focus?
There are three main points:

• Medium-and long-term IT management strategy,
• Methodology for reaching fixed objectives and monitoring the information system,
• Organization to allow structuring of the IT activity within the company.

METHODOLOGY...

What are the proven governance methods?
There are several well-established IT governance models. The most popular is the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL), which was formulated by the U.K. government's Central Computing and Telecommunications Agency (CCTA) and is now overseen by its Office of Government Commerce (OGC). ITIL has widespread support in Europe but is also gaining popularity in North America. It defines a set of best practices in 24 disciplines.
Another established IT governance framework is the Control Objectives for Information and related Technology (COBIT).
COBIT was created to align IT resources and processes with business objectives, quality standards, monetary controls, and security needs.

THE ARCAD APPROACH...

Best adapted tools:
According to a poll conducted in October 2003 by the IDC agency on a sample of 205 IT departments, IT managers utilize the following techniques in a decreasing order of priority: budget management, project management, priorities and service level agreements (SLA), time management (planning and application lifecycle), and finally human resource management and change management.
Furthermore, considering that governance can only be applied using performance indicators in a precise strategic framework, it is clear that in practice, companies must use dashboard tools to evaluate application maintainability. A realistic measure of application maintainability will assist in preserving legacy applications and ensure that enhancements are made in a secure and productive manner. At the same time, they must keep sight of a variety of factors (financial situation, upcoming orders, market, internal processes).
This Fall, [ARCAD-Skipper ], our application life cycle manager, will boast a new dashboard module that is entirely dedicated to this task.

ADVANTAGES...

Many companies have still not yet felt the stakes associated with IT governance. They are still in the habit of calculating software cost rather than the value created by their information system.
Our role is to help companies see IT governance not as a necessary evil, but as a source of added value for the business. Companies that are not yet in this mindset are unlikely to have precise and effective ways to measure information system-driven costs and gains.
With well-run IT governance, companies will find they are sitting on a gold mine: their own information systems.