The study and report was conducted by PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC) was the third one of its kind—the first two conducted in 2003 and 2005. In this latest study for 2007, interviews were conducted with 749 CIOs and CEOs in 23 countries.
Here are some interesting findings from the study on how enterprises are fairing on IT governance and my thoughts on these:
Championed by—in most cases CIOs champion IT governance (40%), followed by CEOs (25%), and then by CFOs (9%).
Since CIOs are predominantly responsible for IT governance, they need to step up and elevate governance as well as its complementary function, enterprise architecture, and resource it as a priority for effectively managing IT investments.
Business management engagement—68% of respondents said that business management participates (42%), leads (14%), or is fully accountable (12%) for IT governance.
From my experience, often business managers are more engaged in IT governance than IT managers; we need to work with the all the SMEs (IT and business) to understand the importance of IT governance and encourage and engage them for their active participation.
Positive view of IT—“Non-IT people…have a much more positive view of IT” than do IT people. 72% of general management agree strongly on the value creation of IT investment versus only 46% of CIOs.
We need to explore why IT professionals have a more negative view of IT than our customers on the business side of the house have and to reconcile this. Is it just that we are professionally self-critical or that know more about our dirty laundry?
Importance of IT to overall corporate strategy—“93 percent of respondents answered that IT is ‘somewhat’ to ‘very important’ to the strategy.”
IT is important to the business achieving its strategic goals. We need to ensure sufficient time, attention, and resources are allocated to developing an IT strategy and enterprise architecture that aligns to and support the business strategy.
IT governance implementation—Only 52% are ‘in the process of’ (34%) or ‘have already implemented’ (18%) IT governance; however, another 24% are considering implementing.
We need to pick up the pace of IT governance implementation. IT governance is critical establishing and enforcing the IT Strategic Plan and enterprise architecture, to vetting IT investment decisions and sharing risks with project shakeholders, and providing oversight and due diligence to ensure successfully project delivery.
Current IT governance practices—Some of these include: “IT resource requirements are identified based on business priorities” (80%), “boards review IT budgets and plans on a regular basis” (72%), “IT processes are regularly audited for effectiveness and efficiency” (67%), “Central oversight exists of overall IT architecture (IT Architecture Board or Committee)” (63%), “IT project portfolio is managed by business departments supported by the IT department” (59%), “Some form of overall IT Strategy Committee exists” (58%), Standard procedures exists for investment selection (IT Investment Committee)” (55%).
IT governance best practices are well established through frameworks such as COBIT, ITIL, and ISO20K. We need to leverage use of these frameworks to develop our organization’s IT governance solutions and ensure this vital enterprise architecture enforcement mechanism!
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