Nowadays, in this competitive world, companies struggle to perform their best to assure that the organization’s ultimate goals can be achieved. On the way to reach the goals, an organization first has to be certain that all areas within the organization –including every single unit of them– are on the same page with one aim: to accomplish the goals. Therefore, it then entails to making sure that those areas are running their operations with a clear vision that aligns with the organization’s. And, IT area is no exception. So, the next question is how do we guarantee that the assistance of IT is aligned with the business objectives? IT Governance is the answer.

1. What is IT Governance?

IT Governance guides organizations to have their IT aligned with business objectives by ensuring that every area of IT, e.g. software, hardware, and network, supports the achievement of organizational goals, while at the same time considering all stakeholders interest. IT Governance is part of corporate governance.

Then how does it differ with IT Management? Generally speaking, IT Management is about managing the resources IT possesses: people and asset. While IT Governance complements IT Management by embracing the elements of leadership and compliance.

2. Why implement IT Governance?

Having IT Governance implemented in your organization gives you guidance in managing IT organization challenges, e.g. IT strategies and business objectives alignment; IT cost valuation; IT security; and regulatory compliance. It targets to having the controls over those subjects and running effective monitoring approach to measure the performance.

3. Who is responsible to implement IT Governance?

As part of corporate governance, IT Governance falls into the responsibility of board of directors and executive management, also because it mainly concerns about business strategies. Nevertheless, it is the cross-functional team of IT and other business line managers that is to convince the board of directors and executive management about the significant need of a well-organized IT management. Furthermore, the IT Governance implementation itself requires all stakeholders to be involved to make sure all of their interest can be taken into account.

4. How to start implementing IT Governance?

Choosing a suitable best-practice framework for your organization will be a good start in implementing IT Governance. There are numerous options, namely COBIT, Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL), Information Security Management System (ISMS), etc. By selecting the appropriate framework, an organization guarantees that it owns a structured and verified basis to implement IT Governance. Next is to get some assistance to carry on the whole processes. It is essential to get some help, mainly because internal IT executives in the organization barely have time to perform the demanding tasks –such as reviewing numerous documentations and interviewing cross-functional colleagues. Furthermore, getting assistance from dedicated IT Governance consultants plays an important role in the successful realization of IT Governance implementation.