IT governance errors have a far-reaching impact, affecting not only CIOs and IT departments but the entire company. These errors encompass various critical subjects, particularly IT management. To steer clear of these pitfalls, it’s vital to recognize common mistakes and implement the most effective IT governance practices. Lemon Learning highlights 5 of the most common IT governance mistakes to avoid.
#1: Neglecting strategic alignment
To achieve effectiveness in IT governance, it is vital to align its strategy with your company’s objectives. This alignment stands as one of the fundamental pillars for the project’s success. By implementing a well-designed IT system, IT governance facilitates and enhances the company’s business processes, leading to value creation. This, in turn, enables your business to evolve and experience significant growth over time.
To accomplish this goal, ensure that the IT governance strategy aligns with the overall objectives of your company, focusing on value creation. Your IT team must develop a well-defined governance plan that help to achieve desired outcomes and fulfill the company’s goals. Neglecting this strategic alignment can lead to severe consequences for all stakeholders involved.
One significant consequence of misalignment is a lack of positive results. When there is a disconnect in overall management, your company will struggle to fulfill its ambitions. As a result, the process of value creation is bound to fail. What’s more is that this failure can discredit your organization, leading to the potential loss of customers and business partners.
#2: Underestimating the importance of communication
To ensure the successful implementation of an IT governance project, the first step is to establish an effective action plan that encompasses all the company’s needs and challenges. Before making this IT governance plan operational, the IT department must communicate it to all other departments and stakeholders within the company. Effective communication is key to the project’s success. This means informing partners, various collaborators, and senior IT staff about the plan.
This communication plays a pivotal role in achieving IT governance objectives. It allows all stakeholders to understand their roles and responsibilities in the framework’s implementation. For instance, legal departments need to be informed about the IT governance action plan to address compliance and regulatory concerns. By fostering clear communication, the IT governance project sets a solid foundation for successful execution.
#3: Ignoring risk management
IT governance that disregards risk management is destined to fail from the outset. Implementing IT governance without considering risk factors exposes the company to various potential risks, including:
- Vulnerability of the computer system
- Constraints arising from a lack of system availability
- Customer rejection due to issues and failures
Your IT Department must identify these risks from the very beginning of the process to ensure a successful IT governance implementation. A comprehensive system should be established to evaluate and address these risks effectively. This approach allows for the creation of a robust risk management plan, to help prevent or mitigate the potential consequences of these risks. Risk management also plays a critical role in enhancing the security of your information systems, safeguarding valuable data and assets.
#4: Cutting corners on training & skills development
The successful implementation of IT governance relies on the collaborative efforts of various employees in your company. To ensure its effectiveness, these individuals need to possess the necessary skills to pilot and manage IT processes. While hiring competent skill sets is essential, it is not a sustainable solution.
In today’s rapidly changing business world, the skills required are continually evolving. What was relevant yesterday may no longer be sufficient today. To address this challenge and establish an IT governance system that keeps pace with this constant evolution, companies need to invest in training their employees.
Training enables employees to continually acquire new skills, such as analyzing dashboards and key performance indicators (KPIs). Without regular training, the IT governance framework implemented by these employees may become outdated, leading to failure in achieving the desired results. This outcome could have adverse effects on your business. It means investing in employee training is vital to maintain a relevant and effective IT governance approach that adapts to ongoing changes in the business landscape.
#5: Ignoring technological evolution
The governance of information systems involves the use of many IT tools. Among them are:
- COBIT (Control Objectives for Information and Related Technologies)
- ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library)
- ISO (International Organization for Standardization)
- COSO (Committee of Sponsoring Organizations)
These tools each have different functions in the establishment of good IT governance. With the evolution of computer technologies, however, they experience changes over time and some of them even become obsolete.
To ensure the effectiveness of their IT governance, CIOs must keep themselves regularly informed of the updates available for these tools. In addition to this, they also need to be aware of new ones that are being created in order to stay on par with competitors. To ensure good IT governance best practices in your organization, avoid these 5 common mistakes.
