IT Governance: Way to Succeed

The concept of IT governance is gaining prominence. As per ITGI (IT Governance Institute), IT governance is or should be an integral part of enterprise governance.

All CIOs comply by the need for governance; it is an imperative skill that future CIOs must possess or acquire, as IT governance provides direction and control to help ensure that the significant investments made in IT bring value to the enterprise. When it comes to IT Governance, most forums centre their discussions around the importance of IT, outcome of IT, IT accountability and effectiveness of IT governance.

Why IT Governance?

Berjes Shroff, Senior IT Manager, Tata Services Ltd., has listed IT governance as the top most priority for any IT manager, as it requires enormous skill sets to handle it. It is like how you govern the money given to you and put the technology to the best use and not create a black hole, says Shroff.

Shroff is surprised by the fact that most IT managers have never used the budget that is allocated, as they lack the confidence and skills to govern their investments. Sharing his experience, Shroff says, As a senior IT manager, I am supposed to be clued into the governance aspect in terms of understanding the risks, create value and realise full value from the investments planned.

Shroff laments that most IT managers fail to do a deep research before putting up a budget plan, which results in ineffective governance.

Sanjeev Kumar, CIO & President-Business Excellence, Adhunik Group of Industries, observes that the governance model varies from company to company.However, he lays down a few basic rules of thumb to facilitate effective IT governance.

Make IT a central function, keep it central to business, manage with shared resources and shared assets,and keep IT contributing to all business initiatives as a strategic function, says Kumar. He further adds, Let IT have one line of control, centralised and governed by top management member, i.e., the CIO.If this is done, the results would be easily visible in an organisation.

Kamal Matta, Head IT & Telecom, Sonic Biochem Ext Ltd.believes that tight governance of projects and generating ROI in expected time should e the priority for the future CIO.

An optimist, Mayank Malik, Manager-IT, Bharat Oman, says that IT managers of today are great technical experts and not-so-great sellers. They must shift their focus towards doing more with marketing the vision of the IT organisation in the business and influencing business stakeholders. With regard to IT governance, they understand the business process very well and but they need to work towards handling change management issues, argues Malik.

He reiterates that future CIOs must focus on team building and nurture team leadership skills by investing in innovating self-driven mentoring and coaching. IT managers must seek feedback from the team and peers and based on responses, work out a plan with time driven goals to deliver the change, points out Malik.

Meheriar Patel, CIO, Globus Stores, says that future CIOs should have a thorough understanding of the day-to-day business policies and have change management as part of their daily curriculum. It is about performing business analysis and being ready for future changes, be it within the work place, around technological evolution or with regard to managing business groups or revenue driven projects, says Patel.

Kinshuk Hora, CIO, Glaxo SmithKline, points out that IT governance starts from the basic functions of managing IT to addressing the complexity of the organisational framework. Given the growing complexity of the CIO role, the future CIO may find that appointing a CTO or a deputy is necessary. The deputy focuses on keeping the lights on - this will enable the CIO to capture opportunities that are advantageous to the organisation by strengthening the stage and supporting the management in advancing new ways of thinking and operating.

It is very important that the CEO believes in the value of IT and is open about it. There was a time when this was not so, but times have changed and are changing for the better. So thats a plus for the future CIO, says Hora.

Pradeep Khanna, Senior Manager-IT, Infosys, recommends his peers to change the measurements and have strong performance benchmarks.

Khanna urges his peers to spend the money wisely. For instance, just because the Cloud is the hottest thing in town, it doesnt mean I should go shopping: not in this century, at least. Every technology decision needs to be evaluated on the philosophers stone of its business relevance.

He strongly believes that the quest for excellence and staying relevant cannot be achieved by the leader alone: it needs to percolate down the organisation and become a part of everything that everybody down the line is trying to do.

So that a Java developer, when writing his code with a 5 per cent testing error, needs to realise that he has wasted 5per cent of the salary spent on him and on that of the testers, the Infra guys, the servers.

According to him, risk management is often one aspect of management that is swept under the carpet. CIOs of 2015 need to not only have rock-solid risk management strategies, but through their vantage position as the bearers of the companys technology, have an opportunity to help the rest of the organisation manage it appropriately.

Interestingly, the ITGI survey indicated how important executives believe IT is to their enterprise, and where its major contribution lies. While there was agreement that IT investments have created and continue to create value, most of the respondents indicated that there were barriers that tended to restrict realisation of full value from those investments.

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