Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
This framework is conceived to implement IT
Governance from top to bottom of the organiza-
tion (from the board to management), and also in
the whole lifecycle, from the strategic planning to
the deployment of capabilities. Clear benefits of
this framework are the integration with different
models, techniques and frameworks already ex-
isting (COBIT, ITIL, TOGAF, etc.). And finally,
it is important to name the efforts of the Institute
de la Gouvernance des Systèmes d'Information
in defining its framework for IT governance
(d'Information 2005), and define every one of the
different techniques and tools for implementing it.
There are different definitions of IT gover-
nance. Not only this, but even it can be found, in
the literature, an attempt to define this discipline
considering the different frameworks and elements
(Webb 2006). But, rather to define it, it is more
important to understand the different elements
that comprise it.
The IT Governance Institute, on its differ-
ent publications (ITGovernanceInstitute 2003;
ITGovernanceInstitute 2007), identified 5 key
elements for IT Governance: strategic alignment,
value delivery, risk management, resource man-
agement and performance management. Other
institutions, such as CISR (Weill 1998; Weill 2003)
consider more important aspects such as strategic
alignment, organizational structures, relational
mechanisms and processes. The approach of Van
Grembergen (Van Grembergen 2004) is similar,
basing IT governance on processes, structures
and relational mechanisms. The ISO 38.500 stan-
dard considers principles such as responsibility,
strategy, acquisition, performance, conformance
and human behavior. And other institutions such
as L'Institute de la Governance des Systêmes
d'information (d'Information 2005) structure IT
Governance on a different way, considering ele-
ments that have already been analyzed such as
value delivery, processes, risk management and
transparency and compliance, but also IT finance
(budgeting and controlling), IT competencies and
IT customer, more related with the operation of IT.
In the next paragraphs the different elements
of IT governance are described.
strategic Alignment
Aligning IT with the business strategy makes IT
to both support the business operation and also
to support the strategic of the business, in terms
of business objectives.
One of the first steps to consider strategic
alignment as one of the key elements was identi-
fied by Weill (Weill 1990), differentiating the
value delivery of IT from the strategic and op-
erational point of view. Nevertheless, Henderson
and Venkatraman (Henderson 1999) were the
first to propose a framework to align IT with the
business, in which they propose the need of an IT
strategy. This framework was complemented by
Luftman and Brier (Luftman 1999), who identi-
fied the enablers and inhibitors of the strategic
alignment of IT.
Other authors such as Weill (Weill 1998)
proposed a model for the strategic alignment
considering the environment, the role of IT and
the strategic content, and linking it with the IT
portfolio. Luftman (Luftman 2000) developed
a strategic alignment maturity model, tested on
25 companies of Fortune 500, and Duffy (Duffy
2002) identified four maturity models.
Strategic alignment of IT must comprise two
things in the organization. First, a clear and de-
fined business strategy, that must have strategic
lines with impact on IT. Second, an IT strategy
that must consider the business strategy and its
impact on IT, and also the needs, from the mid
and long term point of view, of IT.
Value delivery
From the perspective of shareholders, IT must
deliver value. And this can be seen as an optimi-
zation of the investments (Weill 1998). Verifying
the value delivery of IT is verifying the validity
of the investments in IT, for the shareholders, the
Search WWH ::
Custom Search