Corporate governance of information technology

IT governance consists of leadership, organizational structures and processes that ensure that the information technology (IT) supports the corporate strategy and objectives. Under IT, in this context, the entire infrastructure, but also includes the skills and organization that support the IT and justify. IT governance is the responsibility of the Board and management, and is an essential component of corporate governance.

Components

A key component of IT governance is a successful Business -IT alignment. The implementation of IT governance is supported by powerful and internationally accepted methodologies ( COBIT, MOF, ISO 20000, IT Infrastructure Library). These tools can be seen hierarchically as follows:

  • Standard of corporate governance: COSO, ISO / IEC 38500:2008
  • Parent and standard connection to corporate governance: COBIT (Control Objectives for Information and related Technology)
  • Implementation of IT Service Management: ISO 20000, ITIL ( Information Technology Infrastructure Library)
  • Information Security: ISO / IEC 27002 and IT Baseline Protection Catalogs
  • Project Management: PMBOK, ICB and PRINCE2
  • Architecture: TOGAF
  • System development: TickIT and CMMI

Objectives

The main objective of IT governance is to understand the requirements for IT and the strategic importance of IT from the perspective of the core and management processes within the company to ensure the optimal operation to achieve the company's goals and strategies for the future expansion of the business is to provide. IT governance aims that expectations are known to the IT and that IT is able to meet these expectations. This helps to minimize the risks are mitigated. In this sense it would be more correct to speak of the enterprise governance over IT as IT governance. IT governance plays not in fact in the IT organization from, but outside.

The IT governance balanced two main areas:

  • The creation of corporate value
  • Minimizing IT risks

The objectives of IT governance are set by analysts as follows:

  • Strategic orientation with a focus on enterprise solutions
  • Panelizing with a focus on the optimization of expenses and assessment of the benefits of IT
  • Risk management, which refers to the protection of IT assets, taking account of disaster recovery ( recovery after disasters ) and continuation of business processes in case of crisis
  • Management of resources, optimization of knowledge and infrastructure

Functions

  • Product orientation
  • Controlling
  • Strategy
  • Organization
  • Business Process Modeling
  • Architecture management
  • Efficiency
  • Human Resource Management

Application

It's in IT Governance about asking a certain discipline of IT in a special focus. This focus is particularly interesting for companies or very large companies where the IT support for business processes has assumed a dimension that you no longer comes to special schemes and arrangements around. This effort is reflected in transaction costs. In order for this not out of hand, it has to agree on common standards for IT governance sense.

In principle, the IT governance is to provide an effective and efficient framework in order to support the business processes of an enterprise through IT can optimally. These principles in the company must be specified and appropriate procedures and measures for the enforcement both in IT, as well - and even essential - to be taken in the fields.

IT should therefore be optimally aligned to the Group's business and help the group that with the provided IT resources, consolidated optimum of cost, quality and reliability is achieved. In addition, it is expected that risks are eliminated or minimized from the use of IT and the benefits that the investment is achieved in a project which is supported by IT.

Federal model

This section is an often vorfindbares conglomerates in IT governance model, the federal model, shown.

The federal model arises almost inevitably, because centralized and decentralized organizational forms coexist in this environment in corporations and especially in conglomerates. The IT like many other support processes also lives in a field of tension. This tension is characterized by the fact that most IT is designed to support decentralized core processes of various business, products or services, on the other hand, a central information hub to provide that connects seamlessly to business units and their data. The federal IT governance model attempts here to establish customized structures and committees to develop precisely in this tension optimum for the Group.

In this federal model, there are three parties with different tasks and roles. The expression and balance of the model is group- dependent. The federal model moves in the middle between a centralized and a decentralized organizational approach. Depending on the overall tendency of the group to be IT governance model is set. However, for all the companies that have implemented a federal model or want to implement the basic tasks and roles must be locates.

The following model represents the basic responsibilities and regulatory requirements and shows a conventional in the federal model positioning at.

The federal IT governance model at the group's own IT supply

In this framework, there are three columns that need to be in balance with each other:

Pillar 1: Group CIO ensure ( cross- control) with the responsibility for the overall IT planning within the Group, defining key IT projects to synergies across, pretending IT standards and to monitor compliance, definition of sourcing strategy, control and monitoring of IT benefits across on IT demand and IT supply.

Pillar 2: IT Demand is the first point of contact for IT departments, responsible for requirements definition, technical concept development and technical architecture. The IT Demand takes IT services with the Department of the IT supply and in that capacity is a kind of auditor.

Pillar 3: IT Supply is the contact person for IT Demand, responsible for development, IT operations and technical architecture. She advises IT Demand and CIO to technical innovations.

Main features of this model are:

  • Central control tasks by Group CIO
  • Distributed enterprise or range - CIO as IT -Demand Organization
  • Central IT supply with its own responsibility
  • The IT Demand is decentralized the responsibility of the Group companies
  • Decentralized IT budgets in the Group companies and for infrastructure in IT Supply
  • The central budget for central IT Projects Group CIO
  • Coordination through committees structures
  • Basic synergies are achievable in the central IT Supply
  • Group synergies, if there is binding, common standards and guidelines

To be observed success factors are:

  • The general success factors apply to all companies
  • The specific success factors apply to all companies in an industry
  • The individual success factors apply to a very specific business

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