Professor Wim Van Grembergen and IT Governance

The professor spoke today at the Gardens Theatre at Queensland University of Technology (great facility by the way) on the topic of IT governance. He focussed on the actual mechanisms for ensuring that IT and business are in alignment.

He focusses on structures, processes, and relational mechanisms.

He noted that relational mechanisms are often missed by consultants putting in a new IT Governance framework.

Structures and processes are fairly straightforward, but relational mechanisms are a little different. Relational mechanisms are mechanisms that ensure that the relationships that underpin the other two tools are effective. Examples include co-location of business and IT, aligned incentive programs, cross-functional business/IT training and job rotation.

The presentation was very interesting, and linked nicely to COBIT. He also noted balanced scorecard to measure corporate contribution, user orientation, operational excellence, and future orientation. A nice rule of thumb for operational measurement presented is that 33% of time should be spent on maintaining existing systems, 33% should be spent on enhancing existing systems, and 33% should be spent on building new systems.

Sherrena Buckby also presented on IT Governance. Sherrena is a PhD candidate at QUT and is writing her thesis on IT Governance. The topic of her presentation is ‘Why IT Governance is important for boards?’. Sherrena is doing significant research on IT governance on what are the tools that the board could use to cover off on iT Governance issues. Her presentaion was very interesting and holds some promise for a practical tool that may assist boards in addressing IT Governance.

A very worthwhile session today.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.