governance

Conflicting principles

A client was developing a set of principles to guide a DevOps transformation and I proposed the two following principles to be included:

  • Honour existing processes, records, and controls. They arose for a reason.
  • Streamline and simplify all processes, records, and controls. Challenge the level of ceremony.

ISACA Bylaws change 2015

Rumblings of dissent over ISACA internal governance? Say it ain't so.

Dark IT

Dark IT is a more specific term than "Shadow IT" and self-explanatory. Dark IT is a threat to corporate interests for which the IT department is accountable. But the IT department can't do a damned thing about Dark IT in the absence of effective enterprise governance of IT (EGIT).

That's the issue we need to solve before we can address Dark IT.

How to deal with Shadow IT

The issue arises when a business unit decides that they are exempt from organisational IT policy; that they have a right to act in the interests of their business unit rather than the enterprise as a whole; that they have no accountability to a central It function. When this happens, it is an indicator of a total failure of corporate governance, a dereliction of duty by the governors of the organisation. Shadow IT is ungoverned IT.

Real IT is at three levels: governance, management and execution

There are three levels to IT: governance, management and execution. Only the execution layer can be decentralised or outsourced.

A review of Governance of IT

Here is an important book: Governance of IT, by Alison Holt. Everyone in any role of authority in IT should read it, and anyone else would benefit from a better understanding of governance as well - it is a horrendously misunderstood and misused term.

Better still, everyone in executive management or governance of any organisation should read it. Well I can dream.

Thoughts on SMcongress and the future of ITSM

The Service Management Inaugural Congress (SMCongress) is the output of the "RevNet" event at the 2013 Fusion ITSM conference in the USA. As a few of you know, twenty-something ITSM thinkers got together in a room to see what would happen. This happened. It has been followed by some unlovely debate and a number of articles.

I had hoped SMcongress would pass me by, but it seems not. A number of you really want to know what I think about SMcongress, (especially those who would like me to say the things you can't), so here you go.

In summary, SMcongress is full of emotion and short on ideas, it lacks clarity or focus, it is addressing the wrong problem in the wrong way, and like all these collaborative "community" movements in business it is unlikely to come to anything. If it can be built upon to create focus, to get back to useful outcomes, and to address the real issues, then its passion, inclusiveness, and energy might be harnessed to some good. I offer here three concrete solutions to the issues of IT and ITSM that I think SMcongress should be focusing on.

Meet In The Middle: Slow IT and Fast IT

© Copyright Canstock Photo IncI've talked before about the need for Slow IT. Here then is a strategy for IT to address the issue, to make a value proposition for the parent organisation about how Slow IT will deliver benefit, will allow IT to be more response, will enable Fast IT.

The mad competitive scramble

ImageThe rate of change in IT is unsustainable, and is in fact a crowd hysteria. Just because the technology is changing that fast doesn't mean we have to, or can.

A major driver for that scrabbling rush is "competition". That is an over-used trump-card that needs some close skeptical scrutiny in all the companies playing it. Tweet this

More Future of IT Management

The IT SwamiIn which the IT Swami updates his vision of the future of ITSM and the IT Skeptic looks forward to upcoming conferences.

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