Predicting IT Governance Performance : A Method for Model-Based Decision Making

Contemporary enterprises are largely dependent on Information Technology (IT), which makes decision making on IT matters important. There are numerous issues that confuse IT decision making, including contradictive business needs, financial constraints, lack of communication between business and IT stakeholders and difficulty in understanding the often heterogeneous and integrated IT systems. The discipline of IT governance aims at providing the decision making structures, processes, and relational mechanisms, needed in order for IT to support and perpetuate the business. The adjacent discipline of enterprise architecture provides a broad range of frameworks and tools for model-based management of IT. Enterprise architecture is a commonly and successfully used approach, but the frameworks need to be adapted with respect to the concerns at stake in order to become truly useful. The IT organization includes all people involved in decision making regarding IT. The quality of the IT organization differs between enterprises and depends on aspects such as: are rights and responsibilities assigned to the appropriate people, are formalized processes implemented, and does proper documentation exist? This internal IT organization efficiency is labeled IT governance maturity. One might argue that internal efficiency metrics of the IT organization are of moderate interest only. What really matters is the external effectiveness of services that the IT organization delivers to the business. This latter effectiveness is labeled IT governance performance. Even though it is reasonable to believe that enterprises with good IT governance maturity also achieve high IT governance performance, the validity of this assumption has never been tested. IT management’s ability to make well-informed decisions regarding internal IT organization matters would increase if it were possible to predict IT governance performance. The contribution of this thesis is a method for model-based IT governance decision making. The method includes a metamodel, i.e. a modeling language, and a framework for the assessment of IT governance maturity and performance. The method also allows prediction of IT governance performance.  This thesis is a composite thesis consisting of four papers and an introduction. Paper A presents an overview of the method for model-based IT governance decision making. Paper B presents the mathematical foundation of the prediction apparatus, i.e. a Bayesian network that is based on statistical data. Paper C presents how the method can be used in practice to support IT governance decision making. Finally, Paper D analyzes the correlation of IT governance maturity and performance. The analysis is based on statistical data from case studies in 35 organizations.QC 2010090

A Bridge between Practice and Research: Which Governance Vehicle Suits best the Purpose?

In order to successfully govern an enterprise, business and information technology must be aligned. With proper alignment comes many benefits, including improved risk mitigation and more effective use of IT resources. Undoubtedly, the challenge and complexity of this endeavour is enormous and has previously been addressed in research literature and by practitioners. The Strategic Alignment Maturity Assessment Framework is a comprehensive tool for evaluation of business-IT alignment. The framework has roots in academic research and aims at analyzing the current situation in an organization. Further, it provides hands-on suggestions on how alignment can be improved. Based on the Strategic Alignment Model, it is incrementally developed through studies of enablers and inhibitors of alignment, and validated in more than 50 cases in Fortune 500 companies. On the other hand, The Control Objectives for Information and related Technology (COBIT) has emerged from best-practice and has recently been released in version 4.0. It is based on the analysis and harmonisation of existing IT standards and conforms to generally accepted governance principles. In this paper, The Strategic Alignment Maturity Assessment Framework and Cobit 4.0 are compared and discussed from an implementation point of view. In order to successfully achieve an alignment of business and IT, which framework is the governance vehicle that best suits the purpose

A reference model for IT management responsibilities

This reference model for IT management responsibilities covers the most important aspects when modeling, analyzing and evaluating enterprise architecture, EA. The reference model can be employed to support IT management in their quest to make well-informed decisions, e.g. to derive architectural principles in order to obtain a proper scope for EA activities, measure the status of the current EA, follow up changes committed, and evaluate alternative EA scenarios. The model is based on extensive literature studies and has been tested in a series of empirical studies

A Bayesian network for IT governance performance prediction

The goal of IT governance is not only to achieve internal efficiency in an IT organization, but also to support IT’s role as a business enabler. The latter is here denoted IT governance performance. IT management cannot control the IT governance performance directly. Instead, their realm of control includes several IT governance maturity indicators such as the existence of different IT activities, documents, metrics and roles. Current IT governance frameworks are suitable for describing IT governance, IT-systems, and business processes, but lack the ability to predict how changes to the IT governance maturity indicators affect IT governance performance. Bayesian networks are widely used for goal modeling and prediction in several research fields. This paper presents an application of Bayesian networks for IT governance performance prediction. Data from 35 case studies conducted in a variety of organizations has been used to determine the behavior of the network. An assumption on linearity is introduced in order to compensate for the limited amount of data, and the network learns using the proposed Linear Conditional Probability Matrix Generator. The resulting Bayesian network for IT governance performance prediction can be used to support IT governance decision-making

An IT management assessment framework- evaluating enterprise architecture scenarios

Enterprise architecture, EA, is an established approach for the model-based and holistic management of IT. The scope of EA is however wide and the predominant EA frameworks suggest the creation of broad and detailed models. IT management cannot control all areas spanned by the present frameworks for EA models. In order to ensure well informed decisions, IT management has a series of questions that need to be answered. This paper proposes an assessment framework that can be used to identify relevant questions for assessments of EA and EA scenarios, within the areas of EA that IT management can control. Three top dimensions in the proposed framework are presented: IT organization, IT systems, and Business organization. The framework further includes sub dimensions for identifying questions. An application of the assessment framework, as it was applied to assess EA scenarios in a power company, is also described

GETTING THE PRIORITIES RIGHT: LITERATURE VS PRACTICE ON IT GOVERNANCE

Abstract. The field of IT governance has emerged in order to address organizational issues for IT value delivery to the business. However, a shared view of the definition of IT governance is lacking between researchers and practitioners, and support for decision-making is neither present. A commonly agreed upon definition of IT governance would be useful but has until today not been available. This article presents an IT governance definition based on an extensive literature study. IT governance is the preparation for, making of and implementation of IT-related decisions regarding goals, processes, people and technology on a tactical or strategic level. The components of the definition are prioritized in two different ways. A theoretical prioritization was made to highlight the most important concerns according to 60 different publications. Another prioritization was carried out with a group of Swedish IT governance experts. The opinions of practitioners and literature did mostly align, but differences were identified in the importance of understanding the situation at hand prior to making decisions, and monitoring of the decisions ’ impacts

EARP WORKING PAPER MS103: DEFINING IT GOVERNANCE- A CONSOLIDATION OF LITERATURE-

Abstract. A shared definition is lacking within the field of IT governance. This is unfortunate, since a clear and uniform definition of IT governance would make assessments more accurate. This paper provides an IT governance definition based on a consolidation of literature. The definition is based on analysis of 60 different articles. According to the definition, IT governance is about IT decision-making: The preparation for, making of and implementation of decisions regarding goals, processes, people and technology on a tactical and strategic level. A classification of the statements was carried out according to the dimensional units mentioned above. In literature, “Strategic”, Monitoring”, “Goal ” and “People ” were most frequently used. Finally, the Cobit framework for IT governance was mapped to the definition. Compared to literature, Cobit emphasized “process”, and “technology”, while providing less information on “goal ” and “people”