IT Governance Guide for the Board and C-Suite Executives

This practical guide provides in-depth overview of Information Technology Governance aka IT Governance for company directors and corporate executives.

As IT investments grow so does the need to manage them for business value - most 21st century organizations are completely dependent on IT. Unfortunately, stories of IT failures abound - not because of the underlying technology per se but for the lack of its proper application and implementation.

• Are shareholders and the board aware of these challenges and failures?
• Should a board add to its already overflowing plate the issue of IT Governance?

This report answers in the affirmative: "IT governance should now be on everyone’s agenda. Boards and business management should seriously be looking at IT governance practices in their own organizations and questioning the role they play."

Does the Board find a discussion on IT governance as indispensable as one on financial governance?

Unfortunately, "for many directors, IT is a subject to be avoided. The topic seems to be surrounded by jargon which leaves the ‘non–technical’ person confused.

How can a director with little or no experience in IT carry out their fiduciary duties, when struggling to understand the terminology and the ever-changing nature of technology?

The solution for many directors and business executives is to ‘leave it to IT’. It makes life easier to know that the CIO is making the IT decisions and is taking care of all that ‘technical stuff’." Therein lays the root cause for IT failure. "Today, directors must understand the risks associated with the operations of the business and ensure that accountabilities and processes are in place to effectively manage these risks.

This guide will help directors:

•  understand what IT governance is and why it is important
• assess the level of attention directors should be paying to IT-related issues in the boardroom
• come to grips with some of the business issues surrounding planning, building, running and managing IT; and
• with some practical ways of ensuring good IT governance is being implemented across the enterprise.

Board leadership is key to bringing pressure to business executives and managers to become more involved in technology decisions and accountabilities. Through good IT governance, boards will see genuine and rapid improvement in how IT truly contributes to the business. And we know the evidence is there that good IT governance is linked to good financial performance (Weill and Ross, 2004)."