Beginning Governance

CIOs can begin attacking the problem by examining the different piecesof IT governance they already have. Chances are, they aren't very welllinked, says Peter Weill, director of the MIT Sloan School Center forInformation Systems Research in Cambridge, Mass. "The use of IT incompanies has become mature, but IT governance hasn't caught up," hesays. "Most governance mechanisms are created to solve specificproblems, like IT investment or architecture, but little thought isgiven to how they work together."

Here's how the failure to link governance mechanisms hurts yourcompany: A business unit wants to buy 10 PCs, and the business unitinvestment committee gives the go-ahead. Meanwhile, your ITarchitecture board (or architecture policy) says you have to buyThinkPads. If those mechanismsthe business unit investment committeeand the IT architecture boardare not linked, the company will end upwith 10 different business units with 10 different brands of PCsrunning 10 different flavors of software, and you'll need at least 10different guys on the help desk to service them. You might as well nothave a corporate IT architecture at all for all the good it's doingyou.

But not only must the governance mechanisms be linked functionally,they must be linked philosophically, says Weill. The differentgovernance structures should not have conflicting goals that drivedifferent types of behaviorsuch as linking a freewheeling ITpurchasing process to a rigid corporate architecture. Ifbusinesspeople are free to buy whatever PC they want, they will beresistant if IT then wants to control the software they can put onthose machines. In effect, the two governance mechanisms are sendingtwo different messages.

The messages that governance mechanisms send need to be consistent notonly with each other but with the prevailing business strategy. So ifthe CEO is on an acquisition binge and wants to grow the company asfast as possible, IT may need to relax its governance structures tolet decisions happen more quickly and with fewer qualifications.Conversely, when the CEO calls for cost reductions, CIOs may need toadd a few layers of new IT governance to control spending and betterenforce standards and architecture.