Governance Connected to Better IT Value

by Robert J. Benson, Tom Bugnitz

This month's installment of Cutter Benchmark Review takes an in-depth look at one of the critical issues that typically emerges in our yearly series on IT budgets and the budgeting process: IT governance, which we define as the process of identifying responsibilities and implementing decision-making tools and structures for appropriate oversight of the management and use of IT resources. Stating that governance is of paramount importance is guaranteed to bring nods of approval from any audience; if the subject is IT governance, then the "approval meter" is likely to register even higher. This is not surprising given the significant financial impact of IT expenditures for most organizations, the role that IT alignment plays and has historically played, both in rhetorical exercises and in practice, as well as the intuitive necessity of control for informed decision making. Yet, in the very same presentations where the audience agrees on the importance of governance and governance mechanisms, the immediate follow-on is typically a statement about the intricacies and difficulties of implementing "effective" governance systems for something as far-reaching, complex, and ever-changing as IT.