Not long ago I blogged on the recently announced ISACA Strategy. And lately there has been some commentary on the future of ISACA and the itSMF. As a Board member on both organizations I thought I would take a few moments to discuss one of the intersections between the two organizations.

ISACA, a global organization of IT professionals, is dedicated to delivering value to its membership with the delivery of guidance and frameworks such as COBIT.  Increasingly over the past six years I have been asked to communicate to ITSM professionals the value of COBIT and how ITIL and COBIT can be used together for business value. The industry press, analysts and even bloggers have acknowledged that the two bodies of knowledge are complementary.  For example COBIT 4.1, the Delivery and Support domain, and ITIL are very strongly aligned.  (COBIT 4.1 is a free download from the ISACA website http://www.isaca.org/).  More recently, we on the ISACA team worked very closely with professionals across both the ITIL and COBIT domains to produce the Service Managers Guide, which ITSM professionals have shown interest in and value.  This publication teams well with the publication Mapping COBIT, ITIL and ISO/IEC 27002 for Business Benefit which is freely available to both members and non-members.

ISACA recognize that ensuring continued complementary deliverables in the ITSM space is important.  That said, the scope of ISACA is to serve IT professionals who cover a much wider range than ITSM.  This is evident from reviewing the COBIT publication series.

COBIT Mapping: Mapping of ITIL V3 with COBIT 4.1

COBIT Mapping: Mapping of NIST SP800-53 Rev 1 with COBIT 4.1

COBIT Mapping: Mapping of TOGAF 8.1 with COBIT 4.0

COBIT Mapping: Mapping of CMMI® for Development V1.2 with COBIT 4.0

COBIT Mapping Overview of International IT Guidance 2nd Edition

The scope of COBIT is the complete lifecycle from inception to retirement dealing with all aspects of the IT department and its relationships across the enterprise. 

ITSM practitioners are increasingly demanding more detailed information around execution, as governance has become a more important topic.  This is demonstrated in the cooperation we see between local chapters of both ISACA and itSMF which are coordinating locally on ITSM issues.  ISACA believes its membership can add value to ITSM professionals by providing additional, relevant materials to complement the use of and proficiency with ITIL.