How does an organization keep up with the rapid increase in change, manage risk, ensure transparency and ensure compliance while at the same time ensuring agility to meet the business requirements? With the focus on cost reduction over the past two years, we have squeezed out all available costs, leveraged new technologies such as virtualization and new fulfillment methodologies in the cloud, and now the business wants even more! While it's always good to be in demand, businesses have only limited resources and to deliver a balanced proposition, many organizations are looking to leverage good practices to assist them integrating IT with the Business. At the same time they need to achieve efficient and effective service delivery, all the while ensuring enterprise governance of IT.
Recently, I was speaking at an industry event listening to a senior executive of a large insurance company speak. The speaker made a comment that "ITIL without COBIT is a waste of time!" When the speaker was asked about the comment following the session, he remarked that COBIT delivers the processes, metrics and sound governance to communicate to top management that the business goals are effectively being delivered through technology.
Effective governance of IT services is strategic in this age where business delivery is dependent on IT. For instance, IT services supporting critical business functions must be fit for the purpose, and they must be reliable, secure and adaptable. If services fail or cannot react quickly enough to changes in the business, the business impact can be significant. On the other hand, well-managed services may result in significant improvements to business performance and creation of value. Effective governance of services requires service managers to focus on key management tasks supported by the right level of involvement by the business customer in defining requirements and making key service-related decisions.
Now for some there may be the perception that COBIT and ITIL are competitive, but in fact, they are complimentary. Both COBIT and ITIL V3 provide comprehensive guidance covering good practices for service management. However, users of these practices may find it difficult to navigate and identify guidance that is relevant to their particular service manager role. The ISACA "COBIT® User Guide for Service Managers" publication is targeted at delivering guidance to service managers to provide them a better understanding of the need for IT governance and how to apply good practices in their specific roles and responsibilities. The document provides for the adoption and use of COBIT and ITIL concepts and approaches.
The publication is available as a free download to ISACA members and can be purchased by non-members on the ISACA website.
As the speaker said, "ITIL without COBIT controls is a waste of time!"