The IT Governance Evangelist

I just read an article in the Wall Street Journal entitled "How to Tap IT's Hidden Potential." The article talked about the "wall" between the IT Department and "everything else" and says "That wall has to go." I ask you, is this news?

This article is a wake-up call reminding me, yet again, that we have a long way to go before IT is recognized as a strategic asset to be leveraged by the enterprise. The Wall Street Journal says IT's potential is hidden. Hidden? Given the ubiquitous nature of IT today, could this be true? Sure, 20 years ago we had business projects and IT projects. Aren't those days gone? Don't all of our business projects have some technology component? How can the potential of IT be hidden?

I have met very few folks from the business side or the IT side of the house who don't acknowledge the "us-and-them" mentality that exists between IT and the business. All of my presentations, be they on IT Governance, Project and Portfolio Management (PPM), Project Management Offices (PMOs), IT Service Management (ITSM), etc. stress the need to improve the relationship and level of trust between IT and the Business. I have never had to convince anyone of the need to do so.

Why my strong reaction? I guess my immersion in the discipline of IT Governance may be causing me to treat many things as obvious when in fact, they aren't. I thought that as an industry, we were farther along.

But setting the "Is this news?" question aside, the article makes some good suggestions, though it misunderstands the full scope and potential of IT Governance.

The article listed five primary reasons for the wall's existence: mind-set differences between management staff and IT staff, language differences, social influences, flaws in IT governance, and the difficulty of managing rapidly changing technology.

The article outlined six steps to "shatter" the wall between IT and the rest of the company:

• Begin with IT literacy-and commitment-at the top.
• Hire an IT leader who sees the big picture.
• Create demand for IT solutions.
• Make sure nothing gets lost in translation.
• Rationalize IT spending.
• Create an IT portfolio by evaluating risks and returns.

I liked the specific mention of the IT Portfolio as part of the "rationalize IT spending" solution step but once again, IT Governance was equated solely to investment decision-making. Earlier in the article ITG is described as "the specification and control of IT decision rights." Even if you include more than investment decisions in that basic definition, it still falls short of the full scope and scale of ITG. It isn't just the decisions and decision rights (accountability). It is also the IT Governance processes--which do support the author's six steps--into which we feed those decisions. Those processes include:

• Integrated Business & IT Planning
• IT Investment Assessment, Prioritization, Funding & Benefits Realization Accountability
• IT Financial & Resource Allocation
• Project Prioritization & Decision-making
• Emerging Technology Evaluation & Adoption
• Client Relationship Management
• Building & Maintaining Applications & Infrastructure
• Provisioning of IT Services
• Outsourcing Services
• Audit & Risk Management
• Architecture Management - Standards & Review

As usual I am on the road, meeting later today with a group of executives who want to understand IT Governance and its potential. I am sure I won't have to spend any time convincing them of IT's hidden potential or the wall between IT and the business. Those are the reasons they are talking to me in the first place.

Reader, is the "hidden" potential of IT or the wall between IT and the rest of the business news to you?