cobit (3)
So many publications mentionning this topic. Does that mean that
- nobody understand anything?
- there are some unsolved problems in the concept and its application?
- it is now just a way for vendors (consultants, gurus, SOA solutions providers, scorecard specialists ) to market
- Organizations, in spite of the "official speech", are very very far from that?
One of the permanent criticism is that too much governance can kill agility, can kill innovation and adaptation.
It is sure that governance concepts and techniques are mainly "mechanistic", and sometimes far from systemic and "organic" adaptation.
Often too, within governance speeches, a "human" point of view is developed, but is it sincere or just "window dressing"?
Some rebounds on that:
- Is governance, agility incompatible? May be, not?
- SOX and management decommitment !!!
This can occur in some big companies, that are sometimes exceptional at the IT Governance point of view (IBM, ...), and now try to find the right balance between control and need of organic adaptation...
- the key Application Portofolio Management (APM) again and again
- as everybody knows, indicators are connected to Governance. BSC concept is not far, strategic mapping tools too...
Some example of comment on a good usage of bsc...
...a lot of education in business schools on BSC, in a lot of different disciplines
(financial control, governance, strategy, business plans, ...)
examples of students thinking on bsc...
CIO is just in the middle of all that.
- a lot of choices to do in the permanent pressure of demands...
- ...with end user power at last...
- Governance often means contracts. But contracts don't solve everything:
SLA (Service level agreements contracts) cannot replace cooperation in case of outsourcing
- How can CIO solve application challenges? Replace everything by an ERP ? Bridge everything with SOA and Web services? Good question.
- ...And CIO has to use already existing models like ITIL (and others, Cobit, CMMI, ISO xxx, ...)
A lot of informations recently published on this theme.
What are the "new" issues and opportunities for CIO's ?
Let's take a quote from this one
Ovum analysts say in their Summit Seven predictions. "Virtualization, service-oriented architecture, management automation and integrated workflow tools will increasingly be coupled with externally provided software-as-a-service (SaaS), utility computing, business process outsourcing and other network-hosted applications and business services to create highly dynamic enterprise service delivery environments."
Not a bad list! but so many challenges inside! Just to take an example, SOA not so easy, and the article warns on that.
(for those who are not SOA experts, a good recent synthesis there)
See too the feelings of James Champy, ex reengineering guru: IT budget growth, but under control, lack of professional talents, offshoring still on, no technological revolution...
And McKinsey view: SOA and Lean production...
I like too the personal analysis of JP Corniou in his blog (e-voeux 2007), reemphasizing some challenges like level of CIO within organizations, need to prove continuously the value generated by IT, challenges of standards for IT, outsourcing and offshoring decisions, cultural and educational aspects, ...
Determine too what kind of CIO you are (business leader, innovation agent, operational expert, turnaround artist) in this nice report with quiz and ...look at global statistical results!
Le site de Michel Volle est toujours passionant !
On trouve ici une bonne synthèse de Cobit, dynamique clé de la gouvernance IT dans les entreprises.
Cobit a pour moi comme grande valeur ajoutée d'appliquer les concepts processus à l'informatique.
On peut néanmoins regretter que Cobit n'insiste pas sur le besoin, à un instant donné, de prioriser ces processus (tout en étant tous utiles, ils ne sont pas tous aussi stratégiques à un instant donné pour une informatique).
Pour les prioriser, il suffit d'estimer leur effet de levier sur la réussite des objectifs de l'informatique, symbolisés par les éléments du tableau de bord de la DSI (sa "balanced scorecard).
On peut alors mieux prioriser les projets, visant à améliorer les processus et leur maturité !!!