The demand for IT governance is increasing at a rate faster than the capability to govern IT is maturing. While greater scrutiny on spending and increased business regulation ratchets up pressure, IT management struggles even to come to consensus on a definition of what governance is and is not. Governance initiatives are typically little more than bureaucratic "bolt-ons" to monitor employee activity. The results speak for themselves: although it consistently appears as a top-10 priority for CIOs, only about 10 percent of CIOs report "very effective" governance, and nearly 60 percent report neutral or outright ineffective governance practices. To make governance effective, there must be a simple yet complete definition of governance that is results-oriented, inclusive of all IT activities, and non-burdensome to execute.

The term "governance" can conjure images of bureaucratic compliance processes that interfere with "doing real work." Yet it is a results-orientated practice: jobs are on the line when poor decisions are made, or when companies get consistently blindsided by spiraling maintenance costs or unacceptable production quality. The ability to govern IT is, then, a critical capability...

"An Agile Approach to IT Governance" - coded by Joe Perez