Chapter 15. IT Governance
IT governance provides transparency to senior management so that they can make the best decisions based upon the most accurate and up-to-date information. The ALM provides unique capabilities for ensuring that managers have the essential information necessary for evaluating their options. From the CEO to the board of directors, information must often be compartmentalized due to the practical constraints of just how much information can be consumed at any point in time. Achieving this balance empowers your leadership to make informed decisions that help steer your organization to success.
15.1 Goals of IT Governance
The goal of IT governance is to ensure success of your project by providing valid and up-to-date information to those who are empowered to make decisions. IT governance is usually focused on informing senior management, who in turn must answer to the board of directors, shareholders, or other executives who are responsible for the overall well-being of the company. Your goal in IT governance is to provide the information that is needed for executives to do their job effectively, which obviously affects the entire organization.
IT governance places a strong focus on transparency, so that all concerned are assured that projects are going as planned and are informed when there are deviations from the plan or other challenges.
For the agile ALM, IT governance takes on a very special role communicating project status and barriers to success and also raising awareness of identified risks. In our view, DevOps plays a key role in ensuring that decision makers are receiving communication that helps them govern projects and take the steps necessary to ensure success and to address issues when they occur.
Unfortunately, we find that many mid-level managers to do not understand the importance of IT governance, often because the structures in place do not facilitate focusing on the most important issues.
15.2 Why Is IT Governance Important?
IT governance is important to ensure project success and corporate profitability by establishing the oversight needed to successfully direct and guide projects within the ALM. IT governance is also essential for driving out siloed behavior by “being the adult in the room” when individual teams cannot manage to get on the same page.
Integration between development and operations is the starting point for most DevOps initiatives. But Dev and Ops are not the only corporate structures that need to be aligned effectively. What most folks fail to understand is that senior management needs to be integrated with the rest of the organization as well. When your management structure seems to be out of touch with the “worker on the street,” then there is an overall lack of cohesion in the corporate culture. IT governance is important because it provides a means for senior management to stay aligned and be supportive of the efforts within the corporation.
15.3 Where Do I Start?
Our experience is that most organizations have an existing IT governance structure in place, and any efforts at process improvement must be implemented within this framework. It is best to start by asking about the information that is communicated to senior management and what additional information might help the senior management team make better choices. It is important to start by considering how information is collected so that the support for IT governance does not take too many resources away from the mid-level management team, those responsible for day-to-day operations. Our concern here is that we have seen teams stretched very thin, trying to meet their deliverables, resulting in them having to cut corners when putting together the data requested by their senior management team. What is needed is a plan and operational processes to regularly gather the information necessary to support both day-to-day operations and the IT governance function.
In Chapter 7, we discussed the need for excellent tooling to support the ALM. It is very much our intent that these efforts should include an automated mechanism to gather and disseminate the information needed for IT governance. Some strategies for accomplishing this are suggested in this chapter.
15.4 Senior Management Makes Decisions
Senior management can sometimes make very poor decisions that greatly impact the future success of the company. Occasionally, this is because executives are motivated more by short-term results and do not sufficiently consider the long-term success of the firm. Sometimes, though, bad decisions are directly the result of incomplete or inaccurate information being delivered to the folks empowered to make these decisions. We view IT governance as an opportunity to provide valid data to help guide the decision-making process.
The best way to view this effort is that you are effectively managing “up” the ladder by providing the best information possible to influence your boss’s boss and to effectively promote your suggested approach.
15.5 Communicating Up
The key to success with IT governance is understanding that you are actually managing information up the chain of command. Viewed in this way, IT governance can help technology professionals influence the decision making at the top of the organization. But we can tell you from our hands-on experience that it is no easy matter to figure what information should be communicated and the best format for presenting the data. We are sometimes baffled by how often senior executives seem to be addicted to pretty pictures and charts, which convey a message, but seem to take much more work to create than they probably should. The challenge is really to understand what information needs to be presented and the best format for the presentation.
Communicating up also means that you get a chance to show the good work that you and your team are doing. Marketing your accomplishments to the folks who make decisions about your compensation and future promotions is obviously a great idea, but communicating up positive information is not your only concern.
Sometimes, you also want to ensure that you are communicating challenges that you are facing so that perhaps you can get some support in removing barriers that are affecting your ability to do your job. Most importantly, you always want to go on record when there are risks and other threats to the organization. This effectively shifts the responsibility from your shoulders to those above you who are in a position to act. This is not just playing the “blame game,” but effectively freeing you up to focus on getting the work done by getting others involved. Deming said to “drive out fear.” In this case, we might be driving it up the chain of command to others who are better positioned to address challenges that are above your pay grade.
Having far too much work to complete within the time allotted and resources allocated is the norm for any complex technology project. Getting more budget allocated and perhaps adjusting deadlines to be more realistic are essential to ensuring that teams can deliver quality code without working unreasonable hours, which ultimately leads to burnout and skilled technology professionals looking for more reasonable opportunities elsewhere. The key to handling this strategy is ensuring that your executives understand just how much work is really getting accomplished.
15.6 How Much Work Is Going On?
Technology professionals are constantly operating in an environment where they are simply overloaded with work that needs to be completed and no shortage of discretionary tasks that they would love to complete as well. We are all as busy as could be and all too often feeling overwhelmed with just how much work we need to complete within the timeframe that we have been allotted. Communicating the work that is being done is important, not only in terms of senior management and decision makers, but also in terms of providing transparency across the organization. We find that well-designed governance can often be the catalyst for teams with similar challenges becoming connected and empowered to combine their efforts to address challenges.
Communicating your existing workload and deadlines for deliverables can also give you some much-needed support when you cannot possibly complete all of your deliverables within the time allotted. Similarly, you may find yourself empowered to hire more staff or give more budget to help you accomplish your goals. Communicating how much work you have and your risks of missing your deadlines does not always result in other managers coming to the rescue, but it is also true that bad news does not get better with age, and the sooner that you communicate the status, the more likely that you will get the support you need in order to be successful. Often, the most critical aspect of IT governance is identifying and communicating risks.
15.7 Identify and Manage Risk
When risks are identified, key information should be communicated to those in a position to make decisions about the best course of action. Naturally, this effort should include the recommendations of those closest to the action, and one certainly hopes that senior management is wise enough to make the right choices. We find that many managers are afraid to deliver tough messages, but as we have said before, “bad news does not get better with age.” Communicating risks and other challenges often does have the effect of transferring responsibility from the mid-level manager to the executive team.
One of the biggest risks, one with far-reaching implications, is a lack of sufficient time and resources to meet the required deliverables.
15.8 Time and Resources
Estimating the amount of time and resources required to complete a project deliverable on time can be a difficult challenge. IT governance should include the current state of a project and whether or not the development efforts are likely to result in the deliverables being completed on time and within the allotted budget. When that is not possible, decisions must be made to either scale back on the goals of the project or to provide more resources to ensure that the work can be completed as planned.
We have seen situations where the team was running at full speed and on a trajectory to meet the target deliverables, but the executive staff expressed concern as to whether or not the team efforts could really be sustained over the entire course of the project. They were doing fine working long hours for the first few months, but more experienced heads realized that even the most dedicated IT professionals can burn out if they are expected to exhibit such a huge effort for a long period.
Communicating time and resources expended can help the decision makers determine if adjustments need to be made to ensure that the team can complete the project without everyone reaching burnout as we reached the finish line.
When existing time and resources are insufficient, decisions should be made as to whether or not more resources might be obtainable and whether or not they could help with essentials such as scalability.
15.9 Scalability with More Resources
The agile ALM can help identify when resources are insufficient to support the level of scalability that might be a necessity. In large-scale systems development, it is not unusual for project scope to expand to meet emerging business requirements. The well-designed ALM can help identify when scalability is essential, and IT governance should be the vehicle to communicate this information to senior management.
If your request for more resources to meet demand is not approved, you may have to deal with delays and other challenges.
15.10 Delays Happen
When delays occur, you need to ascertain whether additional resources are necessary. Otherwise, a change in scope of deliverables or schedule is required. As any experienced IT project manager will tell you, it is common for projects to experience delays for any number of reasons. The agile ALM should provide sufficient information that can be disseminated to those at the top to communicate delays that are unavoidable.
Effective communication always helps to reduce anxiety and facilitates the decision-making process. Keeping everyone on the team advised of the project status is absolutely essential and avoids anxious managers from becoming helicopter moms.
15.11 The Helicopter Mom
When anxiety is high, senior managers can sometimes provide a little too much supervision. This most often happens when these executives get surprised by a report that a project, thought to be on track, is discovered to be behind schedule. The sponsor of the project or other executives responsible for the success of the effort can feel compelled to suddenly get directly involved. Our view is that effective IT governance can help avoid these situations, which often have an unintended and less-than-helpful impact. You want to funnel information up to those in charge so they don’t feel the need to stand over your shoulder to get their information.
Another dysfunctional situation is when managers seem to have forgotten what you have already communicated.
15.12 I Told You That Already
We have seen many managers find themselves being grilled by those above them, only to feel like the information was already communicated. This can happen because the data that was delivered up the chain of command was not entirely clear to those managers who are directly involved with the action and aware of the nuances that others take for granted. In these situations, we see managers who react negatively because they feel that they had already communicated these issues. This happens when IT governance is not implemented effectively, and although lots of data may be getting sent to the senior management team, effective communication is just not happening.
Make sure that status reports and information dashboards are designed to provide effective communication. This documentation can help avoid the accusation that senior management has not been sufficiently informed.
Another important requirement for IT governance is ensuring that we always communicate and learn from our mistakes.
15.13 Learning from Mistakes
The most effective organizations make it a practice to learn from mistakes. When mistakes happen, effective managers take responsibility, learn from what happened, and then move on. You should be able to have this discussion and utilize even the most serious incidents as a learning experience.
15.14 Governance Ecosystem
IT governance exists within a larger ecosystem with many stakeholders who should be kept informed. When viewed as a holistic system, it becomes readily apparent that there is a tremendous amount of information to be managed and interpreted. When there are too many surprises, it becomes likely that either the wrong information is being delivered or the information has not been successfully presented. Regulatory compliance and outside forces such as competition are both important aspects of the governance ecosystem.
15.15 Continuous Process Improvement
IT governance requires ongoing efforts to improve on a continuous basis. You need to start by understanding where you are today and what you need to do in order to improve. The best approach is usually to measure where you are today in order to track and communicate your improvements. One important aspect of process improvement is ensuring that IT governance is aligned with your compliance requirements.
15.16 Governance and Compliance
IT governance is commonly associated with compliance. We will discuss audit and regulatory compliance in Chapter 16, but what you need to know is that IT governance helps manage and guide the compliance effort. When auditors or outside regulatory authorities become aware of issues, it is the executive team who is most often required to respond to the findings and communicate the firm’s intention to address any shortcomings.
Once again, you want to be proactive in how you communicate this information and ensure that your senior management team has the information they need in order to address any compliance issues.
15.17 Conclusion
IT governance is an importance mechanism for you to communicate the information that will help your executive team make intelligent decisions. You want to proactively drive this effort and not force your senior management team to come asking for information. This is your chance to influence the decision-making process, and doing this well can make your job much easier.