Reccan - IT Management - IT Governance - Best Practise Guidelines

For many organisations the IT function has changed significantly in recent years. The role of IT has become more pervasive and service suppliers have emerged to offer strong application product ranges, development specialisation and support services. For most enterprise companies it is no longer economic to maintain staff to provide all the expertise needed to develop, implement and support the range of IT capability required by their organization.

The changing role of the IT function is forcing organisations to focus more on the management of business requirements and expectations for IT capability and put less emphasis on the need to maintain teams of technical and process specialists.

The core IT management skills that remain critical to the success of today's IT function are:

Business/IT Strategy Development - Translating the business strategy and objectives into the IT priorities, required IT capability and the IT service commitment required for business operations.
IS/IT Planning and Portfolio Management - Building and delivering the programmes and projects required to achieve those business objectives that depend on IT capability.
Investment Management - The allocation and monitoring of the IT resource required to optimise the business impact and the business value obtained from IT.
Architecture Management - Maintaining the consistency and integrity of business information and business processes using IT information processing standards.
Infrastructure Management - Building an IT platform that has both the facilities and resilience required by the business.
Management of Change - Facilitating business operational changes introduced by new or modified IT capability.
Project Management - Working with established processes that will ensure the efficient and effective provision and ongoing commitment to new IT solutions.
Outsource and Partner Management - Maintaining both contractual and individual commitment of service suppliers and partners who deliver externally resourced IT services.
Service Acquisition and Development - Translating business requirements into new IT capability that can be delivered as IT service solutions.
Service Management - Delivering and maintaining the IT services that support all aspects of business operations.

The only way for IT managers to achieve real business/IT alignment is to ensure that the business managers actively support the IT decisions and the business commitment required to transform IT capability into successful business solutions. These IT management activities must therefore be supported by an ongoing relationship with business managers maintained through an effective IT governance commitment.

We can help you develop your organisation's capability in any or all of these IT management areas. We can also help you build a relationship with your customers that will improve both the recognition and business impact from these important IT management areas.