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A challenge with governance is how to realize effective governance without bureaucracy and that it provides both oversight and control while optimizing the activities being governed. Our view of governance is that it sits in the center of process and all of its constituent components. Governance is defined, architected, and managed via the usage model. It is a critical element of any process improvement activity.

Noblestar brings a dose of pragmatism to an organization in understanding where and how the best value can be achieved in terms of establishing the standard benefits of governance (accountability, control, and oversight) while also enabling the same governance to add value; all achieved with transparency so that bureaucracy is minimized if not negated.

Our experience and comprehension of enterprise process with governance, realized by the Gears of Process ™, can drive consistency across all constituent organizations and yet enable each individual organization to optimize the quality and effectiveness of its services and products according to its own characteristics. Governance alone, without process, is static and bureaucratic. Coupled appropriately with process, IT governance not only achieves accountability, control, and oversight but also adds value to the achievement of business objectives while minimizing bureaucratic overhead.

Governance should achieve the following:

• Standardization of technology, process, and centralization of key roles.
• Disciplined approach aligned with stakeholders and business objectives.
• Value clarification to capture costs, measure benefits, and evaluate progress.
• Provide value without impeding progress: transparent to day-to-day work.
• Optimization via Process Enactment. 

All of our IT Governance & Metrics Implementation services can be coupled with our services for Process Assessment, Roadmapping, Enablement, Process Enactment, and Process Tailoring & Implementation

Governance Metrics

Metrics are an important aspect of governance.  There needs to be a realistic understanding of what metrics provide; true measurable value of the implemented governance.  Furthermore, metrics need to be right-sized to the organization and it needs to ensure that the appropriate elements are being measured.  In some cases, this is dictated at a high-level by governing frameworks, such as SAS-70 and Sarbanes-Oxley, and interpreted to the organization’s needs at a functional level.  In other cases, governance is internal or dictated by outside bodies. 

Regardless of the source, understanding the objectives behind governance enables the identification and implementation of metrics that will provide the greatest value to the organization in evaluating its effectiveness in both controls and in adding business value.  Governance metrics are appropriately defined and woven throughout all of our IT governance services.

Service Offerings

We leverage our expertise and knowledge in providing the following services in the realization of governance within organizations:

• IT Governance Assessment
• Roadmap & Define IT Governance Vision
• Define Governance Framework
• Integrate Process & IT Governance Framework

IT Governance Assessment

Working closely with the executives and organizational governance stakeholders, we identify the business objectives to understand the underlying governance needs. From there we:

• Identify critical IT governance objectives, domains, and components.
• Identify opportunities for leveraging governance to add value to the business while establishing accountability, control, and oversight.
• Make recommendations for appropriate IT Governance Frameworks that are a best fit for meeting governance needs.
• Identify risks and mitigation strategies to ensure a streamlined IT governance implementation that will realize cost-effective and pragmatic IT governance.

The key output of this assessment is an IT Governance Assessment Report.

Roadmap & Define IT Governance Vision

Leveraging either our IT Governance Assessment Report or equivalent documents provided by an organization, Noblestar leverages the same base skill set of roadmapping to construct a roadmap of how the organization’s IT governance will be rolled out with metrics and the appropriate tooling. The objective is to do this in an incremental and iterative manner so each successive component of governance is transparently intertwined with existing UALM processes and governance.

A key piece of this service is defining the IT governance vision that is coupled with a roadmap that realizes how the IT governance will be defined, integrated, and sustained.

Define Governance Framework

Many governance bodies regulate what the governance should cover and achieve but not how to implement it; an ideal example is SAS-70 where high level statements and objectives are outlined but without any specific implementations. This requires the specialized understanding of the Application Lifecycle and how a given set of governance can be applied in a seamless manner appropriate to an organization’s processes and culture. Without this level of definition, it is very likely a set of IT governance is bureaucratically burdensome, an anti-cultural fit, and/or does not achieve the objectives driving the IT governance.

An IT Governance Framework will include a definition of the governance elements, recommendations for implementation, identified control mechanisms, roles and responsibilities for accountability and oversight, tasks for performing oversight, and automation recommendations to facilitate transparency.

Integrate Process & IT Governance Framework

Governance alone is static. Like tools, process needs to drive the implementation of governance. The governance needs to be interpreted and woven into the organizational process. Our techniques embedded into the Gears of Process ™ are ideal for performing this activity as integrating a defined Governance Framework boils down to the same elements as defining, tailoring, and optimizing a process within a process improvement effort. IT governance controls and mechanisms are nothing more than input and output work products of various types, additional role responsibilities for oversight and accountability, and tasks or task steps for oversight functions.