Just
as the Captain charts a course for the voyage, a business
needs to chart a course for how their Information
Technology (IT) will support the organization’s vision and
mission. IT Governance processes or IT Best Practices are
the guidelines that assist businesses with creating an IT
approach or a strategic IT plan.
IT Best Practices 1) help
ensure that the investments in IT generate business value,
and 2) mitigate the risks that are associated with IT.
Implementing IT Best Practices is not necessarily a cost
reduction initiative. Rather, IT Best Practices
could raise the bar of expectations on the part of the
board, community, and donors since you may provide a higher
quality of service as well as be more effective and
efficient. As the success of an ocean voyage requires all
of the crew to do their part, so does the success of
implementing IT Best Practices.
This article will highlight
a few Best Practices any business, regardless of size,
should consider implementing.
Are you
aligning IT with your Strategy? Are you doing the right
things? Are you doing things right? Are board members
involved in the process?
When it comes to aligning IT
and Business Strategy take a “top-down” approach. By
looking at the “big picture”, it is possible to align
your business processes and IT needs with the overall
strategy and goals of your organization. Strategy and Goals
drive Business Processes. Business Processes determine
necessary tasks (who, what, why, where and how). The tasks
define the IT requirements (software, data and hardware) to
be implemented.
The challenge with aligning
occurs when discussing the tasks and IT requirements. The
communication channel tends to break down. This is known by
many as the “IT Divide”.
Both sides have their own jargon, abbreviations, and unique
experiences. Neither is able to explain, in terms
understandable by the other, the necessary requirements,
limitations, gaps, and potential solutions that are an
acceptable fit. CEOs, Executive Directors, Managers,
Technologists, and Board Members each go their own way out
of frustration with one another and alignment goes by the
wayside.
Best Practice:
.
Project Management is an approach or discipline for
planning, organizing and managing resources to successfully
complete a specific project.
How reliable is the vendor?
Do we have adequate backups of our data? Are we performing
the right amount of maintenance work?
A number of factors as well
as decisions can impact a business’s technical risk. We
have found many organizations needlessly complicate their IT
environment. IT should not and does not need to be
complicated. Focus on keeping your technical environment
simple, but implement Policies and Standards to assist with
standardization and controlling of actions.
What is an example of
increased risk? You may have heard of a well-meaning
decision maker, who buys a new application system and then
calls the technical person after the fact. "I purchased
this software to help with sales. I realize we did not talk
before I selected the software, but we need you to install
it and support it." Will the software work? Maybe or maybe
not.
Best Practice:
3.
Create
Policies and Standards
such as:
Purchase brand name software and hardware from industry
leaders.
Prohibited access to pornography, violence and criminal
activity sites.
Windows 7 is the standard operating system for
workstations.
Application data is backed up nightly.
60%
of the technology budget will be for maintenance; 40%
for new projects.
Every business is dependent
on Information Technology (IT) to support their operations
as well as to meet the organization’s mission. Whether you
have 5 or 500 employees, implementing IT Best Practices
enables your business to prioritize efforts, analyze and
manage risk, and ensure maximum benefits at the right cost
are provided.
Issue
51,
January 2010
