Failure is not an option!

IT is becoming increasingly important to business operations, and to all types of businesses, as such we can no longer afford to fail to successfully apply these types of frameworks. It is time we recognized and resolved the ABC worst practices once and for all. It is this need to bring IT under control that has partly led to the rise of IT Governance.

IT Governance according to a Weill & Ross investigation into best practices for IT Governance, may be described as:

Specifying the decision rights and accountability framework

to

encourage the desirable behaviour in IT.

We in IT have focused for too long now on the first part, the ‘frameworks’, and not enough on the second part - the ‘desirable behaviour’. This is why many IT improvement initiatives fail.

A Forrester report revealed that 52% fail because of ‘resistance to change’ (Attitude). A further 29% fail because of a lack of business interest or involvement (Attitude). Findings from our own 'Apollo 13 – An ITSM case experience' business simulation (see the article ‘Using simulations to increase the success of your ITSM initiative’ published in the IT Service Management Global Best Practice book – volume 1, 2008, Van Haren publishing) also reveal that the key learning point, identified by more than 1000 students is that ‘People related issues’ are the most significant success or fail factor in improving IT performance.

Issues such as the need for: