IT governance models in organizational implementation

¶ … IT Governance. Explain how the models are employed and how they result in strategic alignment. What could be done differently? Also, suggest models that would make a better impact for your organizational goals and objectives. If your organization does not practice IT Governance, discuss how it could be implemented, which models would be most useful, and how that would translate into increased IT value.

Informational technology departments are often difficult for management to govern in ways that facilitate overall organizational goals. On one hand, IT departments must be subject to the same budgetary constraints as other departments that functional within the overall organizational framework. On the other hand, IT concerns are less reliant upon the needs of the financial markets and immediate forces of the business cycle than many other organizational departments. IT's needs are often more contingent upon the creativity of the staff and potential long-term developments in the field of technology. In traditional 'machine' type or bureaucratic and autocratic models of organizational management, IT departments often exists as a mere cogs in the wheel of the larger machinery, with little regard to IT's departments different needs. In other governance models, IT organizations are faced with either too much or little managerial supervision. The former of which can lead to hostility to an inflexible management structure, while the latter can lead to IT's isolation from overall company goals and needs. Even in more loosely organized entities based on entrepreneurial or so-called 'visionary' organizations, IT is still often subject to being governed or advised inefficiently by a management staff that has little knowledge of the core needs of IT development and how it relates to the larger organization. (Mintzberg, 2005)

However, there are other ways of envisioning IT governance beyond the traditional hands-on or hands-off government models. For instance, at one stalwart American company, that of Harley-Davison, "the 97-year-old motorcycle titan envisions its corporate structure as three overlapping circles in a Venn diagram. Each circle represents a core capability: manufacturing, sales and support." (Levinson 2000) Each CIO oversees Informational Technology operations in one of these specific areas. This, technology is integrated into all facets of the company in individual ways. Although each CIO is in charge of IT for his or her own circle, they "share administrative responsibilities such as recruiting staff, fixing the budget and setting departmental goals." (Levinson, 2001)

"An example of this" at Harley Davidson, "is how they developed their strategy for migrating to an n-tier architecture." While the management CIO viewed the IT project from the perspective of their effect on the customer, the support CIO "saw the n-tier architecture in the context of IT evolution from mainframe to personal computer to client/server to n-tier." Although, according to the management and sales staff, while "business people" don't often care enough about support technicalities, and care only "about the value that will be delivered to the business as we invest more in this new architecture," by introducing a corporate management governance structure that was innovative, the combined forces of all CIO's input enabled all members of the staff to see the importance of all sides, financial, technical, and sales-related, regarding the project, They were able to fuse the diverse project needs into a complete strategy that included "training staff and getting rid of legacy capabilities." The trio went on to say, "A partnership model" of IT governance, "just makes so much sense ... In our profession." (Levinson, 2001)