IT Governance

IT governance aims to provide appropriate support to the management team and put reliable structures in place that can guarantee transparent decision-making procedures, for example. This, in turn, ensures that IT supports business goals optimally at all times, uses resources responsibly and monitors relevant risks.

Standardised methods and procedures, together with key principles, regulations and measures, are the most important components of IT governance. The components that are required by LEXTA’s clients are as varied as our clients themselves: the characteristics and degree of complexity of each of these components needs to be chosen appropriately for the client to avoid excessive micromanagement or delays. This is also the only way to integrate an internationally distributed IT organisation, for example, so as to ensure goal-oriented cooperation.

Supporting strategic targets with IT governance

The following figure uses an example project to demonstrate the effects of IT governance on IT as a whole.

We can see that the client’s IT unit was tending to fall back into the role of a simple ‘tool provider’.
A modern IT department needs to be positioned to promote efficiency, however – and ideally as a business enabler. An appropriate IT governance structure combined with effective leadership is not only able to prevent the organisation ‘going off at a tangent’, so to speak, but can instead guide it to ensure optimal positioning of its IT.