There have been several posts on LinkedIn recently about IT Steering Committees—what their charter is, what information they should have available and how they should interact with IT implementation project teams. The Steering Committee is one component of IT governance and how it interacts with other components can determine whether the Committee is performing properly, or not. Continue reading
How we design and implement systems and processes can play a large role in determining their usability. Poor usability can contribute to avoidable risks. This post addresses the need to employ risk identification and mitigation techniques in the course of designing things in order to minimize the probability of negative outcomes.
Mark Moore’s recent post entitled Corporate Cataracts focused on the need to match vision with strategy in order to achieve success at the enterprise level. The same can be said at the initiative level. In fact, executing on any tactical or strategic plan involves a series of What and How decisions at increasing levels of detail and failing at any level endangers the success of all of the dependent initiatives above the failed one. How can enterprises mitigate this risk? Continue reading
Many enterprises have groups responsible for governance functions, such as Project Management (the PMO,) Enterprise Architecture (the EA team) or Technical Architecture (the ARB.) Unless these groups reflect a mature, enterprise-wide approach to management, however, they are unlikely to produce the benefits for which they are chartered. This results in the Illusion of Control. Continue reading
Enterprise Architecture (EA) is a discipline focused on aligning an Enterprise’s execution capabilities with its strategy. In this article, I show how the EA function is actually a tool for risk management at the Enterprise level. Continue reading