Governance
Effective governance is as much about investing in the right things as it is about effective execution. We view effective execution as being in the realm of good project management skills and well run project management offices.
Good governance means taking a portfolio based view on all live and proposed investments. This is a view that balances risk, value and ultimately strategy into one or more investment portfolios. Reporting project progress in the context of portfolios will not only allow senior executives to be closer to projects in general but will also place more emphasis on managing the expected benefits arising from those projects. Much better tracking of benefits tends to be a very worthwhile by-product of portfolio management disciplines.
Simply reporting project progress against a portfolio usually forces the issue of value delivered, as that part of the investment decision was probably a big part in getting project approval in the first place.
We have installed technology investment governance processes for a range organisations in industries that include: Banking, Telecommunications, Transport and Logistics, and Retail. In most instances it has been deployed to support investment decisions made in IT.
This work has entailed establishing or enhancing investment approvals boards, their operating processes, accountabilities and reporting feeds. All of the best practice accumulated in doing is in line with industry standards such as: Cobit, ITIL and now ValIT.
Below is our hands-on guide to running a standard set of measures that describe the risk and value of new investments. Using it, or something based on it, will provide your organisation with a standard way of describing and measuring risk and value at a project, programme and portfolio level. Using it will provide a consistent benchmark for investment approvals helping to eliminate the problem of approving investments based on senior executive “gut feel”.
Examples of our previous work include:
- Redesign of an executive board’s capital expenditure approvals process.
- Aligning operational management IT cost reports with divisional level business KPI’s.
- Simplifying a large, legacy IT request for investment process.