Week 01: IT Governance

I want to go over your weekly activities a second time to make sure there is no confusion.  Each Thursday morning, you will find a post with the upcoming week’s Reading and Case Questions.  Once you have finished the readings you should answer  all of the Reading questions in a comment to out original post. You can also comment on someone else’s answer, so long as your contribution is substantive in nature.  I expect that members of my section will submit a minimum of five substantive posts weekly.

You should then turn your attention to the weekly case or activity.  For our four Harvard Cases, you will need to prepare answers to all of the case questions in preparation for our online discussion.  For ISACA cases, you should submit your answers to the case questions online.

Finally, there will be a quiz on each week’s material the weekend after class.  There will be five multiple choice questions on each quiz, mostly CISA & CISSP practice exam questions.  The quiz will be available from Saturday at 6:00 am until Sunday at midnight.  You will have 15 minutes to complete the quiz but can take it anytime that weekend.  Once you start, you must finish in 15 minutes so be sure you have the time to finish it.

Rich

I think theSTARS case is wonderful as an opener for an IT Governance class.  Why?  Because there is no governance at STARS, at least nothing explicit.  If we use our “Right Things, Done Right” mantra, we can illustrate the point.  On the “Right Things” side, Khan is inheriting an IT organization that has no identifiable mission or charter.  Senior management doesn’t recognize the critical role that IT could play in its organization.  The implicit charter is probably something like, “Give the business what it needs to get the job done.”  That simply isn’t good enough leadership.  On the “Done Right” side, you have pointed out the deficiencies of the IT effort (its not even a real organization). No organizational structure, runaway customers, out-of-control contractors, no technical standards, no project portfolio management etc.  The only good news for Khan is that the only way for this organization to go is up!

The key point for this class is to recognize that both things are necessary for true governance.  IT organizations, as a generalization, have tended to focus on the process of doing things extremely well and very efficiently.  This is important but it is only half of the game.  IT leadership and company leadership must work together to ensure that IT is doing things that provide value to the company and manage risk.  This is a political (small p) process and not one that is comfortable to most IT people.  Hence many CIO’s fail because, while they run their IT shops well, they are not focused on contributing to the company’s goals.

Throughout this course and the program, keep the “Right Things, Done Right” model in mind.  Many CISA and CISSP questions will give you three answers that urgently need doing and one that seems so obvious that it can be assumed and ask you which is MOST important.  Don’t fall for the trap! The correct answer is usually the one about making sure that the organization is doing the right thing and that must always come first.

Rich

I am happy to welcome you to the ITACS program and to MIS 5202 !  I hope you are as excited to get started as I am.  I will begin on Wednesday night, August 30th when we will go through the structure of the course, what I am expecting from you, and talk about the Stars Ambulance case.

In the following weeks, we will study one topic per week.  I will publish Reading and Case Questions each week to kick the topic off and then a wrap up note at the end of the week.  You must answer all the reading questions each week.  The goal is to have a thorough discussion of each topic at the beginning of each class.   Case questions are there to guide your analysis of each case.  For our four Harvard cases, you do not need to answer the questions online as we will discuss them in class.  For the other cases and activities, you will need to answer and comment online.

We will in-person class every week.  In the event we don’t have in-person class, I will use WebEx to host the class for the specified week.   Please use a computer to join in as Webex is not friendly to IOS devices.

For this week , all you need to do is read the Stars Ambulance case and think about these three case questions

• Identify three or four of the most critical challenges facing the new CIO?
• What is the overall issue facing the new CIO?
• How would you proceed as the new CIO?

 

I look forward to seeing you all on Wednesday night.

Rich