Wednesday, October 14, 2020

Organizational Governance Inquiries

 Enterprise-architecture as a governance enabler can be used to raise visibility and awareness for many business issues that are captured at the different levels of the organization.

Governance is about doing the right things, more specifically, it’s about enforcing decision effectiveness, and getting the people, culture, accountability, and performance right. In the simplest terms, governance is who you are and how you do it. 

Given many organizations don't view governance as "decision-making optimization," or “accountability enforcement,” their governance efforts usually devolve into time-consuming, costly, bureaucratic constructs. Here is a set of inquiries to assess organizational governance maturity, as effective governance leads to effective management practices and reaches a high level of organizational maturity.

How should business strategy development be governed? Governance is an internal control to monitor the path of strategy execution. A Governance Model is an architectural description that addresses the concerns of the stakeholders who want to ensure that the strategy execution is aligned with intent. It’s about how well an organization is being run and if set upright, it should effectively oversee the achievement of the business vision, strategy, and objectives. If a strategy is not moving forward as desired, perhaps it’s because that governance fails to function smoothly. Strong governance disciplines enforce the ability to revisit and reinforce what you have put into management processes consistently before moving on to new phases.

Sound governance is to improve the management effectiveness and eliminate risks. Technically, the governance structure is independent of management structure, but the governance process/mechanism can be embedded into the business process seamlessly. Governance can begin with frameworks, policies and standards to be put in place, governance practice should be shared cross-enterprise collaboratively. Under strong governance, the well-defined KPIs will help to measure business performance results qualitatively and quantitatively.

How should Enterprise Architecture be governed? Enterprise Architecture defines architecture principles for the whole enterprise, Enterprise Architecture governance devolves from enterprise governance. Enterprise Architecture Governance is a discipline that teaches how an enterprise ensures or enforces its accepted Enterprise Architecture. It deals with how the architecture is developed, managed, shared, monitored, verified, updated, or checked for standards compliance, etc.

As Enterprise Architects claimed: "An enterprise has an architecture even if it doesn't have electricity." Enterprise-architecture governance needs first to reflect that fact. Governance as components of the Enterprise-architecture, includes business rules, legal requirements (such as data protection), operational requirements rules, financial compliance, so governance in this instance is items that influence the architecture relationships or other components options.

How should Enterprise Architecture be used in a governance effort? Governance is one of the most important tasks of Enterprise-architecture. Governance= Superior Management. There should be a governance mechanism embedded in all crucial business processes, and there are governance practices to enforce accountability at every level of the organization. And there are varying governance activities such as delegation of authority, auditing, or strategy monitoring, etc.

Enterprise-architecture can be used in governance efforts that help business management gain an in-depth understanding of their risks and conducts. Governance is a neutral term which is useful in having the ability to discuss bad governance with terms such as waste, corruption, inefficiency etc. Enterprise-architecture as a governance enabler can be used to raise visibility and awareness for many business issues that are captured at the different levels of the organization to ensure the enterprise is running in the right direction and well heading to the destination.

How should IT be governed? Information Technology is the linchpin of the company. IT governance is an integral component of the business governance. IT governance enforcement starting with understanding business for the dynamic complex and adaptive system that they are, is the starting point, and it should include not only IT-driven business solutions but also IT PMO, IT Policies, IT Processes, IT Change Management, etc. IT governance facilitates faster, better execution through visibility and formal decision making. It has costs associated with it and partly it is to do with the way a business perceives risk, as opposed to focusing on the benefits that a well-governed business can bring to its strategic stance.

In reality, IT governance is one of the most critical but the most neglected part of corporate governance. IT architecture governance is an intersection of IT governance and enterprise-wide architecture principles. From a business capability perspective, governance is not about maximization but about optimization. IT Governance is a vector of quality, for both the maturity of process and outcome. IT departments that have their own house in order and have absorbed compliance and operational risk management can move on to greater, more strategic business needs.

How to enforce the organizational governance discipline depends on the nature, scale, and complexity of the organization, as well as understanding its risks and conducting. Therefore, a set of inquiries help to clarify its governance effectiveness. Besides processes and mechanisms, it’s important to understand the human element - harden the soft factors for enforcing GRC maturity. Organizations with better GRC discipline will outperform competitors significantly.


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