IDC PlanScape: Mature Governance for Future IT

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• Table of Contents (15 pages)
• List of Tables (1)
• List of Figures (6)

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Abstract

This IDC PlanScape identifies strategies for aligning governance efforts with a robust but simple commitment-based protocol, oriented around a critical question: "Who owes what to whom?"

This study also reviews five critical success factors for mature governance:

• Cross-organizational engagement: The leadership bar has risen significantly for digital strategy and execution. Mature governance brings material cross-organizational engagement to the oversight of shared strategic investments.
• Strategic, rather than opportunistic, prioritization: Organizations taking on too many transformative investments in parallel will not be successful. A mature governance program prioritizes investment to ensure the unequivocal realization of outcome-based commitments.
• Integration of technology, business systems and processes, and customer experience: Integration is a business imperative and one of the guiding principles for future IT success. Mature governance aligns integration around doing what's best for the long-term digital strategy and places investment emphasis on simplification, automation, and measurement to align organizationally shared accountability.
• Optimization of oversight relative to the impact and complexity of investment: Optimization brings digital and strategic governance to the highest purpose of the organization, assessing stakeholder considerations, regulation, risk, and opportunity to deliver value in a clear investment/prioritization framework. Mature governance leverages a commitment-based and accountable structure to calibrate investment according to the vision and needs of the organization.
• Balance of trust, value, and progress toward future IT: As the complexity of future IT unfolds, balance will be critical to harness the many trade-offs that will be required. Organizational commitments to immediate services will be balanced against keeping options open for the future. Data-centric strategies to optimize analytics and AI will be balanced against emerging societal issues and investment affordability. Mature governance will be pressed to continually balance trust, value contribution, and measurable progress toward future IT strategies.

"Bringing maturity to the governance of future IT investments may be the biggest challenge most leaders have faced in this digital era," says Alizabeth Calder, adjunct research advisor, IDC's IT Executive Programs (IEP). "The magnitude of the digital opportunity can give leaders a taste of power and profile that would turn the heads of even the most balanced senior leader. Mature governance demands emotional intelligence, mindfulness, and integrity to collaboratively navigate the barrage of critical decisions that can impact the very foundations of business value creation. Mature governance practices recognize that waste is often not in the design of digital programs but in the decision making."

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