IT Governance and the Role of IT Managers in an Organization - Essay Example

IT governance and the role of IT managers in an organizations strategic and support infrastructure Information Technology (IT) governance refers to the full control and proper regulations over IT initiatives by all the stakeholders in an organization. Therefore, IT governance is essential within the company’s strategic versus support infrastructure (Weill, Peter and Jeanne, pg 2). Proper IT governance does enhance the productivity and creativity of an organization towards the achievement of its goals since key decisions are not made on individual basis. IT managers are responsible for the verification and harmonization of the IT initiatives to ensure the success of the company (Wallace, Michael and Larry, pg 4).There are various roles that IT managers do play within the company’s strategic versus support infrastructure. To begin with, IT managers are very important in decision making. In an organization, it is always essential to make fast and key decisions during a crisis and these are the decisions that aid the organization in attaining its goals (Gupta, pg 107). The IT manager should be able to establish a problem before it escalates and make prompt decisions that solve the emerging problem. The manager’s decision is normally vital for this, since it involves planning out strategies that improves the efficiency and the quality of the job already done (Grembergen, pg23). Secondly, the IT manager reviews the distribution of the IT funds in the organization. Like any other department, one cannot allocate funds in a field that he or she has very minimal knowledge in. IT managers therefore play an important role in budgeting for the relevant equipment. In this role, the manager advices on the best machines that are needed to accomplish various departmental tasks (Hausman, Kalani and Susan, pg 108). The IT manager together with other stakeholders discusses the necessary equipment that are important and effective in the subsequent departments such as the finance department and then they come up with a relevant budgeting for the equipment. The IT manager also helps to coordinate IT department with other user departments such as finance department in a company. Through coordination with the user departments, the manager educates and evaluates the staff members on Information technology (Gupta, pg 20). Through this, the manager also gets various ideas that enable him to come up with an appropriate strategy for IT governance. It is very important for the IT manager to come up with the best strategy for IT governance because it is only through this that the manager understands the needs of other departments and improve on them for the betterment of the organization’s performance (Gupta, pg 93). In addition, the manager helps the organization in authorization and monitoring of major IT projects in the company (Weill, Peter and Jeanne, pg 181). It is very important for an organization to involve the IT manager in the approval of major projects since the managers are well trained in this field and they can advise and help accordingly on the projects. An organization that fails to involve the IT manager in the ongoing IT projects is likely to spend much cash in irrelevant equipment. It is the IT manager’s duty to inspect and amend where there are mistakes because he has the knowledge and experience on IT (Grembergen, pg 271). The manager should be capable of introducing new technology to enable the company operates in a more professional and competitive manner. The manager facilitates this by making IT governance their main concern (Wallace, Michael and Larry, pg 399). Through proper IT governance, there are various ideas that are considered by the IT leaders, these ideas are then communicated to the IT manager who thereafter reviews the ideas and finds a proper solution of the underlying departments; this enables the IT manager to find a new technology which enables the organization curb its competitors through doing things that were until that time impossible (Hausman, Kalani and Susan, pg 86). IT governance is very important to every company. Through involving various departments in making IT decisions, it helps to strengthen the organization since new ideas are shared out and vital decisions are discussed out. Proper IT governance ensures that the organization improves on the services delivered to the customers thus more profits and narrow competition (Grembergen, pg 162). This governance also helps the organization to track easily employee records and asses them accordingly. Governance also ensures that the departments give the expected outcome without any qualms (Weill, Peter and Jeanne, pg 236). A company that ignores IT governance is subjected to a variety of problems. To begin with, there is the regulatory compliance of a person or employee. In such a company, it is not easy to keep and track records of each employee since there is no coordination with other departments. Here one may decide to break the organization policy at any time since there are no records in place (Wallace, Michael and Larry, pg 225). For instance a large organization that lacks a database management system such as My Simple Query Language (MySQL) for keeping employee records may fail in checking the regulatory compliance of an employee and this may create loop-holes for breaking the rules of the company (Hausman, Kalani and Susan, pg 283). Besides, the company will lose its customers to the competitor thus low returns to the organization and this may further lead to shutting down of the company due to incurred losses. Since there is no IT governance, the company may purchase wrong equipment for the various departments since there is no coordination among the staff members thus reduced productivity in such departments (Weill, Peter and Jeanne, pg 217). Besides, since there is no IT control, it is extremely hard to understand the IT related threats and this may lead to loss of most of the IT assets in an enterprise. Lack of IT governance makes it very hard for the IT administrator to direct the subsequent departments on the IT related threats and how to respond to them. IT related threats are injurious to the organization because they jeopardize an organization’s efforts to meet its aims (Gupta, pg 170). Lastly, an organization that ignores IT governance is prone to hackers. Such organization may incur many loses since their database is easily reached by everyone. Hackers are extremely dangerous because they can manipulate the database anytime they feel like and this can greatly harm the organization’s efforts to meet its goals and objectives (Wallace, Michael and Larry, pg 825). In conclusion, IT governance should be a key priority in every organization for it to meet its goals and objectives and this can be enhanced through e-business (Grembergen, pg 71). IT managers should be very keen on IT governance for this enables them to understand the needs of other stakeholders thus improve on them as expected. Organizations that ignore IT governance are prone to many challenges and such organizations do find it very difficult to attain their objectives since there is great misuse of funds (Gupta, pg 33). Work cited Grembergen, Wim. Strategies for information technology governance. Hershey, Pa.: Idea Group Pub., 2004. Gupta. IT Infrastructure & Its Management. Tata McGraw-Hill Education, 2010. Hausman, Kalani Kirk, and Susan L. Cook. IT architecture for dummies. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Pub. ;, 2011. Wallace, Michael, and Larry Webber. IT governance policies & procedures. 2008 ed. Austin [Tex.: Wolters Kluwer Law & Business/Aspen Publishers, 2007. Weill, Peter, and Jeanne W. Ross. IT governance: how top performers manage IT decision rights for superior results. Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2004. Read More