Saturday, October 12, 2013

IT Governance - COBIT 5 version - S1E4 - Principle 2: Covering the Enterprise End-to-End

COBIT 5 addresses the governance and management of information and related technology from an enterprise-wide, end-to-end perspective. This means that COBIT 5:
• Integrates governance of enterprise IT into enterprise governance. That is, the governance system for enterprise IT proposed by COBIT 5 integrates seamlessly in any governance system. COBIT 5 aligns with the latest views on governance.
• Covers all functions and processes required to govern and manage enterprise information and related technologies wherever that information may be processed. Given this extended enterprise scope, COBIT 5 addresses all the relevant internal and external IT services, as well as internal and external business processes.

COBIT 5 provides a holistic and systemic view on governance and management of enterprise IT (see principle 4), based on a number of enablers. The enablers are enterprise-wide and end-to-end, i.e., inclusive of everything and everyone, internal and external, that are relevant to governance and management of enterprise information and related IT, including the activities and responsibilities of both the IT functions and non-IT business functions.

Information is one of the COBIT enabler categories. The model by which COBIT 5 defines enablers allows every stakeholder to define extensive and complete requirements for information and the information processing life cycle, thus connecting the business and its need for adequate information and the IT function, and supporting the business and context focus.


Governance Approach:



In addition to the governance objective, the other main elements of the governance approach include enablers; scope; and roles, activities, and relationships.


Governance Enablers:

Governance enablers are the organisational resources for governance, such as frameworks, principles, structures, processes and practices, through or towards which action is directed and objectives can be attained. Enablers also include the enterprise’s resources—e.g., service capabilities (IT infrastructure, applications, etc.), people and information. A lack of resources or enablers may affect the ability of the enterprise to create value.


Governance Scope:

Governance can be applied to the entire enterprise, an entity, a tangible or intangible asset, etc. That is, it is possible to define different views of the enterprise to which governance is applied, and it is essential to define this scope of the governance system well. The scope of COBIT 5 is the enterprise—but in essence COBIT 5 can deal with any of the different views.


Roles, Activities, and Relationships:

A last element is governance roles, activities and relationships. It defines who is involved in governance, how they are involved, what they do and how they interact, within the scope of any governance system. In COBIT 5, clear differentiation is made between governance and management activities in the governance and management domains, as well as the interfacing between them and the role players that are involved.


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