Information Systems Governance

Objective

Despite the vast sums of money spent on the development of software applications, failure rates remain extremely high. According to the Standish Group, 84% of Information Systems (IS) fail as they cost more in time and money, they are out of scope or they are of bad quality, usability or functionality. The literature reveals that the 31% of information systems is canceled before its completion, where another 51% costs more in time and money. Furthermore, change management and risk management failure is also high (63% and 57% respectively). Clearly, it is of high importance for organisations to govern their information communication infrastructures. Information systems governance deals with a series of important decisions that are taken before (pre-implementation), during (implementation) and after (post-implementation) the delivery of information systems. Among others, governance refers to decisions related to techno-economic study, evaluation, development, operation, maintenance and expansion of information systems. These decisions are so important that can lead an organization to success or failure. An exemplar case of this is the American pharmaceutical giant FoxMeyer that went bankrupt due to poor governance. To grasp the magnitude of failure, FoxMeyer’s sales totaled $ 5.1 billion a year before the bankruptcy, indicating that poor IT governance can lead any kind and size of organisation to bankruptcy. In this context, the main objective of this course is to present and analyse key issues related to Information systems’ governance. Upon completion this course, students should be able to understand the techniques, tools and practices to be adopted for a successful IS implementation. Particular emphasis is placed on the analysis of real cases studies.

Course Contents

• Information systems governance: Definitions and principles of governance, compo-nents of governance, people, processes, organization, technology, structure and levels of governance, policies, plans, projects, priorities, key deliverables of IS governance, governance and strategy, governance and organizations, governance and architecture, governance and project life cycle, the impact of governance on organizations, the framework control objectives for information and related technology – COBIT, examples of COBIT.
• Information systems project management: Portfolio management, project scheduling, resource management, project development framework.
• Sourcing and outsourcing: Advantages and disadvantages for ICT, software develop-ment and acquisition, appropriateness of outsourcing, outsourcing criteria, service level agreements, risk management.
• Information systems costing and return-on-investment: Costing procedures, Tech-nical, economic and financial feasibility, costing factors, cost estimation methods, re-turn-on-investment estimation methods, case study.
• Information systems strategy: Strategy for business value, linking information systems to business metrics, managing perceptions of information systems, creating and evolving a systems roadmap.
• Information systems evaluation: Successful evaluation framework, goal-oriented evaluation, goal-free evaluation, criteria-based evaluation, evaluation results, evaluation process and cost.
• Information systems acceptance: Technology acceptance models (TAM model), influential factors, success and failure, exemplar case study.
• Change management and organizational framework: Despair, denial, anger, anxiety, acceptance, practice, relief and motivation. Establish sense of urgency, create coalition develop a vision, share the vision, clear obstacles, secure short time wins, consolidate and keep moving.
• Risk management: Risk identification, analysis, planning and monitoring, techniques, exercises, examples and exercises.
• Service-oriented architectures governance: Governance and lack of governance, different types of SOA governance, SOA governance models, governance policies, stakeholders and roles, SOA governance lifecycle.