The key to successful IT management — a hot topic even before the Office of Management and Budget released a door-stopper of a report on the issue in December — is maintaining good governance over a project.
So said, Richard Spires, chief information officer of the Department of Homeland Security, who took to the CIO.gov blog to share his thoughts on successfully managing federal IT projects.
And, with 25 years of experience in IT from the private sector to the federal government, he would know.
Good governance, or setting sound process and policies for success, is the âcore,â he writes.
âEven the best program manager fails if the governance model does not work,â he notes. âGovernance drives alignment amongst key decision makers in an organization.â
Nearly all other problems that can plague IT systems stem from this failure of alignment, when all the stakeholders are not on the same page, Spires writes.
But getting everyone on the same page is an ongoing process, he acknowledges.
âChange is inevitable in all IT programs, so achieving such alignment is not a one-time event occurring at the start of a program,â he writes. âAlignment is an ongoing process that is critical throughout an investmentâs strategic planning, design and development, as well as its implementationâhence, governance must be viewed as a full life-cycle process.â
For Spiresâ complete blog post on the principles of good governance, click here.
FYI