Project Governance

IT Operations governance is mainly defined in the IT operations policy that is regularly managed and updated by IT’s O&M. Project governance however is related to both IT governance and company governance, and defines the control and authority given to the members of each project, and defines the manner and processes in which they are to conform to, usually as defined by the portfolio manager. Both IT operations and project governance are guided by the overall corporate governance and at the policy level, may be captured by ISO20000, ISO9001 and ISO27000 certifications, but these need to be translated to the work instructions that operationalize them. Essential to project governance are how a project is created, the roles and responsibilities of the different project members and how the project is to be monitored and controlled. Risk, communication and release management are aspects of the project which also need to be defined at the operational level, in terms of how it needs to be conducted. Release management is especially important as usually the project environment being used is also shared with operations, so that roles and responsibilities need to be clear in order to avoid conflicts in the release of Configuration Items. Other aspects of project governance which usually have to be in sync with operations are code development guidelines, test, training, backup and recovery, security, and service desk usage guidelines. Lastly, due to the changing nature of the project’s requirements, request for infrastructure and scope (change requests) are normal. A clear method for requesting additional infrastructure must be set, as well as the method and approval process for change requests.