Recently, I've been in a bunch of conversations revolving around the subject of IT governance. It is, it appears, the latest solution-to-all-of-our-problems. Except it isn't. Governance is defined in the dictionary as a synonym for government and by industry as the formal processes, procedures, rules and regulations through which an organization makes decisions. In the context of IT, good governance suggest Recently, I’ve been in a bunch of conversations revolving around the subject of IT governance. It is, it appears, the latest solution-to-all-of-our-problems.Except it isn’t. Governance is defined in the dictionary as a synonym for government and by industry as the formal processes, procedures, rules and regulations through which an organization makes decisions.In the context of IT, good governance suggests a well-defined, transparent system through which IT’s priorities and budget are established. Maybe there are businesses that make their decisions this way. If there are, my guess is that they are poorly run. For good decision-making to happen, two factors must be in play. The first is a good governance process (what – did you think I’d advocate a bad one?). It’s a necessary condition. It simply isn’t sufficient, because by itself a governance process is no better than the quality of information fed into it.To complement the governance process you need strong, trust-based relationships among the key players in the business. This does, of course, have a downside, in that an inner circle is almost inevitable. The alternative, though, is even worse: Trusting that the information included in the proposals processed through the governance process is accurate, unbiased, and automatically normalized to match how the information in other proposals is characterized.– Bob ——– Technology Industry