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The IT Leadership and Governance (ITG) capability establishes a leadership style, and ensures that distributed IT decisions are supportive of the organization's strategic goals and objectives.

• Establish the IT leadership competences required to drive organizational progress and win stakeholder support.
• Enhance the business orientation and engagement of IT leaders.
• Establish IT governance as a central component of effective corporate governance.
• Improve confidence in, and the agility and transparency of IT decision-making.
• Establish appropriate IT accountability mechanisms.
• Establish oversight structures to support compliance with ethical, legislative, and/or regulatory obligations.
• Provide broad oversight on the performance of IT in the organization.

The IT Leadership and Governance (ITG) capability can improve the direction and consistency of leadership and distributed IT decision-making throughout the organization, and accelerate realization of the organization's strategic goals and objectives.

Emerging and disruptive technologies can transform an entire organization and change its relationships with its customers, partners, and suppliers. However, without clear IT leadership and governance approaches, the organization may be exposed to heightened risk, inappropriate resource allocation, and poor performance from IT. Effective IT leadership is necessary to encourage commitment to the purpose and value proposition of IT, and to set accountabilities for value delivery. Appropriate governance (including decision rights and oversight mechanisms) is required to enable the IT function to move swiftly and as a cohesive unit so that it can extract full business value from technology-enabled business investments.

By establishing an IT Leadership and Governance (ITG) capability, an organization can effectively and efficiently deploy IT in pursuit of its business goals. The IT leadership team steers the IT function in a direction supportive of the organization's goals and best interests. IT governance is integrated with the wider corporate governance function, with IT decisions jointly and consistently taken by the IT function and other business unit leaders¹. The ability of the IT function to demonstrate leadership and governance through improved accountability mechanisms and structures will help ensure that the IT function takes appropriate decisions in support of the business strategy, reacts to legislative demands, manages IT resources and risks effectively, and contributes value to the organization².

The IT Leadership and Governance (ITG) capability is the ability to motivate employees towards a common strategic direction and value proposition, and to establish appropriate IT decision-making bodies and processes, including mechanisms for IT escalation, accountability, and oversight. While the leadership aspect establishes the IT function's direction, it cannot directly affect all IT decisions distributed across the various levels in the organization. The governance aspect addresses this by establishing appropriate IT decision rights, and mechanisms for accountability and oversight. The IT Leadership and Governance (ITG) capability covers:

• Uniting the IT function around a shared IT value proposition, vision, and direction.
• Determining the effectiveness of the partnership between IT and other business units.
• Determining the effectiveness of IT leadership.
• Establishing governance/decision-making bodies and processes, including decision rights, accountabilities, and escalation paths.

Representative POMs are described for ITG at each level of maturity.

2Basic

• Practice

  Promote a common IT vision within the IT function and inspire commitment to it.

  Outcome

  Emerging buy-in to the IT vision is evident, particularly among key stakeholders and influencers in the IT function.

  Metric

  Percentage of IT employees who see the connection between their work and the IT vision.

• Practice

  Ensure there is effective two-way dialogue across the IT leadership team.

  Outcome

  The leadership team can constructively challenge the perspectives and decisions of the management team, leading to more robust decision-making outcomes.

  Metric

  Yes/No indicator regarding facilitation of diverse contributions and perspectives at team meetings.

• Practice

  Establish basic decision-making criteria in the areas most critical for the functioning of the IT function.

  Outcome

  Consistent decision-taking is ensured for the most important decisions.

  Metric

  Yes/No indicators regarding the involvement of appropriate individuals in relevant decisions.

3Intermediate

• Practice

  Ensure members of the IT leadership team collaborate with other business units to develop a sound grasp of the business and to anticipate key business requirements.

  Outcome

  The IT team responds promptly and efficiently to key requests from the other business units.

  Metric

  Percentage of IT service change requests not meeting customer expectations.

• Practice

  Expand the IT decision-making process to clearly define which individuals across the IT function need to be involved in what decisions.

  Outcome

  Decisions are increasingly taken in a transparent manner by appropriate individuals.

  Metric

  Yes/No indicators regarding the involvement of appropriate individuals in relevant decisions.

• Practice

  Define a comprehensive escalation process for troubleshooting key IT decisions.

  Outcome

  Key IT decisions can be readily escalated and addressed in a consistent manner.

  Metric

  Percentage of dcisions escalated that follow the defined IT escalation process.

• Practice

  Establish an IT steering committee, which is co-chaired by the CIO and senior representatives from other business units (such as the Chief Financial Officer) to oversee all important IT decisions and monitor performance of the IT function.

  Outcome

  Senior representatives from the business can influence important IT decisions, resulting in greater alignment with the business objectives.

  Metric

  Relative proportion of executives from the IT function and executives from other business units on the IT steering committee.

4Advanced

• Practice

  Promote the IT vision throughout the organization, with an emphasis on enabling business objectives rather than delivering technical objectives.

  Outcome

  Stakeholders across the organization can see that the primary focus of the IT vision supports strategic business objectives.

  Metric

  Level of agreement among business unit leaders regarding whether the IT vision enables the organization's objectives.

• Practice

  Expand the IT decision-making process to involve appropriate individuals across the organization and ensure the availability of all relevant information and well-defined criteria for making decisions.

  Outcome

  All decisions are based on factual information, and are taken in a transparent manner by appropriate individuals.

  Metric

  Yes/No indicators regarding the involvement of appropriate individuals in relevant decisions.

• Practice

  Periodically stress test the escalation process to confirm its ability to deal with all potential IT decisions.

  Outcome

  All IT-related decisions can be readily escalated and addressed in a consistent and timely manner.

  Metric

  Percentage of decisions escalated that follow the defined IT escalation process.

• Practice

  Ensure the IT governance council is a subset of the executive board, and is chaired by the CEO or the highest-ranking person in the organization.

  Outcomes

  • IT governance is anchored at the organization's executive level.
  • The IT governance council can devolve its authority with confidence through a cascade of subsidiary committees or working groups at business unit and programme/project levels.

  Metric

  Percentage of top executives on the IT governance council.

• Practice

  Ensure monitoring systems for IT governance are focused on business outcomes and are operating effectively.

  Outcome

  The governance monitoring systems enable the outcomes of organization- wide IT-supported activities to be transparently reviewed, and agile corrective decisions made.

  Metric

  Number of upheld complaints submitted against governance decisions.

5Optimized

• Practice

  Reflect accountabilities for value delivery as a major category in all individual and group performance scorecards.

  Outcome

  Business value goals are reflected in the performance assessments of IT leaders.

  Metric

  Percentage of bonuses related to business value delivery.

• Practice

  Empower the IT leadership team to proactively engage with business ecosystem partners on the improvement of business processes and business value.

  Outcomes

  • IT leaders are to the fore in driving the success of the business.
  • The IT function is viewed positively by the rest of the organization and is perceived as an exemplar by business ecosystem partners, competitors, and other external parties.

  Metric

  Percentage of IT leaders collaborating with business ecosystem partners and engaging in industry-relevant activities.

• Practice

  Ensure IT governance is rooted in corporate governance, is directed by the board of directors, and regularly incorporates insights from the business ecosystem to improve the governance structures.

  Outcome

  IT governance reflects industry best known practice, and its importance is recognized by its position within the corporate governance structures.

  Metric

  Frequency of reviews of the IT governance structures (and updates as appropriate).

This capability was introduced in Revision 16 as a new critical capability.

It was deprecated in Revision 18.07, being split into Governance (18.07) and Leadership (18.07).

The following CCs cover topics that are related to ITG in some way:

BPBusiness Planning

The IT business plan that describes tactical and operational service objectives

ODPOrganization Design and Planning

Implementing organization design

ODPOrganization Design and Planning

The current organization design as input to governance design

PAMPeople Asset Management

Developing leadership skills of individual employees

PDPPersonal Data Protection

Ensuring personal data governance and control

PDPPersonal Data Protection

Guidance on managing the governance of personal data

PPMProgramme and Project Management

Managing individual programmes and projects.

PPPPortfolio Planning and Prioritization

Prioritizing and selecting programmes and projects for the IT investment portfolio

RMRisk Management

Managing organizational risks

SPStrategic Planning

Developing a strategic plan for the IT function

SPStrategic Planning

The IT vision and strategy