Strategies and Models for IT Governance

Abstract

This introductory chapter records and interprets some important existing theories, models, and practices in the IT governance and strategic alignment domain. IT governance will be defined and its relationship with corporate governance and IT management clarified. A separate section is devoted to the concept of strategic alignment, one of the key elements of IT governance. Finally, a detailed set of IT governance structures, processes, and relational mechanisms is discussed that can be leveraged to implement IT governance in practise. Two important IT governance processes, COBIT and the balanced scorecard, are discussed in more detail in separate chapters.