What kind of animal is an "IT governance regime" ?
- First if all, we should assess that the locution "IT governance regime" is rarely used in IT management global literature. "IT governance model", “IT governance framework” (such as in “SOA governance framework”), or "IT governance archetype" (such as in Pr. Weill and Pr. Ross's framework on IT governance) are much more popular locutions. Of course, the locution can be found in some academical articles [2], but anecdotally, and the notion has not retained much attention both from academics and practitioners [3].
- Then we should recognize that the notion of regime is a basic notion in political sciences; the word of regimen has a similar meaning but is much less used;
- Finally, we should contemplate that regime is deeply rooted in French culture and history; “regime” is translated directly an immediately into French with “régime” whereas “regimen” gives “traitement”.
To feel the potential of regime from a methodology perspective, just look at the following locutions :
“SOA governance regime life cycle”,
“SOA governance framework life cycle”,
“SOA governance model life cycle”,
“SOA governance life cycle”...
As a matter of fact, an IT governance regime is precisely what the deliverable (output) of an IT governance project should be. Versus an IT governance regime, an IT governance model or an IT governance framework being intermediate deliverables with no direct and immediate value for IT stakeholders and shareholders.
Now, the answer to define an IT governance regime or a SOA governance regime is not obvious and governance of information technologies is still one of the most difficult challenges that an enterprise and its ecosystem face.
If we take an operational perspective, the answer to the question "What should deliver an IT governance project ?" is still not straight forwards.
Should it deliver IT decision rights, IT accountabilities, IT leadership, IT processes, IT structures, IT systems, IT strategies and IT policies or only part of this, let's say for example IT decision rights and IT accountabilities should we follow the stream of thought leadership leaded by Professor Peter Weill and Professor Jeanne Ross (MIT)?
If we take an epistemological perspective, we may identify three approaches to define an IT governance regime / regimen:
(1) call for a general definition of regime / regimen;
(2) formulate a definition that would fit specifically to IT management matters;
(3) find and observe implementations of IT governance regimes.
As for a call for a general definition, we might call for the help of political sciences. To define a governance regime, a mere dictionary would do and in the native language. Of course, definitions might vary and we will not find in a dictionary a specific definition for governance regime that would be immediately and naturally endorsed and used by IT professionals.
For a definition that would fit specifically to IT matters, we might call for definitions, select one of them and invite every IT professional to endorse, learn and use.
As for actual implementations, The Archilogy Institute , an open creative knowledge community addressing governance in enterprises and ecosystems, was able to find three animals in IT management answering to the call of “eService governance regime” where eService is a service enabled by an IT infrastructure :
- “Internet governance regime”
- “corporate telecoms governance regime”
- “SOA governance regime” or as The Open Group has named it “SOA governance regimen”.
Following these three paths all together should let emerge a general definition for IT governance regime / IT governance regimen from which Internet governance regime, corporate telecoms governance regime and SOA governance regime should be a direct and immediate application.
Notes
[1] Ryan R Peterson, “Integration strategies and tactics for information technology governance”, an article collected under the direction of Wim Van Grembergen in “Strategies for information technologies governance”, 2003. There is only one occurrence of “IT governance regime” which introduces a CIO interview.
[2] “Governance of outsourcing – IT governance domains and competencies”, ITGI, 2005. In the 23 pages document, “governance regime” is mentioned three times along with “governance environment” which appears twice.
[3]NGEN ITG : an original IT governance framework crafted for SOA governance and SAAS governance (sometimes called IT cloud governance).
About this page
The page is a creative knowledge cell :
1. it carries some creative work;
2. it is endorsed by its creator ;
3. the life of the page is traced;
4. the creative work is anchored in previous creative works;
5. the creative work is marked through Creative Commons license with the freedom the creator wants it to carry, so others can share, remix, use commercially, or any combination thereof. This creative knowledge cell is a cell of The Archilogy Institute, an open creative knowledge community addressing governance within the enterprises and the ecosystems.
Tracing the life of this creative knowledge cell
Published by Tru Dô-Khac under Creative Commons Attribution France 2.0. July 2009, Paris.Updated on November 15, 2009, Paris.
Updated on May 18. 2010 to introduce three entities : Internet governance regime, SOA governance regime and corporate telecoms governance regime.
Updated on June 27. 2010 to align to the suggested format of a cell of The Archilogy Institute.
Updated on March 5. 2011 : minor corrections which do not take into account current development on IT Regime Management (Regit)framework.
Transferred on this site on August 1. 2011 from www.regime-de-gouvernance-informatique.com
“Sharing, Remixing, Reusing, -Legally” the content of this creative knowledge cell
An introduction to IT governance regime by Tru Dô-Khac est mis à disposition selon les termes de la licence Creative Commons Paternité 2.0 France. “Share, Remix, Reuse, -Legally” is the motto of Creative Commons, a non profit organisation. It has been remixed under Creative Commons license Attribution 3.0 unported
Contacting the nurturer of this creative knowledge cell
The present cell of The Archilogy Institute cell is nurtured by Tru Dô-Khac, an independent consultant in IT and innovation governance. Tru Dô-Khac is the author of « L'externalisation des télécoms d'entreprise - l'Opérateur Privé Virtuel» [Ang : Corporate Telecoms Outsourcing – The Virtual Private Operator ] published by Hermes Lavoisier 2005 (www.lavoisier.fr), ISBN 2-7462-1064-9, and subsequent articles published in selected magazines such as « Stratégie de sourcing – l'approche contractuelle » [Ang : « Sourcing strategy – a contract oriented approach » ], 2006, La Jaune et La Rouge, ISSN 0021-5554, Ecole Polytechnique alumni magazine.The book reports in 220 pages the result of a creation and research work on three “governance regime patterns” for corporate telecoms. The subsequent articles build on this work and show how IT governance can (easily) leverage the creations and findings of this work.
Tru Dô-Khac 's profile may be found at linkedin.
