The use of IT steering committees ranks No. 1 as the most mature IT management practice out of 15 practices covered in the study. Steering committees, which usually include executives and departmental heads, set priorities from among competing requests for IT projects, services, and attention, among other duties.
Organization’s that are not actively engaging in this practice should be asking themselves: why not? According to Computer Economics, “These practices have withstood the test of time. They would not be so widely practiced if they were not effective.”
There are varying approaches to IT decision-making, including:
- the CIO gets all the requests and decides what to do;
- the CIO makes all the decisions;
- the decisions are made by a committee run by the CIO;
- the CEO and the CIO make all the decisions, and
- the officers of the company meet on a regular basis and decide what should be done.
Makeup and Functioning of the IT steering committee
IT should have a set of basic operating principles which should be universal among all IT departments. The makeup and the functioning of the IT steering committee should be one of them. In our view, the IT steering committee should be composed of the officers of the company and should be chaired by the CEO, or in certain circumstances, the COO.
Our rationale is as follows:
- The officers of the company understand the strategic plan for the entire organization and have the insight and the power to add projects, exchange projects or delete projects based on resources, budget and plan. Lower level executives should not be put into that position.
- The CIO should not be put into the position of deciding priorities. If the CIO does this, then the CIO’s position is compromised relative to all the officers. In this scenario, the CIO is required to determine that one officer’s priority is not as important as another. Decisions should be the consensus of the entire officer group based on the strategic plan.
- The CIO, as a member of the steering committee, is allowed to express views just like any officer may comment on their or any others requested project. Each officer should be able to defend his or her project before the committee. The CIO should bring technical expertise to the conversation to either support or discourage discussed projects. The CIO must also defend any large technical infrastructure projects.
- This approach avoids the “squeaky wheel” approach which allows powerful executives to dominate the IT agenda while less powerful departments are ignored even though their requirements may be more strategic.
- This approach assures that IT is aligned to the business and ensures that IT is working on projects that the company wants and needs.
Establishing the IT steering committee
Important considerations in establishing an effective IT steering committee process are as follows:
- Focus the IT Steering Committee on three main tasks: IT strategic planning; project prioritization and project approval.
- Ensure the meeting agenda is related to the future IT needs of the business, versus last month’s service disruption reports.
- Poll committee members for their ideas on what IT’s priorities should be for next year’s budget long in advance of the budget cycle. Use the committee meeting to encourage those people to speak to those priorities and encourage discussion.
- Review new emerging technologies and brainstorm how they could be used for the business.
- Implement a communications plan to pre-empt the need to react to requests coming from the executive table, seemingly out of left field. The IT steering committee becomes the process to examine requests that come via that route, reducing the number of requests that appear to be end runs to established policies.
The role of the CIO
The role of CIO is central to an effective IT steering committee as he or she serves as the primary facilitator – but not as an advocate. As we previously mentioned, the CIO is allowed to express views just like any officer and may comment on any project. The CIO must also bring technical expertise to either support or discourage projects and also defend any large technical infrastructure projects.
The Litcom Approach
Litcom’s professional team is equipped to provide comprehensive and efficient solutions for improving IT governance. For further information, please contact us at: info@litcom.ca