In business today, Governance, Risk and Compliance play a critical role. Effectively managing Governance, Risk and Compliance is essential to an enterprise’s success. Experience and an increasing volume of research have demonstrated that process frameworks, when managed within an effective governance framework provide organizations with significant opportunities to create value. A process framework definition and implementation should imbibe industry Best Practices, Methodologies and Standards and set the foundation for a superior IT Governance Framework.
• Don’t try a “Big Bang” approach: Process frameworks should be self-corrective by incorporating incremental process improvement. Therefore there is no need to strive to get it right the first time. Since many of the things the framework says would be new to the organization, they aren't qualified to know how to do it right. So it would be a waste of time for them to try. The golden rule is: do the absolute minimum and keep reviewing to mature into more robust processes.
• Have clear goals for process documentation: Process documentation comes in two parts. The first is a high level, abstract description of the steps; ideally around 5 or 6 and certainly less than 10. If more details are needed, steps can be blown out hierarchically as separate processes. The step description should be what everyone can agree upon as the process description without requiring that anyone has to significantly change the way they do things.
The second part of process documentation is supporting or background material. This describes viable alternatives for particular steps and additional detailed guidelines for executing the step. The idea should be to provide guidance but individual projects can tailor things if there is a need to do so. This provides greater detail without creating ambiguity in the initial documentation effort. As best practices are identified later, they should be incorporated into sub processes.
• Have a systematic way to define processes: Typically implementing a process framework requires defining and documenting processes. A lot of companies spend huge amounts of effort with committees developing process documentation. Standard techniques for defining processes within a fixed time frame that should be used. This is also another area for a minimalist approach initially.
• Have the right goals: Too often goals are tied to schedules and ratings (e.g., Level 3 in 3 years). The purpose of process frameworks should be to improve the way software is developed. Any goals and metrics should be tied to monitoring expected improvements in the process that should result from implementing the framework. The idea should be that when initially implementing a framework, organizations should only implement those portions where there is clear benefit identified.
• Data and metrics: Process frameworks should use metrics and, hence the need for data collection. First comes the data collection stage and then companies can define the metrics for the data collected. This helps to avoid lots of disparate data collection and redundant data collection that may be a cumbersome process and waste of efforts. The approach should be to develop a very basic data collection system that is carefully designed to be non-invasive and easy. Then companies can define the metrics based upon that data. Going forward one can enhance the system when there is a demonstrated, quantified need to do so.
Conclusion
Organizations would do well to these industry best practices in mind while setting out to define a process framework which can help them
- Increase process maturity, drive productivity and cost avoidance on incremental project agenda
- Enable strategic initiatives and business growth
- Ensure compliance to internal and industry controls
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