Trabalho de História

An investigation into the governance of information technology projects in South Africa

Carl Marnewick and Les Labuschagne

International Journal of Project Management, Volume 29, Issue 6, August 2011, Pages 661–670

Background

Many organizations have been using Information Technology (IT) to embrace their business, improve performance and increase their productivity. IT is seen as an integral part of organization business strategic objectives and processes in many organizations. In order to realize the value of IT in various organizations, they need to apply established both IT and IT projects governance principles as part of overall organization’s strategic objectives.

Unfortunately, organizations that uses general project governance principles in managing IT projects have encountered many problems including delaying the completion of IT projects, over or under budgeting and poor quality of project outputs. This implies that specific attention needs to be given to the management of IT projects (pp. 662).

This paper looks at what degree IT governance is adopted by South African organizations (pp.662), and determining the relationship between corporate governance, IT governance and IT project governance. To achieve these objective findings from the literature survey (theory) were compared with the actual practice found in South Africa organizations to determine whether gaps do exist and, if so, to recommend improvements (pp.662). Through qualitative interviews the study has found that many South Africa organizations adhere to formal corporate governance principles, but many organizations do not comply with IT governance principles. Moreover the literature revealed that there is a lack of formal guidance regarding IT project governance, and therefore investigated the practices of governance of IT projects in the South African context.

Results

In order to achieve the objective of the study, the authors compared the findings from the literature survey (theory) with the actual practice found in organizations to determine whether gaps do exist and, if so, to recommend improvements (pp.662).

In the literature review the authors discussed the relationship between corporate governance, IT Governance and IT project governance. The main objective of corporate governance is to ensure the sustainability of organizations through what would be considered best practice (pp. 662).There are many good governance principles and practices in different countries where organizations need to adhere to. In South Africa the government established Code of Governance Principles known as King 2 and the King 3. In recognizing the importance of IT in business in South Africa, the latest version of this code has included full Chapter 5 to its principles guiding the governance of IT. This chapter emphasis the integration of IT in every business process including organization objectives and risk management; gives the directions for board to monitor and evaluate IT investments and expenditure IT investments are implemented within the organization through IT projects (pp.663). This is what provides a link between IT governance and IT projects, and therefore to the management of IT-related projects and programmes (pp.663).

There number of international guidelines for IT governance as it is for Corporate Governance, but Control Objectives for Information and related Technology (COBIT) is popular and widely used. Based on literature, there is no formal guideline for IT projects governance. The relationship between Corporate Governance, IT governance and IT project Governance can be shown in Fig 1(pp.663).

Fig. 1 Relationship between corporate, IT and IT project governance.

To determine the actual situation in South African organizations context, qualitative methods based semi-structured interview were used for this study. The semi-structured interview was developed based on the findings of the literature survey that focused on three aspects namely the interviewee's role and responsibilities within the organization, the notion of corporate governance and project governance within the organization, and the summation of the business strategies of the organization as well as the perception of the interviewee regarding organizational success. The interviewees participated in the study came from a wide variety of organizations ranging from the banking environment, mobile telecommunications environment, agricultural as well as petrochemical industries with wealth of experience in their respective organizations

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