Does anyone have a governance model they’d be willing to share for holistic governance across hardware and licensing? Interested in both traditional models that leverage charter, RACI, and governance board and more light-weight, modern models.
I have the traditional model in place. I’m finding that with a fairly solid program (of course there’s always room for improvement!), interest from upper management has waned in attending governance meetings without having big, flashy problems to solve, so I’m looking to shake up our approach and would appreciate knowing what’s working for others.
Sounds like your objectives are not aligned to those of the business, apologies if blunt, I don’t have much to go on.
I’m also being realistic - different orgs that I’ve worked at have different drivers. E.g. financial incentives worked in my previous company, whereas regulatory risk drives my current one and my SAM programme was adapted to suit the drivers. Needless to say I don’t do SAM for SAM’s sake and some elements of SAM definitely do not feature as they don’t provide any value to the environment I happen to be in. I believe in SAM best practice, but one size doesn’t always fit all.
I’d suggest a reframe based on what gives value.
So if financial - storyboard non-compliance impacts from potential audits, real costs of obsolescence especially with extended support costs and forecasts around AS IS, remediation OPTION 1, OPTION 2,3,4 etc.
If regulatory - storyboard risks of what part of your estate is contributing to non compliance to regulation and stamp a timeline to remediate. Want to remediate faster? invest in resource.
Elise, am I interpreting your description correctly that “with a fairly solid program” things are working effectively? Your ITAM team is meeting its goals and objectives and delivering on its Charter? There’s nothing wrong with a traditional Charter model with RACI and Governance Board. I work with companies regularly that employ Charters to scope out their work effectively.
But what are your Deliverables? And how well do they align with the interests of the members of your Governance Board? For example, are your ITAM deliverables written to align with the business’s strategic goals, or are they focused on meeting IT Service goals? Are your Governance board members responsible for IT service delivery, cost accounting, sales and marketing, product design, or after-market service?
If there is a mismatch between the strategic business goals of your governance team and your Charter deliverables, you’re likely going to experience sparsely populated governance meetings. If any of the above is true, have you considered redesigning your ITAM Charter to align more closely with your governance team’s strategic business goals?
One of the best ways to understand this is to consider what metrics your Charter has you measuring. Are they IT goals or business goals? For instance, are you measuring the numbers of tickets closed each month, or do you measure the improved efficiency of a business process supported by an improved IT service? (I know that was more of a service model than an asset model, but you get the picture).
I’ll stop there in case I’ve wandered way off track and am not touching your main concerns. Would you mind telling us more?
Thanks for your thoughtful response! Yes, our program is operating effectively, so to your point, the metrics are bland and repetitive seeing as how they’re on target. You’ve given me a lot to think about reassessing alignment with strategic business goals of stakeholders. Thank you!