Executive's Guide to IT Governance: Improving Systems Processes with Service Management, COBIT, and ITIL

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

IT Configuration and IT Portfolio Management

WHETHER A MANAGER’S IPAD OR LAPTOP, a server system supporting a branch sales office, or the corporate primary data center, any installed IT system will have numerous components, including portfolios of application software, files and databases, operating systems, telecommunications gear, and supporting documentation for these procedures. These IT components should all be connected system by system and across the overall enterprise in order to be able to communicate and work with one another. This whole assembly of IT components is known as an enterprise’s IT configuration. As an important element of IT governance, processes should be in place to manage the compatibility and status of these IT configuration components such that they can talk and communicate with one another. An enterprise should have an effective IT configuration management system supporting its IT key processes.

Business managers often encounter IT configuration issues when they receive a report or an error message from some unit of their overall enterprise and find they cannot open or read a transmitted file. The manager’s first response often is to call his or her IT function’s help desk, but the problem is often traced back to find that the unit sending the unreadable data was using the wrong version of the software or even totally incorrect software. That incorrect and unreadable software problem is often caused by the failure to update a software ...