A different perspective for an Adaptive IT Governance Model

Abstract

A key priority for organizations is to have a more adaptive IT governance model. Traditional governance, based on a directive model and designed to control risk and reduce the pace of change (such as COBIT or ISO 38500), competes with the increasing reliance on digital business. The question is what change in perspective is required to achieve a more adaptive governance model. To perform this analysis, we have turned to other disciplines, different from the world of Agile, and for this we have taken as a reference the field of organizational design and development. Based on this approach, we have seen that making a change from a directive model to an adaptive one is not simply a matter of applying a methodology, but also involves changing the way we perceive organizations: (1) changing our perspective to complexity thinking, where we conceive organizations as living systems, as complex adaptive systems; (2) the socio-technical design approach, which recommends looking at people, culture, knowledge, processes, and technology as a whole. In this paper, we collect reflections on how the IT governance model should be an enabler for the human system (socio-technical) to generate the greatest value for the organization.