Monitoring future trends and regulations is a process I have proposed implementing at my current client. I have yet to see any IT organization that I have worked with do this systematically, and especially where I am working now everything is reactive. One of the approaches we are considering is creating a technical standards lifecycle; a process to evaluate current technical standards periodically to determine if the standard still makes sense to the business, or if that standard needs to be updated to reflect changing business needs or technological shifts. This process will force the architecture review board to keep existing standards fresh. It can also help identify technologies that are becoming obsolete, unsupportable, or that no longer have an ROI that meets business goals.

Another approach we are looking at is asking our architects to look at best practices in infrastructure. The organization has a cultural mindset of doing everything in-house, and doesn’t consider alternative approaches to sourcing either computing or human resources. With the advent of cloud computing, outsourcing and managed services, and other sourcing models, the infrastructure group could create significant cost savings with higher performance. The group can also evaluate process best practices such as through ITIL and COBIT.

I agree with you that it will take having an agenda that the architects work on periodically. I don’t think it matters so much as frequency (monthly or quarterly might make sense), but that the agenda is clear and the architects engage in the process.

I’d like to empathize how valuable your blog is. As it stands there is a lot of work to be done and I recon it will take a while before all CobiT processes and Controlobjectives have been blogged. But this makes a very nice freely available place where a practical approach to the CO’s is available.

Tanks for the effort you are putting into this!

Best Regards,

Jip