What must effective IT governance ensure?

Effective IT governance is essential for ensuring that the IT strategy aligns with the organization's objectives. This alignment is crucial because it ensures that IT investments and initiatives support and enable the overall goals of the organization. When the IT strategy is in sync with the organization's objectives, it can enhance operational efficiency, improve service delivery, and drive innovation, thereby creating value for the organization.

This alignment also allows organizations to prioritize IT initiatives based on their contribution to achieving strategic objectives, ensuring that resources are allocated effectively. By fostering this alignment, IT governance plays a key role in decision-making processes, risk management, and performance measurement, which are all integral to achieving the intended outcomes of the organization's strategic plan.

In contrast, risk management should not be the sole responsibility of IT, as it requires a holistic approach that involves the entire organization. IT governance should not operate independently from overall governance, as integration is needed to ensure that organizational goals are consistently met across all functions. Additionally, while it is ideal for the business strategy to inform the IT strategy, the primary focus of effective IT governance is to ensure alignment with the organization's broader objectives, rather than just driving IT decisions based on business strategy alone.