Literature Review Essay

Topic: Critical success factors for the IT strategy and governance

1. Introduction 

The Information Technology (IT) resources, demands and investments are a major concern for the executive and board management due to the opportunities, issues and challenges in its effective governance and management in the enterprises in the global world today. Therefore, there is a need to address the critical success factors for the IT strategy and governance being a contemporary concern for the enterprises due to the rapid dependence of organisations on the IT for managing and growing the business in a competitive world. Thus, IT has become an integral part of the organisations in today’s world and its critical success factors are even more important that decide the success or failure of the IT systems being implemented in the organisations. In various activities, IT governance has now become an imperative need for corporate organizations. The key process is characterized by modernisation, and its form of thinking and the ability to address the problems posed by the market world define intellectual leadership. Effective ITG produces real business advantages such as improved reputation, trust, time-to-market, product leadership and lower costs, all of that increase the value of stakeholders.   

Many legislations covering the protection of protected information, financial transparency, data management and disaster recovery among many others are subject to organisations today.   Shareholders, stakeholders and consumers also push them. Many organisations implement a formal IT governance programme, which provides a framework of best practises and controls, to ensure it meets internal and external specifications. Both private and public sector organisations need to have a plan to maintain that business targets and objectives are achieved by their IT works.  Any company in any sector that must comply with legislation related to financial and technical transparency must be on the radar with a structured IT governance programme.  However, it consumes a lot of effort to incorporate a robust IT governance programme. Where really small entities can only practise essential methods of IT governance, a complete IT governance programme should be the objective of larger and more regulated organisations.  Therefore, IT strategy and governance have significant benefits including the production of measurable results for the achievement of goals and strategies via the following formal framework. It can be stated that the integral part of the enterprise governance overall is the IT governance. It also helps in the compatibility of the strategic organisational goals and the intentions for the aid of corporation for realising a stage of satisfactory risk.  

2. Main body 

This part of the literature review essay constitutes the annotated bibliography of five identified sources for analysing the literature regarding the selected topic that is “Critical success factors for the IT strategy and governance” under the area of IT strategy and governance/management.