Governance: The Invisible Framework
IT governance is like the foundation of a building — when it's solid, nobody notices it. When it cracks, everything built on top starts to shift. Most organizations don't think about their IT governance until something goes wrong. By then, the damage is already done.
The Five Warning Signs
1. Shadow IT Is Thriving
When departments routinely bypass IT to purchase their own tools and services, it's a governance failure. Shadow IT isn't just a security risk — it's a symptom of an IT organization that isn't meeting business needs efficiently enough.
2. Projects Regularly Miss Deadlines
Occasional delays happen. Chronic delays indicate systemic issues: poor prioritization, unclear ownership, inadequate resource planning, or all three. These are governance problems.
3. Nobody Can Articulate the IT Strategy
If you ask five IT team members about the department's strategic priorities and get five different answers, you have a governance gap. Strategy must be clear, communicated, and consistently reinforced.
4. IT Budget Is a Black Box
If business leaders can't understand where IT money goes or why certain investments are prioritized over others, trust erodes. Transparent financial governance is non-negotiable.
5. Security Incidents Keep Surprising Everyone
A mature governance framework includes proactive risk management. If security incidents are consistently unexpected, your risk identification and mitigation processes need work.
What to Do About It
Recognizing these signs is the first step. The second is getting an objective assessment of your current governance maturity. An external IT health scan can quickly identify the specific gaps and prioritize the fixes that will deliver the most impact.