Governing Your Governance Process

"Agile software development projects can very likely be shoe-horned into your existing IT governance program. The not-so-easy answer is this likely isn’t a good idea because your existing IT governance program is probably a mess that’s potentially doing more damage than good. Worse yet, you might be so overwhelmed with rhetoric from the traditional governance folks that you aren’t able to even observe the problems that your governance program is causing you. As I’ve written previously, traditional governance programs are often based on command-and-control strategies which often do little more than layer yet more bureaucracy into your IT department, thereby increasing risk. Many IT governance programs are effectively out of control in practice due (ironically) to a lack of governance: a favorite question that I like to ask senior managers is how do they governing their governance programs, to which I often get blank stares. Effective governance, which agile development teams should step up and demand from their organizations, is based on enablement, motivation, and collaboration " governance should help, not hinder, development teams."

~Scott Ambler, “Agile and Traditional Governance,” DrDobbs.com