Organisations that are heavily depend on IT or which have large organisational change and IT projects to deliver, do not have the bandwidth in the boardroom to exercise good governance.

Many organisations establish a board subcommittee for IT, similar to the audit and risk committee and this committee deals with specific IT governance including strategic alignment, prioritisation, approval, delivery, benefits, resourcing and the balancing of supply demand equation. Implementing an IT committee to the board is one way a board can realistically govern IT. And most importantly, it is necessary to ensure that business recognition and reward structures recognise business accountability for project and benefits delivery (see Fig 4).