IT Shared Services - Will Governance be overlooked?
Governance, described by Oxford as 'an act of governing', is one important and essential element of any engagement. An engagement will be between two (or more) parties contractually obligated for its success and governance is a means to ensure it happens. Typically there will be, and preferably so, a three level governance structure governing the operational, tactical and strategic aspects of the engagement. Based on the level in the structure, multiple levels of people will be involved from the parties contracted.
In the traditional engagement models, where the customer has a dedicated IT team from the service provider, servicing his needs on projects or for support & maintenance, there will be a well defined Governance structure and mechanism overseeing the operations with periodic reviews on the progress. Now the question is will this setup be available for the shared services delivery model too??
I think the Governance structure is something of very hygiene in nature and is expected to be available on all engagements irrespective of the nature of the delivery model nor any other factors. Having said that, it may be possible that there could be some minor changes in the framework of the governance structure but the skeleton would remain the same.. for example, there may not be a need to have transactional monitoring or operational level monitoring in the shared model as the delivery is expected to be on well established and standardized processes. there may not be a need to have tactical structure unless multiple projects are under the same engagement umbrella.
There would still be an engagement manager, from the service provider, acting as a liaison to the customer manager who would take bottomline on the delivery of services and the relationship overall.
Under no circumstances, the Governance mechanism of the engagement can afford to be overlooked by either of the contracted parties. For a very healthy relationship, it is pertinent to have a well-defined governance model and the senior management involvement in ensuring that the governing body performs efficiently.
