IT governance disasters are everywhere. IT projects run off the rails, a bank's ATMs might be taken out of service because of early release software obtained from a very pushy vendor, benefit payments are disrupted by a computer crash, a telco's billing systems are bad because the software had not been fully tested ... the list goes on.

So how to avoid IT governance disaster?

Interesting piece in the Chartered Secretaries Australia journal Keeping good companies.

The piece 10 steps to an IT governance catastrophe written by lawyers Paul Kallenbach and Luke Scanlon is totally tongue in cheek. And absolutely spot on.

To guarantee you will run an IT governance disaster, they advise us to do the following:

1. Don't involve senior management.

2. Keep introducing new processes for key IT activities and don't consolidate or review them.

3. Encourage each business unit to implement its own process and don't worry about the duplication and cost. What's more important is the autonomy.

4. Encourage responsibility without accountability.

5. Make sure the IT department makes all the decisions on projects and programs and don't worry about aligning these with the broader business requirements.

6. Implement everything quickly and under no circumstances undertake a pilot program. It's all about quick solutions, not quality ones.

7. Keep the steering committee in the dark.

8. Over-complicate things so no-one understands.

9. Avoid clear standards.

10. Create a culture of failure where poor IT processes are the norm and where accountability is avoided at all costs.

Read the piece and weep. The extraordinary bit is that many companies keep doing these sorts of things. No wonder there are horror stories.