1.        What business outcomes must we support? [Selected  after our analysis]
2.        What IT services will we offer to support these objectives?
3.        Who are our internal and external customers? [Strategically
   selected customers]
4.        What market spaces do we serve? [Based on our research of
   market spaces]
5.        Technology standards
6.        Architecture
7.        How do we prioritize and decide on investments? [This is an
   outcome of portfolio management process]
8.        IT organization governance

a.      
Why: After the widely
reported collapse of Enron in 2000 and
the alleged problems within Arthur Andersen and WorldCom, the duties and responsibilities
of auditors and the boards of directors for public and privately held
corporations were questioned. As a response to this, and to attempt to
prevent similar problems from happening again, the US Sarbanes-Oxley Act was
written to stress the importance of business control and auditing. Although
not directly related to IT governance, Sarbanes-Oxley and Basel-II in Europe
have influenced the development of information technology governance since
the early 2000s.

b.     
Why: the need for greater
accountability for decision-making around the use of IT in the best interest
of all stakeholders

c.      
IT governance
systematically involves everyone: board members, executive management, staff
and customers.

d.     
 It establishes the
framework (see below) used by the organization to establish transparent
accountability of individual decisions, and ensures the traceability of
decisions to assigned responsibilities.

e.     
It states that strategic
IT decisions should be owned by the corporate board, rather than by
the chief information officer or other IT managers

                  9. What constraints must we manage