Story update 11/1/2010: We had the incorrect author shown for this story. The author is Bipin Roy.

Welcome to the information technology world of governance boards, compliance councils, Sarbanes Oxley, and audit committees that continually invent stringent rules and regulations to make the daily job of an IT manager harder than ever before. It’s scary to visualize all these new regulatory bodies chiming in to see whether you’re doing the right thing!

What is good governance?

Good governance is the ability of an organization to steer itself into the future and is influenced by complex relationships among all its stakeholders. A governance model can only be as successful as the level at which its stakeholders allow themselves to be governed.

Before the IT industry matured, the rules of the game were very different. Compared to those times, the current scenario looks like overkill. Now a software-development manager may think, “Come on! Let’s just do our jobs and get out of here. Why should I bother about all these councils and rules trying to ensure that my job is done correctly? This is my job! What does a corporate scandal somewhere have to do with my project and my team? Give me a break!”

 …