This article provides an overview and summary of the COBIT 5 process Manage IT Framework, which is part of the Management – Plan (Align, Plan and Organise) domain.

The purpose of this COBIT 5 process is to provide a consistent management approach to enable the IT governance requirements to be met, covering management processes, organisational structures, roles and responsibilities, and skills and competencies by ensuring:

  1. An effective set of policies are in place and maintained.
  2. Everyone is educated on the policies and how they are implemented.

The following sub-governance processes are further supported by a list of control activities:

  1. Define the organisational structure. Establish organisational structure that reflects organisation and IT needs and priorities.
  2. Establish roles and responsibilities. Establish roles and responsibilities of IT staff, as well as other stakeholders – defining lines of authority, responsibilities and accountability.
  3. Maintain the enablers of the management system. Maintain the enablers of the management system and control environment for IT by ensuring alignment with the organisational governance and management framework – cross functional.
  4. Communicate management objectives and direction. Communicate awareness and understanding of IT objectives and direction.
  5. Optimise the placement of the IT function. Position the IT function and capability in the overall organisational structure to demonstrate importance and value.
  6. Define information (data) and system ownership. Define responsibilities for the ownership of information (data) and information systems.
  7. Manage continual improvement of processes.  Assess, plan and execute the continual improvement of processes, people and technology.
  8. Maintain compliance with policies and procedures. Implement procedures and systems to maintain compliance and measure effectiveness and performance of policies and controls.

For more information please contact Morland-Austin at info@morland-austin.com.