Question

COBIT is one of the IT standards we studied this semester. a) What does COBIT stand for?[1 mark] b) List and explain the seven enablers for COBIT. What is the purpose of each one? [1 x 7 =7 ] Lecture 2 c) In this semester, we studied managing IT in organizations. List and describe three types of IT resources. [1x3 =3]

Answer 1

a. COBIT - it stands for control objectives for information and related technologies which is basically a framework for the governance and management of enterprise information and technology aimed at the whole enterprise so not limited to the IT department of any organization but also a clear distinction between the governance and management.

b. COBIT's Seven Enablers are helped to achieve objectives, enablers are factors that, individually, influence whether something will work in this case, governance and management over enterprise IT, Enablers are driven by the goals cascade, higher-level IT-related goals what the different enablers should achieve,

1. Principles, policies, and frameworks - to translate the desired behavior of the organization into practical guidance for day to day management to follow it sort of sets the stage of what you want to occur.
2. Processes - describe an organized set of practices and activities that achieve certain objectives and produce a set of outputs in support of overall IT-related goals.
3. Organizational structures - the key decision making entities in an enterprise and so obviously important to understand what your organizational structures will be and how they help or hinder your decision making.
4. Services, infrastructure, and applications - our infrastructure, technology, servers, windows and UNIX and networks that provide the technology processing and services for the business that we're running.
5. Cultures, ethics, and behavior - it focuses on the people the individuals and ends the enterprises because they are often underestimated as a success factor in governance and management activities so making sure the right governance the right culture, the right behaviors in place.
6. People skills and competencies - they are linked obviously to people's and the human resources side of things and then required obviously for the successful completion of what we're trying to accomplish in the right decisions and the corrective actions.
7. Information - while natural information is required to keep the organization running and well-governed but at the operational level information often the key product.

c. Types of IT Resources can be managed in organizations:

• Inventory Management - Organizations need to maintain enough stock to meet demand inventory management systems track the quantity of each item triggering order of additional staff and so on. it can be easily managed by connected to point of sale system.
• Data Management - the days of large file rooms rows of filing cabinets and the mailing of documents is fading fast therefore most companies store digital versions of documents on server and storage devices the documents become instantly available to everyone in the company with immediate access.
• Management information system - progressive companies use data as part of their strategic planning as well as the tactical execution strategy MIS enables companies to track sales data and productivity levels next track profitability over time and identify areas of improvement.
• Customer relationship management - companies are using IT to improve the way they design and manage customer relationships if a customer calls a call center with an issue the customer support representative will be able to see what the customer purchased and can quickly respond to the situations the entire interaction is stored in the CRM system ready to be recalled if the customer calls again the customer has a better more focused experience and the company benefits from improved productivity.