- Your policies are out of date, disorganized, and complicated. They don’t reflect current regulations and don’t actually mitigate your organization’s current IT risks.
- Your policies are difficult to understand, aren’t easy to find, or aren’t well monitored and enforced for compliance. As a result, your employees don’t care about your policies.
- Policy issues are taking up too much of your time and distracting you from the real issues you need to address.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
A dynamic and streamlined policy approach will:
- Right-size policies to address the most critical IT risks.
- Clearly lay out a step-by-step process to complete daily tasks in compliance.
- Obtain policy adherence without having to be “the police.”
To accomplish this, the policy writer must engage their audience early to gather input on IT policies, increase policy awareness, and gain buy-in early in the process.
Impact and Result
- Develop more effective IT policies. Clearly express your policy goals and objectives, standardize the approach to employee problem solving, and write policies your employees will actually read.
- Improve risk coverage. Ensure full coverage on the risk landscape, including legal regulations, and establish a method for reporting, documenting, and communicating risks.
- Improve employee compliance. Empathize with your employees and use policy to educate, train, and enable them instead of restricting them.
Review and Improve Your IT Policy Library Research & Tools
Start here – read the Executive Brief
Read our concise Executive Brief to find out how to write better policies that mitigate the risks you care about and get the business to follow them, review Info-Tech’s methodology, and understand the four ways we can support you in completing this project.Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:
- Review and Improve Your IT Policy Library – Phases 1-3
1. Assess
Assess your risk landscape and design a plan to update your policy network based on your most critical risks.
- Review and Improve Your IT Policy Library – Phase 1: Assess
- Policy Management RACI Chart Template
- Policy Management Tool
- Policy Action Plan
2. Draft and implement
Use input from key stakeholders to write clear, consistent, and concise policies that people will actually read and understand. Then publish them and start generating policy awareness.
- Review and Improve Your IT Policy Library – Phase 2: Draft and Implement
- Policy Template
- Policy Communication Plan Template
3. Monitor, enforce, revise
Use your policies to create a compliance culture in your organization, set KPIs, and track policy effectiveness.
- Review and Improve Your IT Policy Library – Phase 3: Monitor, Enforce, Revise
Workshop: Review and Improve Your IT Policy Library
Workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.
1 Establish & Assess
The Purpose
Identify the pain points associated with IT policies.
Establish the policy development process.
Begin formulating a plan to re-design the policy network.
Key Benefits Achieved
Establish the policy process.
Highlight key issues and pain points regarding policy.
Assign roles and responsibilities.
Activities
1.1 Introduce workshop.
1.2 Identify the current pain points with policy management.
1.3 Establish high-level goals around policy management.
1.4 Select metrics to measure achievement of goals.
1.5 Create an IT policy working group (ITPWG).
1.6 Define the scope and purpose of the ITPWG.
Outputs
List of issues and pain points for policy management
Set of six to ten goals for policy management
Baseline and target measured value
Amended steering committee or ITPWG charter
Completed RACI chart
Documented policy development process
2 Assess Your Risk Landscape & Map Policies to Risks; Create a Policy Action Plan
The Purpose
Identify key risks.
Develop an understanding of which risks are most critical.
Design a policy network that best mitigates those risks.
Key Benefits Achieved
Use a risk-driven approach to decide which policies need to be written or updated first.
Activities
2.1 Identify risks at a high level.
2.2 Assess each identified risk scenario on impact and likelihood.
2.3 Map current and required policies to risks.
2.4 Assess policy effectiveness.
2.5 Create a policy action plan.
2.6 Select policies to be developed during workshop.
Outputs
Ranked list of IT’s risk scenarios
Prioritized list of IT risks (simplified risk register)
Policy action plan
3 Develop Policies
The Purpose
Outline what key features make a policy effective and write policies that mitigate the most critical IT risks.
Key Benefits Achieved
Write policies that work and get them approved.
Activities
3.1 Define the policy audience, constraints, and in-scope and out-of-scope requirements for a policy.
3.2 Draft two to four policies
Outputs
Drafted policies
4 Create a Policy Communication and Implementation Plan and Monitor & Reassess the Portfolio
The Purpose
Build an understanding of how well the organization’s value creation activities are being supported.
Key Benefits Achieved
Identify an area or capability that requires improvement.
Activities
4.1 Review draft policies and update if necessary.
4.2 Create a policy communication plan.
4.3 Select KPIs.
4.4 Review root-cause analysis techniques.
Outputs
Final draft policies
Policy communications plan
KPI tracking log