COBIT 5 is here: essential reference for everyone in IT
You may recall Pink12 gave you 10 things to do when you got home, and my own recommendation was
Read ISO/IEC 38500 Corporate Governance of IT and dip into COBIT 5 Process Reference Guide (Draft) - you need to be aware of these
COBIT 5 is no longer in draft: the final public version is out and you can download it here (46,000 downloads as of April 26th). As ISACA says on the website
COBIT 5 is the only business framework for the governance and management of enterprise IT. This evolutionary version incorporates the latest thinking in enterprise governance and management techniques, and provides globally accepted principles, practices, analytical tools and models to help increase the trust in, and value from, information systems. COBIT 5 builds and expands on COBIT 4.1 by integrating other major frameworks, standards and resources, including ISACA’s Val IT and Risk IT, Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL®) and related standards from the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).
That sounds like something everybody in IT should at least be aware of.
Personally I think it is something that everybody in IT should have in their toolkit.
In fact I go even further than that and say it should be the default best practice framework which we reach for first (as you know if you went to my “ITIL vs. COBIT: showdown of the methodologies” presentation at Pink12).
But even if you don’t buy that last premise, it is hard to argue with the first one: everybody in IT should at least be aware of COBIT 5.
ISACA want your registration to get the core COBIT 5 content (but they don’t want money).
They want your membership to get all the associated books in digital format for free as well, but personally I think that is a good deal. I pay it. I buy the hardcopy versions too, but I’m like that: I still prefer paper to bytes.
If all you want is overall awareness, then you don’t even need to register. You can download a few documents without registration that will give you the picture:
- Executive Summary (powerpoint)
- COBIT 5 Introduction (powerpoint)
- Framework Overview, the main diagrams describing COBIT 5’s structure (pdf)
- Toolkit, a zipfile of articles, presentations and a spreadsheet.
I would encourage everyone to have a copy of COBIT 5 at hand. I use COBIT as
- a structure for framing any IT management thinking
- a checklist for any form of review: process capability assessment, current state review, document audit, process audit…
- an input to role descriptions, especially the RACI responsibility matrices
- a reference for process best practice (fleshed out when necessary with other sources such as ITIL)
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