COBIT Implementation Workshop for UN Officials at Brindsi, Italy

It was a privilege to have been invited by the United Nations (UN) to conduct a COBIT 5 Implementation Workshop for their Senior Officials at Brindsi, Italy this month.

As we started, the expectation was very clearly stated by the participants, “we have read through the COBIT 5 framework and we want to understand how this framework can be implemented in an intuitive way, so that there is least resistance and maximum participation from across the stakeholder domains”.

We had participants with multi-national, multi-technology (Software & Hardware) & multi-framework (ITIL, COBIT, TOGAF, Lean IT, Agile, Prince2, MOR etc.) experience. Their broad knowledge, skills and varied cultural backgrounds, helped create an appropriate environment to discuss comprehensively the challenges of rolling out such frameworks at a global level. My broad industry, technology & IT Best Practices experience helped me to relate with the challenges shared by them.

Instead of conducting a routine theoretical 3 days COBIT Implementation Training, a 4 day workshop was organized; with over a day spent reviewing concepts covered in a typical 3 day COBIT Foundation Training from a practitioner perspective. This helped mature the understanding of the concepts and its application in real life.

We looked at how the business was getting transformed with rapid advancement of technologies & business models, and compatible agile approach required for implementation of process frameworks in an iterative and incremental manner to ensure nimble & quick business oriented value delivery and avoid typical IT best practices purist approach.

We discussed in detail the COBIT Implementation Lifecycle and how each phase of the lifecycle needs to be programme managed and organization change management required to elicit support from all stakeholders – Business, IT, Audit, Risk & Compliance. We also discussed typical challenges, root causes which can adversely impact the IT governance journey and the respective success factors.  

And Yes! We also measured the knowledge acquired by the conducting the APMG Exam on the last day and we had 100% success rate.

Quoting the Participants VOC – Knowledge & Certificate Mission Accomplished. It was a fulfilling session for me too, having enriched from perspectives of seasoned professionals across the globe.

PS: Missing some participants from the Title Image photo as taking photograph was an afterthought after the session was over and they had left.