Applying COBIT With Limited Resources

Many midsize and small businesses, IT departments, and organizations in general look at best practices and governance as procedures into which they will grow eventually. Common justifications for not improving include waiting until they have enough people, the department has a larger budget or the current projects are completed. Control Objectives for Information and related Technology (COBIT) provides a useful framework for recognizing existing strengths and needs, improving processes that will provide noticeable improvements, and creating metrics to gauge the maturity of the business environment. It is possible to do this with existing personnel, and, through incremental implementation, costs can be controlled.