Key takeaways
- The six characteristics are Discipline, Transparency, Independence, Accountability, Responsibility, and Fairness.
- In a scenario, identify what is guaranteed or threatened: procedure, inspection, conflict of interest, answerability, conduct, equity.
- Responsibility concerns each contracted party; Accountability, the deciding groups.
- Benefits range from risk control to shareholder value, including reuse.
- Governance complements existing methods instead of replacing them.
Six characteristics to recognize
Adapted from a book on corporate governance, these characteristics show both the value and the necessity of governance in dealings with all parties involved. In the exam they mostly appear as scenarios: look for what is threatened or guaranteed.
- Discipline: everyone commits to follow the established procedures, processes, and authority structures.
- Transparency: actions and their rationale can be inspected by authorized parties.
- Independence: processes and decision mechanisms are designed to limit or avoid conflicts of interest.
- Accountability: identifiable groups, such as boards, are authorized and answerable for their actions.
- Responsibility: each contracted party acts responsibly toward the organization and its stakeholders.
- Fairness: neither decisions, processes, nor their implementation create an unfair advantage for any party.
Distinctions that trap candidates
Responsibility and Accountability look alike. Remember that Responsibility targets each party bound by a contract, while Accountability targets the groups that decide and must answer for their decisions.
Transparency and Independence complement each other: the first makes a decision inspectable afterwards, the second protects the decision from conflicts of interest by design. A Board member stepping back from a vote about their own supplier is Independence, not Transparency.
Discipline and Fairness do not necessarily go together: a process followed to the letter can still be unfair if it consistently favors one business unit.
What governance delivers
TOGAF lists benefits that serve as arguments against those who see governance as mere administrative overhead:
- more transparent accountability and informed delegation of authority;
- proactive management of risks and opportunities;
- protection of the existing asset base through maximum reuse of components;
- proactive control, monitoring, and management mechanisms;
- reuse of processes, concepts, and components across all units;
- value creation through monitoring, measurement, evaluation, and feedback;
- greater visibility, so that local decisions with strategic reach get oversight at the right level;
- higher shareholder value, as EA becomes core intellectual property;
- integration with existing processes and methods, complemented by control capabilities.
TERMS TO KNOW
The terms, in context.
- Discipline
- All parties’ commitment to follow established procedures, processes, and authorities.
- Transparency
- The ability of authorized parties to inspect actions and their rationale.
- Independence
- Designing decisions and mechanisms to avoid conflicts of interest.
- Accountability
- Identified groups being authorized and answerable for their decisions.
- Responsibility
- The obligation for each contracted party to act responsibly.
- Fairness
- No unfair advantage for any party in decisions and processes.