FIT3174 IT STRATEGY AND GOVERNANCE
Semester 1, 2024
Assignment 2: IT governance evaluation and application
Value: This assignment is worth 20% of your final assessment in the unit.
Type of Assignment: Group (group of three from the same Applied)
Submission Date: Monday Week 12, 20th May 2024, 11:55 PM
Submission of the Assignments: You are required to submit your assignment to Moodle/Turnitin. The file
names should contain Unit Code, assignment number and your Group number, similar to the following
example: FIT3174A2_GroupNumber.docx OR FIT3174A2_GroupNumber.pdf
Only one of the group members will need to upload the assignment file on Moodle for the group, but all
members must click the 'submit' button to accept the student submission statement.
Learning outcomes:
Demonstrate the understanding of IT governance, and how IT projects can be successfully completed with
appropriate attention to IT critical success factors, implementation issues and various aspects of IT
governance. Discuss the applications of the well-known IT governance frameworks commonly used in
organisations.
Broad Assignment Aims
Students are presented with a case study to:
a) critically review the organisation’s need for good IT governance,
b) critically evaluate the implementation experience of the organisation and suggest ways to improve its
IT governance by drawing on the theoretical constructs of IT governance and those involved in IT
governance frameworks such as COBIT,
c) demonstrate how a chosen IT governance framework can affect the organisation’s corporate and IT
strategies, thereby influencing the values and risks associated with IT-enabled investments.
Students are required to derive the strategic motivations, barriers, impact, and lessons of the case organisation
in implementing IT projects and governance, relating them to the IT governance scholarly literature.
Using Generative AI (GAI) for the assignment:
Students are allowed to use GAI, such as ChatGPT, to assist them with this assignment. However, the main
use of the tool should be to generate initial ideas and improve the quality of the report (e.g., grammar checks).
Please note that if GAI is used, the following information needs to be included in the appendix:
● Declare the adopted GAI technology and the ways it was used to assist with this assignment. For
example, did you use it to generate ideas for any parts of the assignment or to improve writing in any
ways?
● Declare the prompts used and how you have utilised the results critically. Please take a critical
approach to the results that GAI generates.
○ Validate the correctness of the responses by conducting further research.
○ Make sure that any argument made in your report needs to be supported by appropriate
literature (remember that GAI is limited to its training data and is thus biased by nature).
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○ Clearly indicate how you adopted the responses from GAI selectively and critically to inform
your report.
Report Outline:
A recommended report outline is as follows:
● Title page (with assignment title, student name, ID, group number, unit code, tutors name)
● Table of contents
● Introduction section, e.g., purpose of the report, scope, and a summary of key ideas
● Body (responses to the assignment tasks)
o a critical review of the case study and the role of IT governance
o make plans to improve IT governance of the case drawing on theoretical constructs and
popular IT governance frameworks
● Conclusion
● One single aggregated reference list at the end of the document.
● Appendix
o Indicating each person’s contributions in any of the following areas, in a reasonable style:
conceptualisation, desk research, analysis, writing-up, and editing.
o Declaring if GAI is used to assist with this assignment. If yes, please see the previous section
for information to include in terms of your critical use of GAI.
Writing style:
● Use an IT/business report genre (https://www.monash.edu/rlo/quick-study-guides/features-of-reports).
● Font - Times New Roman font, size 12, and single space.
● Paging - each page (except the title page, table of contents) must be numbered.
● Write in a neutral voice.
● Writing clear sentences and paragraphing, for examples:
o Writing clear paragraphs: https://www.monash.edu/rlo/research-writing-
assignments/writing/clear-communication/writing-clear-paragraphs
o IT report: approaching the task: https://www.monash.edu/rlo/assignment-samples/information-
technology/approaching-the-task
o Writing style attributes: https://www.monash.edu/it/current-students/resources-and-support/style-
guide
References:
Students are encouraged to search for relevant extra readings and draw on suitable literature from academic
publications as well as practitioner outlets. All sources of information must be fully and appropriately
acknowledged using in-text citation and reference list. The reference section should use the American
Psychological Association (APA) style of referencing (https://guides.lib.monash.edu/citing-referencing/apa).
Late Submissions: Late submissions will be penalised as stated in the submission link in Moodle.
Assignment Assessment Criteria:
Your submission will be evaluated in terms of the following criteria:
● Depth of analysis.
● Completeness and correctness of arguments.
● Clarity of expression.
● Use of appropriate references to support arguments.
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Group Assignment:
This assignment promotes students’ collaborations via group work – collaboration of three students per group.
Students must form their group within the same applied session, the latest being the end of Week 9. You will
choose your group via the Assignment Two Groups (see Moodle Week 7 page).
Students will be graded as a group. Every student in the group is required to actively participate and contribute
to the assignment. These would be used as a basis for marks adjustment for the final score (if necessary) of
the assignment. At the end of the assignment, all students must complete their Peer Evaluation confidentially
and individually.
Specific Instructions
Students are provided with initial resources for the assessment. There are two case organisations provided
below, from which you will select ONLY ONE. You are required to seek additional material from a variety
of sources, and you must specify any sources used in the submission using appropriate referencing styles.
1. Boeing 737 MAX 8
• Cusumano, M. A. (2020). Boeing's 737 MAX: a failure of management, not just technology.
Communications of the ACM, 64(1), 22-25.
• Seyer, K., & Londner, E. (2020). Case Study of the Boeing 737 MAX 8 Crashes Using a Systems Thinking
Approach.
2. Police Scotland i6 computer system
• https://www.henricodolfing.com/2021/09/case-study-scottish-police-i6-accenture.html
You are required to find information beyond the resources provided above. However, you are not required to
contact the organisation for information. You may make reasonable assumptions based on your understanding
of the case, citing relevant references if available (e.g., the case company’s website, practitioner material or
academic literature) and state them in the report.
Drawing on the reading about the case study and based on the understanding developed through this unit
(FIT3174), prepare a report addressing the assignment tasks.
Task 1 (30 marks)
Discuss how IT projects can be successfully completed with appropriate attention to IT critical success factors,
implementation issues, and IT governance.
● Discuss the need for ‘good IT governance’ for business organisations and draw on examples from the
case study to strengthen your argument. (6 marks)
● List at least three issues related to the implementation of the project in question and discuss the
problem with IT governance in the case. (12 marks)
● Discuss how this project could have been successful with appropriate attention paid to the IT critical
success factors (see Lecture 7). Include at least three critical success factors. You must justify your
answers using evidence from the case study or web resources. (12 marks)
Part 1 write-up should be approximately 1000 words (+/- 10%) in length.
Task 2 (55 marks)
If you could implement the project differently, what IT governance advice would you provide to ensure the
success and minimise risks of the projects?
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1. Using the COBIT (Control Objectives for Information and Related Technologies) framework, and
● Discuss how the six governance system principles of COBIT 2019 can help address the
implementation issues identified in Task 1. Please select at least two principles to discuss.
(8 marks)
● IT governance system design can be affected by various design factors. Please list and explain at
least three design factors that reflect the contextual elements of your case organisation and
explain how these factors should inform IT governance (for example, using the design factors to
identify specific focus areas or/and prioritise certain management objectives) to avoid the project
failure. (9 marks)
● COBIT2019 contains 40 governance and management objectives, and each objective can be
achieved by taking a holistic approach; that is, by considering the seven components of the
governance system. Select one governance or management objective that is critical to the success
of the project and choose three components to discuss what the organisation should do to achieve
the identified objective. (12 marks)
2. Effective knowledge management gives an organisation competitive advantage by bringing them both
tangible and intangible returns on investment. Considering the four aspects of knowledge
management processes – discovery, capture, sharing, and application, discuss how each of these
aspects should be governed for the project to be successful? (12 marks)
3. If you were to offer some advice on IT budgeting, which of the following methods would you
recommend to minimise IT costs in the case study and why: incremental, activity based, value
proposition, and zero based? (4 marks)
4. Search for another well-known IT governance framework that is commonly used in organisations and
discuss the advantages of using the framework to ensure effective IT governance in the selected case
organisation, e.g., to overcome issues, sustain critical success factors, etc. You are free to choose one
of the other IT governance frameworks introduced in the unit or a new one from your own search.
● Introduce key concepts of the chosen framework (purpose, coverage, and application) and in
what ways the framework is different from COBIT 2019. (5 marks)
● Explain with examples to justify the applications of the framework in the project in question to
prevent the implementation issues and ensure success. (5 marks)
Part 2 write-up should be approximately 2000 words (+/- 10%) in length.
References (5 marks)
Include at least ten significant1 references and cite them in the body of your assignment report and add full
references in the bibliography (use APA style).
Overall report (5 marks)
Overall report, e.g., writing structure, flow, headings/subheadings, paragraph construct and linkage, general
grammar, appendix requirements.
Peer Evaluation (5 marks)
Complete the Peer Evaluation Form.
1 These may include websites and newspaper articles and should be as current and substantive as possible – you are expected to
provide at least four published peer-reviewed academic articles, e.g., journal, conference article, book, book chapter. You should
acknowledge all sources of information.