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Orgnanizational Policies
A TenStep White Paper
Contact us at info@tenstep.com
TenStep, Inc.
2363 St. Davids Square
Kennesaw, GA. 30152
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770.795.9097
Setting Up and Enforcing Organizational
Policies
Why does your IT organization and approved by the people or
need formal policies? group that owns the process.
Because of this, you hope that the
When companies are small, they rarely
policy reflects the best practices of
have many (if any) formal policies in
the group that is most experienced
place. However, as they get bigger
in the area and most impacted by
they always start to codify many of the
the outcome. The policy then aligns
important aspects of the culture into
everyone else under these best
formal policies. Your IT organization
practices. For example, look at
may have started the same way. When
your company Expense Reporting
there were only a handful of people
Policy. This policy is going to be
performing your IT function, there
established by the Finance group.
may have been no formal policies.
That should make sense. Even if
Now look around. How many policies
your team had the time to create
do you see? If you’re like most
the policy yourself, you don’t have
organizations, you probably have
the expertise to know the best way
policies for:
to handle expenses. You are IT
• Application Development people – not accountants. So,
following the established process
• Security
gives you the sense that you are
• Production turnover to support working on a firm foundation. Let
the Finance Department establish
• Asset management
the finance policies. Let the
• Teleworking Database Group establish the
database policies. Let your
• Finance
management team establish the
• Procurement management policies. These
groups are then accountable for
• Dozens or hundred of others
the policies and you know where to
How did it come to this – an go if you need an exception or if
organization guided by policies? you would like to change the
policy.
Policies reflect an organizations logical
progression from working in an ad-hoc • Working more efficiently
manner to one where people are through process reuse. Most of
following common and consistent us recognize the value of reuse. It
processes. A policy reflects your makes more sense to reuse things
organization’s desire for everyone to that are already developed instead
perform a specific function in a specific of having to re-invent everything
way. Policies help everyone we do from scratch. This is true
understand how to do things, and they with work processes and policies as
help managers understand the well. For instance, you could
framework in which they can manage. certainly come up with a
framework for handling IT security
Policies are developed and are they
on your project. But why would
are important for two main reasons.
you need to if your organization
• Working more effectively under has already developed and
company best practices. One approved a Security Policy. You
thing you will observe about could also come up with a
policies is that they are created workstation replacement policy