Towards Conceptual Metamodeling of IT Governance Frameworks Approach - Use - Benefits

Up to now, there has been little academic support for the challenges of IT governance/IT management. As a reaction, various best practice frameworks - like COBIT (Control Objectives for IT and related technology) or CMMI (Capability Maturity Model Integration) - were developed. Due to their origin, these frameworks lack of a sound basis or scientific foundation. To undertake a step in this direction, we propose the use of modeling notation and techniques to represent frameworks as conceptual metamodels. Accordingly, we present the well-known framework COBIT metamodeled in a conceptual way and, thereby, represent the underlying logically and semantically rich structures. We furthermore discuss the benefits of using conceptual metamodeling to analyze frameworks coming from practice. Using the metamodel, we are also able to demonstrate ways to improve the frameworks and configure them according to the specific needs of an enterprise or an industry. To have a sound basis for any improvement we discuss the process of metamodeling and derive some requirements for "good" metamodeling.