There was an IT engineer who had an exceptional gift for fixing all things IT related. After serving his company loyally for over 30 years, he happily retired. Several years later the company contacted him regarding a seemingly impossible problem they were having with one of their main networks, resulting in multimillion-dollar losses per day. They had tried everything and everyone else to get the network to work, but to no avail. In desperation, they called on the retired engineer who had solved so many of their problems in the past.

The engineer reluctantly took the challenge. He spent a day studying the network. At the end of the day, he marked a small "x" in chalk on a particular network component and stated, "This is where your problem is".
The part was replaced and the network worked perfectly again. The company received a bill for $50,000 from the engineer for his service. They demanded an itemized accounting of his charges.
The engineer responded briefly:
One chalk mark $1, knowing where to put it $49,999. It was paid in full and the engineer retired again in peace.

Learning Point:

Do you wish you were the engineer? The engineer is smart and the company is not. What happened with setting a price, before the actual work was done? COBIT clearly recommends that service levels need to be defined and managed (Deliver and Support processes #1 and #2) and documented in contracts. In addition, ITIL can tell you exactly how this is done. This clearly wasn't done in the example above!

Also, it seems the company had a critical dependency on the engineer; does COBIT mention anything on managing (IT) Human resources? The answer is yes, find two examples below:

Planning and Organization 7.5:
Mitigating the risk of overdependence on key resources: Minimize the exposure to critical dependency on key individuals through knowledge capture (documentation), knowledge sharing, succession planning and staff backup.

Planning and Organization 7.8:
Job Change and Termination: Take expedient actions regarding job changes, especially job terminations. Knowledge transfer should be arranged, responsibilities reassigned and access rights removed such that risks are minimized and continuity of the function is guaranteed.

It can be challenging to discuss COBIT with executives sometimes, as it seems very technology related. However, to start the discussion, use the joke and information above and simply take off the “T” in COBIT, which makes it the “Control Objectives for Information”, which is something any executive can relate to.