This highly practical workshop is aimed at organisations who wish to:- Establish a baseline for their IT departments in order to set up a Continuous Improvement Programme Understand the strengths and weaknesses of an IT department to undertake new initiatives, using new IT technologies, such as Cloud Computing Assess the impact of merging IT systems as part of an M & A activity Objectively evaluate competitive tenders from hardware and software vendors Objectively evaluate the capabilities of outsourcing partners The workshop provides an introduction to the examination of an IT function (or functions) based on the international audit standard - CobiT (Control Objectives for Information and related Technology). CobiT is the worldwide standard for IT audit and the trainers have distilled this into a methodology which allows for evaluating IT disciplines over time or from a set of competing suppliers. It incorporates a set of structured questions across 27 IT disciplines plus a simple but powerful scoring system which allows evaluators to objectively justify their observations. Participants will learn how to:- Customise a standard question set to the specific needs of their organisation Prioritise the importance of each question to the organisation Score the answers to each question Evaluate the answers to each question by asking for samples of evidence to substantiate claims Point the IT function under examination towards a comprehensive set of IT standards and Best Practices to improve their performance over time