Primary and Secondary Goal Mappings

Primary and Secondary Goal Mappings in COBIT 2019 Foundation

Understanding Primary and Secondary Goal Mappings

What are Primary and Secondary Goal Mappings?

Primary and Secondary Goal Mappings are a fundamental concept in COBIT 2019 that illustrate the relationships between different governance and management objectives. The COBIT framework organizes goals into two categories:

Primary Goals: These are the main governance and management objectives that directly address specific business needs, risk considerations, or regulatory requirements. They represent the core focus areas within the five COBIT domains.

Secondary Goals: These are supporting objectives that contribute to the achievement of primary goals. They have indirect but important relationships with primary goals, helping to enable their successful implementation.

Why Primary and Secondary Goal Mappings are Important

Strategic Alignment: Primary and secondary goal mappings ensure that governance and management objectives are aligned with business strategy and objectives. By understanding these relationships, organizations can ensure their IT governance efforts directly support business outcomes.

Comprehensive Coverage: The mappings demonstrate how different objectives interconnect and support each other. This comprehensive view helps organizations avoid gaps in their governance and management approaches.

Prioritization and Resource Allocation: Understanding which goals are primary versus secondary helps organizations prioritize their efforts and allocate resources more effectively. Primary goals typically require more direct investment and attention.

Holistic Implementation: These mappings enable organizations to take a holistic approach to implementing COBIT, recognizing that achieving one objective often requires progress in multiple related areas.

Risk Mitigation: By understanding goal relationships, organizations can better identify and mitigate risks that might affect multiple objectives simultaneously.

How Primary and Secondary Goal Mappings Work

The Five COBIT Domains: COBIT 2019 organizes its 40 governance and management objectives into five domains:

1. Evaluate, Direct and Monitor (EDM): Governance focus
2. Align, Plan and Organize (APO): Management focus
3. Build, Acquire and Implement (BAI): Management focus
4. Deliver, Service and Support (DSS): Management focus
5. Monitor, Evaluate and Assess (MEA): Management focus

Goal Relationships: Within and across these domains, goals have defined relationships. A primary goal in one domain may have secondary goals in other domains that support its achievement. For example:

A primary goal in the EDM domain might be to ensure that IT governance is aligned with business strategy. Secondary goals across APO, BAI, and DSS domains would support this primary goal by ensuring proper planning, implementation, and service delivery aligned with that strategy.

Dependency Mapping: The mappings show which objectives must be implemented together or in sequence. Some goals are prerequisites for others, creating logical dependencies that guide implementation planning.

Business Process Alignment: The mappings also connect governance and management objectives to business processes, showing how each goal contributes to overall business effectiveness.

Key Characteristics of the Mapping Structure

One-to-Many Relationships: One primary goal can have multiple secondary goals supporting it across different domains.

Many-to-One Relationships: Multiple primary goals may rely on the same secondary goal for their successful implementation.

Cascading Nature: Goals cascade from business objectives through governance objectives to management objectives, with clear traceability at each level.

Contextual Relevance: The importance of specific goal mappings may vary depending on an organization's industry, size, risk profile, and strategic priorities.

How to Answer Exam Questions on Primary and Secondary Goal Mappings

Question Type 1: Identifying Primary vs. Secondary Goals

When asked to identify whether a goal is primary or secondary:

• Look for the direct contribution to business outcomes. Primary goals typically have direct impact on business objectives.
• Consider the scope of the goal. Primary goals are usually broader and more strategic, while secondary goals are more specific and supportive.
• Identify the domain focus. Goals in EDM are often primary from a governance perspective, while supporting goals in APO, BAI, DSS, and MEA are often secondary.
• Remember that the same goal might be primary in one context and secondary in another, depending on the organization's strategic priorities.

Question Type 2: Establishing Goal Relationships

When asked about relationships between goals:

• Trace the logical flow from business objectives through governance to management objectives.
• Identify dependencies: Which goal must be achieved first? Which goals support others?
• Consider domain boundaries: Goals in different domains often have specific types of relationships.
• Look for alignment patterns: Primary goals usually align with strategic business needs, while secondary goals support implementation.

Question Type 3: Scenario-Based Mapping Questions

When presented with a business scenario:

• Extract the core business need or objective from the scenario.
• Map to primary goals that directly address this need.
• Identify supporting goals across different domains that enable achievement of the primary goals.
• Consider secondary impacts: What other objectives might be affected?
• Ensure your answer shows comprehensive understanding of how goals interconnect.

Question Type 4: Implementation Sequencing

When asked about implementation order or priorities:

• Prioritize primary goals as they address direct business needs.
• Sequence secondary goals to support primary goal achievement.
• Consider dependencies: Some goals must precede others.
• Remember that parallel implementation is often possible for goals from different domains.
• Think about resource constraints and phased implementation approaches.

Exam Tips: Answering Questions on Primary and Secondary Goal Mappings

Tip 1: Master the Goal Descriptions
Know the specific wording of each of the 40 COBIT objectives. Understanding exactly what each goal addresses will help you correctly identify relationships and distinguish between primary and secondary roles in different contexts.

Tip 2: Use the COBIT Cascade Model
Remember that COBIT follows a cascading model from stakeholder needs to governance objectives to management objectives. In exam questions, look for this cascade to identify how goals relate to each other and to business outcomes.

Tip 3: Think About Domain Functions
Keep in mind the core function of each domain:
• EDM = Strategic governance decisions
• APO = Strategy and planning execution
• BAI = Solution delivery
• DSS = Ongoing service management
• MEA = Oversight and accountability

This helps you predict where primary and secondary goals will typically be found.

Tip 4: Recognize Context Dependency
Understand that goal roles may be context-dependent. A goal might be primary for one organization and secondary for another. Look for contextual clues in the question (industry, size, risk profile, strategic priorities).

Tip 5: Draw Connection Maps in Your Mind
When reading complex scenario questions, mentally map the connections between goals. Visualize how different objectives support and enable each other across domains.

Tip 6: Focus on Business Value
Remember that primary goals directly support business value, while secondary goals enable that value delivery. If a question asks which goal should be prioritized, choose the one with more direct business impact.

Tip 7: Understand Bidirectional Relationships
Goal mappings aren't always one-way. Recognize that relationships can be bidirectional: a secondary goal might support a primary goal, and that primary goal might provide governance direction to the secondary goal.

Tip 8: Practice with Scenarios
Most exam questions about goal mappings will be scenario-based. Practice identifying relevant goals from business situations and explaining their relationships. This develops your practical understanding of how COBIT's goal structure works.

Tip 9: Know the Stakeholder Perspective
Understand that goals are linked to stakeholder needs. Primary goals often address specific stakeholder concerns (customers, investors, regulators), while secondary goals support the delivery of these addressed needs.

Tip 10: Review Official COBIT Matrices
Familiarize yourself with the COBIT goal-to-process mapping matrices and goal correlation tables provided in COBIT documentation. These official references show exactly how goals relate to each other.

Tip 11: Watch for Overlapping Goals
Be aware that some goals may overlap in their coverage. When this happens, identify which goal is the primary focus for a given business need and which are secondary supporters of the overall objective.

Tip 12: Practice Traceability
Develop your ability to trace relationships backward and forward:
• Backward: From a business objective, what governance and management goals support it?
• Forward: From a specific management objective, what business value does it ultimately enable?

This traceability skill is essential for answering complex mapping questions correctly.

Common Exam Question Patterns

Pattern 1: "Which goal is primary for...?"
Answer by identifying the goal that directly and most importantly addresses the stated business need or challenge.

Pattern 2: "Which goals should be implemented together?"
Answer by identifying goals with strong dependencies or complementary functions that enable mutual support.

Pattern 3: "How does this management goal support the governance objective?"
Answer by explaining the specific enabling relationship and the business value flow from management execution to governance assurance.

Pattern 4: "What is the impact of not achieving this secondary goal?"
Answer by explaining how the primary goal's achievement would be compromised and what business risks would result.

Key Takeaways

Primary and Secondary Goal Mappings in COBIT 2019 are essential for understanding how governance and management objectives interconnect to deliver business value. Primary goals address direct business needs and strategic objectives, while secondary goals provide the supporting implementation and execution necessary for primary goal achievement. Success in exam questions requires understanding not just individual goals, but the relationships between them across the five COBIT domains. By mastering the cascading nature of COBIT's goal structure and practicing scenario-based analysis, you'll be well-prepared to answer any exam question about primary and secondary goal mappings.