Governance: Policy (Definitions)

"A general, usually strategically focused statement, rule, or regulation that describes how a particular activity, operation, or group of operations will be carried out within a company." (Steven Haines, "The Product Manager's Desk Reference", 2008)

"A deliberate plan of action to guide decisions and achieve rationale outcomes." (Tilak Mitra et al, "SOA Governance", 2008)

"Clear and measurable statements of preferred direction and behaviour to condition the decisions made within an organization." (ISO/IEC 38500:2008, 2008)

"The encoding of rules particular to a business domain, its data content, and the application systems designed to operate in this domain on this set of data." (Alex Berson & Lawrence Dubov, "Master Data Management and Data Governance", 2010)

"A rule or principle that guides or constrains the behavior of someone given decision rights. Policies provide guidelines, sometimes set limits, and sometimes enables behavior. Policies guide decision rights, which are generally conditional." (Paul C Dinsmore et al, "Enterprise Project Governance", 2012)

"A structured pattern of actions adopted by an organization such that the organization’s policy can be explained as a set of basic principles that govern the organization’s conduct." (For Dummies, "PMP Certification All-in-One For Dummies, 2nd Ed.", 2013)

"A high-level overall plan, containing a set of principles that embrace the general goals of the organization and are used as a basis for decisions. A policy can include some specifics of processes allowed and not allowed." (Robert F Smallwood, "Information Governance: Concepts, Strategies, and Best Practices", 2014)

"The intentions of an organisation as formally expressed by its top management [1]" (David Sutton, "Information Risk Management: A practitioner’s guide", 2014)

"A document that regulates conduct through a general statement of beliefs, goals, and objectives." (Weiss, "Auditing IT Infrastructures for Compliance" 2nd Ed., 2015)

"A structured pattern of actions adopted by an organization such that the organization's policy can be explained as a set of basic principles that govern the organization's conduct." (Project Management Institute, "A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide)" 6th Ed., 2017)

"A high-level overall plan, containing a set of principles that embrace the general goals of the organization and are used as a basis for decisions. Can include some specifics of processes allowed and not allowed." (Robert F Smallwood, "Information Governance for Healthcare Professionals", 2018)

"A statement of objectives, rules, practices or regulations governing the activities of people within a certain context." (NISTIR 4734)

"Statements, rules, or assertions that specify the correct or expected behavior of an entity." (NIST SP 1800-15B)