When it comes to the seven deadly sins of IT, Australian companies admit they are often tempted to take the path of least resistance.

But in this tough, corporate climate there is no obvious path to redemption. According to research undertaken by software testing provider Mercury, Australian companies are still neglecting IT governance which is why it made it into the top seven. Here"s the list.

7. Shifting the focus from IT infrastructure to IT governance. Only 11 percent of respondents said governance was a priority with the greatest emphasis on infrastructure monitoring (53 percent). Toowoomba City Council IT manager, Rodney Kuhn, said the real problem is making IT governance more visible to the business. TDK IT manager Sergio Malacaria even described IT governance as a buzz word with Bunnings IT manager Brian Dearne pointing out that business resents the inflexibility that accompanies compliance.

6. Respect thyself. Asked how strategic IT is to business, IT managers rated their departments third, after finance and operations. An astounding result considering 90 percent of mission-critical business processes are automated by enterprise applications. Essentially, IT is the business.

5. Waste not, want not. Mercury claims up to 50 percent of applications are rolled back as a result of defects, thereby generating a huge amount of IT waste. However, 76 percent of respondents said they are addressing this problem by testing applications before they go live, but only 13 percent of companies have automated the process of testing all applications before deployment.

4. Simplify complexity. In such a heterogeneous application environment covering legacy, packaged and customized software this is a growing challenge. Around 60 percent of Australian companies find composite applications the most difficult to manage across the application lifecycle. IT needs to reduce complexity and provide a clear vision.

3. Privacy and performance. More than half the Australian companies surveyed admitted business and IT will be better aligned after compliance initiatives are implemented.

2. Reckless outsourcing. More than 80 percent of Australian companies view risk degradation in service quality as the biggest obstacle to IT outsourcing.

1. Quality over quantity. As more business processes are automated, quantity is no longer the issue, it is all about the quality of data. More than 60 percent of respondents identified improving the quality of IT as their biggest challenge, which replaced the need to reduce cost as their number one priority.