Building an IT Strategy

An Information Technology (IT) Strategy is an overall plan which consists of objectives, plans, organizational structure, governance, projects and tactics for using technology desired outcomes.

The strategy should define specific technologies, identify organizational structure, project responsibilities for implementing these technologies, and how the technologies will be managed for the specified outcomes.

Building a robust IT strategy to execute on your organization’s goals is critical to long term success in the information age.

Start with an IT Assessment

Start with a Technology Assessment to both know the competitive environment, the current state of your technology and your technology organization’s capabilities. The assessment will address:

• Senior leadership’s view of the company’s objectives, competitive environment and technology capabilities;
• Current technology organization and their capabilities;
• Technology governance and project management maturity;
• Applications and software in use and maturity / adoption;
• Technology infrastructure (servers, PCs, network, etc.) and cloud strategy / adoption; and
• IT security and compliance.

Develop a Technology Vision and Strategy

Once the current state assessment is complete and validated with senior management, collaboratively develop vision for technology at the organization and strategic themes. This highly collaborative process leverages the experienced senior level experience of your TechCXO partner.

Develop a technology roadmap

The most important aspect the roadmap is that it is designed to solve for the gap between where the organization is today and where it needs to be in the future. To develop the roadmap, we collaboratively:

• Identify top technology initiatives / projects that accomplish the business objectives;
• Formulate a technology roadmap showing relative timing for the projects;
• Develop a high-level cost model and resource plan; and
• Layout an organizational approach to managing the roadmap.

Mentor the Technology / Project team

When undertaking a strategic roadmap implementation, clients often request that we mentor the Technology and Project team on the first project on the roadmap or on a particularly difficult one. We help to establish good project management / agile disciplines, set up governance and help guide the projects.

Communicate the Strategy

Once the roadmap is developed, we work to

• Provide communication to the senior executives and board concerning strategy, vision, major systems, roadmap, compliance, security or other technology related issues.
• Proactively advise the executive management team on emerging technologies and digital trends that are most relevant to the organization’s goals and evolving needs.
• Regular, strategic meetings with executive and technology leadership teams to update on the progress of implementing strategy.