Strategy

A Technology strategy (as in Information technology) is a planning document that explains how information technology should be utilized as part of an organization's overall business strategy. The document is usually created by an organization's Chief Information Officer (CIO) or technology manager and should be designed to support the organization's overall business plan.

Assumptions

For this analysis we assume this document is used for a medium-sized IT department of somewhere between 5 and 100 staff members. If your organization does not fall in this range other systems may be employed.

Consensus building and buy-in

One of the principal purposes of creation of a technology strategy is to create consensus and stakeholder buy-in. There are many methods to this process such as the delphi method. Organizations that have the option of using a non-biased outside facilitator frequently build consensus quickly using these processes.

Successful strategies take into the collective knowledge of many levels within an organizations and attempt to remove bias of one or more individuals. The use of anonymous feedback has been shown to prevent highly destructive passive aggressive employee behavior.

Typical structure of a technology strategy

The following are typically sections of a technology strategy:

• Executive Summary - single page summary of the IT strategy
  • High level organizational benefits
  • Relationship to overall business strategy
  • Resource summary
    • Staffing
    • Budgets
    • Summary of key projects
• Internal Capabilities
  • IT Project Portfolio Management - An inventory of current projects being managed by the information technology department and their status. Note: It is not common to report current project status inside a future-looking strategy document.
  • Current IT departmental strengths and weaknesses
• External Forces
  • Summary of changes driven from outside the organization
  • Rising expectations of users
    • Example: growth of high-quality web user interfaces driven by Ajax technology
    • Example: Availability of open-source learning management systems such as Moodle
  • List of new IT projects requested by the organization
• Opportunities
  • Description of new cost reduction or efficiency increase opportunities
  • Description of how Moore's Law (faster processors, networks or storage at lower costs) will impact the organizations ROI for technology
• Threats
  • Description of disruptive forces that could cause the organization to become less profitable or competitive
  • Analysis IT usage by competition
• Milestones
  • List of monthly, quarterly or mid-year milestones and review dates to indicate if the strategy is on track
  • List milestone name, deliverables and metrics

Audience

A technology strategy document is usually designed to be read by non-technical stakeholders involved in business planning within an organization. It should be free of technical jargon and information technology acronyms.

The IT strategy should also be presented to or read by internal IT staff members. Many organizations circulate prior year versions to internal IT staff members for feedback before new annual IT strategy plans are created.

One critical integration point is the interface with an organizations marketing plan. The marketing plan frequently requires the support of a web site to create an appropriate on-line presence. Large organizations frequently have complex web site requirements such as web content management.

Presentation

The CIO,CTO or IT manager frequently creates a high-level overview presentation designed to be presented to stakeholders. Many experienced managers try to summarize the strategy in 5-7 slides and present the plan in under 30 minutes to a board of directors.

It is also common to produce a professionally bound booklet version of the strategy - something physical that I.T. teams can refer to, rather than the more disposable presentation slides.

Scope and size

Although many companies write an overall business plan each year, a technology strategy may cover developments somewhere between three and 5 years into the future.

Relationship between strategy and enterprise technology architecture

A technology strategy document typically refers to but does not duplicate an overall enterprise architecture. The technology strategy may refer to:

• High-level view of Logical architecture of information technology systems
• High-level view of Physical architecture of information technology systems

External links

• [1] CIO Magazine
• [2] CIO Portal
• Tech Strategy Frameworks S-Curves and other Tech Strategy Frameworks and Applications

References

• The Business Value of Computers: An Executive's Guide by Paul A Strassmann (1990) ISBN 0-9620413-2-7
• Lawson, J (2006) "Delivering on Strategy: Those That Can...Do!! Those Who Simply Talk... Make Another Fine Mess", "Spectra - Journal of the MCA, June 2006" See Article Here.
• The Human Capital Impact on e-Business: The Case of Encyclopedia Britannica. This case study is widely quoted example how technology has large impacts an overall organization's overall business strategy.