Marc Dowd
Marc Dowd (Principal, European Client Advisory)

What’s in your IT strategy?  I don’t mean, what *is* your IT strategy, I’m really asking what elements make it up.  Maybe you’re grappling with a strategy for 2021 and beyond right now? What will be in it, and why?

I’ve been doing a fair amount of research recently into IT strategies, looking at various documents produced by organisations across public and private sectors. “Rather you than me”, I can hear some of you saying.  And with good reason – I can report that many of these documents were pretty dry stuff.  And maybe that’s how it should be in some cases.  But while analysing these documents to understand the content, the question that kept cropping up was – why is this particular information in here?

To answer that question we have to understand the reason for creating the document at all, and the audience.  I believe there are three key audiences for an IT strategy.  The first is the “powers that be” – this includes the managing director, the chairman, the investors and so on.  These are the people who have appointed the IT Director or CIO and they want to know that they made the right choice, or that they are still backing the right horse.  The second audience is the organisation as a whole, starting with the management board, leadership of the various departments, and so on. And the third distinct audience is the technology team, working to achieve the aims set out in the strategy document.

All of these stakeholders will (or should) have had an input into the creation of the strategy either directly or indirectly. Their requirements, visions, aspirations and challenges will be reflected in the organisational strategy as a whole and in the IT strategy particularly.  They should not be surprised by the direction of this document! Rather, it should reassure them that the technology team have made preparations to be an enabler of what that organisation does.  The strategy document identifies the challenges to be overcome and the actions that will be taken.  These actions are more detailed than goals and ambitions but less specific than “implementation” steps.

So, let’s go back to the “why is this in here” question.  In my research I found various elements that cropped up again and again, most of which will be familiar. Missions and visions, financial summaries, business objectives, technology objectives, SWOTs, org charts, risk maps etc.  Some were more esoteric.  Net promoter scores for IT, COBIT models, balanced scorecards, reference architectures.  Some strategy documents were several dozens of pages long, some were a handful.

Whether these documents served their individual purpose or not I cannot say, but my working assumption has always been that each page you add to a strategy document has a commensurate negative effect on the number of people that will read it.  And if a strategy document is not going to be read, what is it for?  To tick a box that says “we have a strategy”?  To use as a lever in negotiations in future “it’s not in the strategy” or “we are committed to it in the strategy”? To reassure the “powers that be” that we know what we’re doing and we’re spending their money wisely?

Hopefully when most of us create an IT strategy document it will be with the three audiences in mind and not for these “ceremonial” reasons. So alongside our desire to cover all the bases for the audience should be a focus on being as concise as possible, while remaining coherent of course.  The art of building a coherent strategy that avoids being a “wish list” has to be the subject of another article, I’m afraid!

But if you are interested in building a strategy document that is fit for purpose, or that will do a job beyond ticking a few corporate boxes, we would be very happy to talk to you about it. In the CIO Advisory team an important aspect of our work with clients is helping to create strategies that have an impact but can also be communicated in a way that brings your audience along. We have a framework for creating coherent strategies and stay abreast of the best practice in this area (hence the research!).

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