Typical IT strategies define the future-state systems architecture, organizational structure, guiding principles, and roadmap to achieve the future state. These traditional components are necessary to guide decisions and investments. However, having these components does not guarantee the strategies’ acceptance and adoption. Many IT strategies do not receive funding and become shelfware as tactical needs take precedence over strategic investment.
To truly be effective, IT strategies must be framed in a way that both links them to the business strategy and explains them in business terms. CIOs should anticipate several common questions and include the answers to those questions in their initial strategy presentations. One of the first questions a CIO must be prepared to answer when proposing an IT strategy is, “How will this strategy enable an IT organization to improve its ability to deliver value?”
Presenting a strategy with this perspective engages executive teams that are facing project backlogs and need new capabilities to meet their business plans. It also acknowledges that delivery needs to be accelerated and communicates that to the whole organization. Lastly, it presents the CIO as an ally, shifting the dialogue from cost center to strategic partner.
This question can be broken down into three components:
- How will IT accelerate product or project delivery?
- How will IT improve quality of those deliveries?
- How will IT lower costs for existing services?
Accelerating product delivery: Too often, IT strategies target governance, transition to DevOps, or migrate to the cloud as if these are an end unto themselves. Stating these migrations as actions to achieve acceleration in project or product delivery focuses on the benefits of these actions and sets up success measurement criteria. Declaring acceleration as a goal will also surface ideas and process improvements from the teams within the organization. It is much easier to ask business partners to change their approach to projects if IT demonstrates that it is working to improve value delivery.
Improving quality: Organizations that deliver projects with moderate to high defect rates have significant customer experience issues. A more typical but less visible problem is high defect rates or tech debt during development and the cost of the resultant rework. Many IT process improvements target this issue. However, these procedures can often be perceived as bureaucratic barriers to product delivery. Framing the issue as one of quality and describing the benefits in terms of improved customer experience or shifting resource allocation to strategic initiatives again creates business buy-in and suggests appropriate metrics.
Lowering expenses: Many CIOs feel trapped responding to questions about why IT costs as a percentage of direct written premium or revenue are so high while being asked to deliver more services and functionality to the organization. All functional heads are being asked for expense savings, so CIOs should recognize that this is part of their job and take a more offensive stance. Changing the dialog to measurement of costs for existing services focuses on run rate reductions and elimination of redundant costs, which is usually consistent with the overall strategy. Engaging business partners to obtain funding for new capabilities makes those decisions separate discussions.
Each traditional strategy artifact should state its impact on value delivery. This linkage needs to be compelling and frequently communicated. Non-technical people will grasp the importance of the traditional artifacts if these questions are used to introduce and explain them.
In general, communicating this intent to the organization will help IT gain credibility and support for the investment and resources needed to achieve success. Communication within the IT organization should create buy-in and engage the IT organization in the necessary changes. Communication should be framed in such a way that individuals from any department can understand and relate to it. CIOs who express themselves in these terms will be perceived as business partners who are effectively managing their area of responsibility.
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