In my first blog on questions an IT strategy must answer I discussed the need to communicate how value delivery will be accelerated. That blog focuses the discussion on improving IT delivery and positions IT more as a business partner than a cost center.
The second question any IT strategy must answer is, “What new competitive capabilities will be available if the strategy is effectively executed?” Future-state diagrams are usually point-in-time documents and may not explicitly highlight new capabilities. Doing so will help, but it is not enough. Roadmaps and capability inventory scorecards should be designed to answer this question.
Highlight Future-State Diagram Changes
Highlighting changes makes it easier for the reader to understand what will be new or different in the future state, but pointing out foundational components may not be enough. Future-state diagrams often show new shared services that imply new capabilities. Investing in these components is a prerequisite to delivering a new service or to achieving lower run costs.
However, these diagrams often do not explicitly state where and how those new services will be leveraged. In fact, some foundational capabilities like a service bus are not easily translated into new business capabilities. That linkage is often provided in embedded comments or by voiceover during presentations.
Architects need to be reminded that their internal customers are not as familiar with these artifacts and do not interpret them as easily as their authors do. Framing architectural component explanatory and overview sessions with the linkage to capability delivery will improve engagement and understanding of these items. CIOs and their teams can use roadmaps and capability inventory scorecards to clarify delivery expectations and measure progress over time.
Structure Roadmaps Effectively
Roadmaps show when new capabilities will be available and when they will be implemented, but these details can often be lost if not specifically highlighted and incorporated into success metrics (more on that topic later). It is important that CIOs structure IT strategies to have a steady stream of new capability delivery. Capabilities milestones should be highlighted. By explicitly stating rollout priorities by line of business or products, CIOs can avoid many common misperceptions created by misinterpretation of initial capability implementation targets.
In an Agile world, organizations may be unwilling to specify delivery dates for new services. Longer-term roadmaps are even more challenging when priorities for specific new capabilities have not been defined. Some organizations only list targeted capabilities, their relative priorities, and the allocated resource levels that will be dedicated to new capability delivery as part of their strategy submissions.
Other IT organizations work around these challenges by showing a series of yet-to-be-named capabilities to be released periodically based on priorities yet to be established. CIOs who ask for prioritization of digital and data initiatives from their business partners during their strategic planning process are best positioned to understand and meet organizational expectations.
Inventory Capabilities and Use Scoreboards
Of course, to clearly state what new capabilities will be available implies a good understanding of the existing inventory of capabilities. Inventories have become more difficult as they now must be detailed by specific personas and by the engagement platform used. For example, distinct types of agents might be granted different endorsement capabilities, and consumers may be granted capabilities on websites, phones, or through voice recognition channels. Scoreboards are a great tool to summarize capability delivery by persona and engagement channel for lines of business and to measure overall progress.
Capabilities do not have to be communicated in absolute terms. It is consistent with minimum viable product or Agile approaches to talk about having 20% of all documents distributed electronically or 10% of all calls routed by voice recognition technology as initial objectives.
Customer experience improvements should not be overlooked. While technically not the delivery of a new capability, releases or modernization efforts often result in significant improved customer experiences. The most effective way to communicate this progress is to report new and improved capabilities in aggregate.
At Novarica, we have found that annual objective assessment of current capabilities from both a deployed capability perspective and a market priority perspective is extremely helpful when establishing digital or data roadmaps and measuring progress over time.
Answering these two questions creates a sense of anticipation for new functional capabilities and improved delivery capabilities. The third question, and the topic of my next blog, is how to communicate the inherent risks in a positive way.
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