IT Toolkit

Definition:

IT strategy is a comprehensive plan that information technology management professionals use to guide their organizations.

Role of IT Strategy:

IT strategy is used to create plans that consist of objective(s), principles and tactics relating to use of the technologies within a particular organization to acheive strategic goals. An IT strategy should cover all facets of technology management, including cost management, human capital management, hardware and software management, vendor management, risk management and all other considerations in the enterprise IT environment (Rouse, 2012).

IT Strategy's Guidelines:

Listed below is a selection of guidelines to be used in the management of business strategy:

1. Create a Mission Statement - A mission statement is a statement of the organization’s reason for being, its purpose – what it wants to accomplish in the larger environment. It explains why the organization does what it does. It says what, in the end, the organization wants to be remembered for. A clear mission statement acts as an “invisible hand” that guides people in the organization (Olsen, 2010).

2. Perform a SWOT Analysis - Performing an assessment of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats within an organization is a precursor to creating a strategy roadmap.  This analysis can then be further broken down into the departments and business processes effected in order to focus on specific areas of an organization (Varner, 2013).  According to Johnson, SWOT will reveal “the health of your company’s key business priorities and IT strategy as they relate to your culture, capabilities, and infrastructure” (2012).

3. List Of Prioritized Actions - These must be thoughtfully linked to both the mission statement and SWOT analysis. Consider the projects and tasks that infrastructure and operations professionals must perform to: 1) bring workforce computing to the required level to remedy current weaknesses, and 2) acquire new processes, skills, and tools to remedy tomorrow's challenges (Johnson, 2012).

4. Build a Strategy Roadmap– Creating a strategy roadmap enables stakeholders to have a clear understanding of the people and processes involved with the operating the organization(Varner, 2013).

5. Financial assessment -  Based on historical record and future projections, this assessment helps plan and predict the future, allowing you to gain much better control over your organization’s financial performance (Olsen, 2010).

6. Identify Short- and long-term objectives - Tt helps keep employees aware of the company mission. Short-term goals and long-term goals can help It managers set priorities and emphasize to employees what is important (Bianca, Media 2016).

7. Develop a Strategy with the Flexibility to Accommodate Change by Enabling Integration with Emerging Technology. Your strategy must be built to accommodate change. Invest in technology that is well positioned to take advantage of new platforms and services (Mancini, 2016).

Tools and Best Practices

Tools: 

• Strategy Maps: using strategy maps to build consensus around strategic objectives and communicate this strategy to all stakeholders 

• SWOT: a framework that allows managers to synthesize insights obtained from an internal analysis of the company’s strengths and weaknesses with those from an analysis of external opportunities and threats (Jurevicius, 2013).

• CobiT: CobiT provides a strategic alignment which helps enterprises continuing to move in the right direction and being better aligned than competitors.

Here are some best practieces for IT strategy that I have found from Yesser.gov:

• Adopt Continuous Feedback and Learning Process Justification: As the IT department develops strategies, projects and the like, it is oftenrecommended to go back and revise or correct decisions made earlier.

• Strategies to Avoid Justification: There are some false strategies that do not apply regardless of thesituation; these strategies have proven themselves as strategies to fail. They include:

  • Doing everything at once altogether

  • Follow blindly without assessing the applicability to the IT department specificconditions

  • Quitting or abandoning previous efforts if no results or achievement are made

  • Rushing and creating short-cut solutions to intrinsic and chronic problems

  • Postponing Quality

• Execution and Control Strategies - In designing a control system, top management should remember that controls shouldfollow strategy