IT Strategy

StrategyBest Practices, Tools, Techniques

• How to win in the future and be successful, is the main plan in the game.• To Know how to use your talent and

resources to the best of your advantage. • Having a well structured Strategy lead to

success immediately.

Scorecard• Balanced scorecards translate strategy into action to achieve

goals measuring (customer focus, process efficiency, and the ability to learn and grow).

• 4 Questions are designed to answer one question: How the Co. doing business:

• How do we define performance?• How do we measure it• How are we performing wrt our goals• How do we link goals with day-to-day performance..

ITIL

• offers eight sets of management procedures in eight books: • service delivery,• service support, • service management, • ITIL is a good fit for organizations concerned

about operations (Behr, & Kim, & Spafford, 2004).• One said, “Behind every great service, is the role

of a service manager”

A mission statement

•Defines the organization's purpose and primary objectives.• It defines the measures of the

organization's success – and its prime audience is the leadership team and stockholders. • EX • TED: Spreading Ideas. (2 words)

Vision

• vision statement that defines both the purpose and values of the organization • For employees, it gives direction about how they

are expected to behave and inspires them to give their best and it shapes customers' understanding of why they should work with the organization.• Boy Scouts of America: To prepare every eligible

youth in America to become a responsible, participating citizen and leader who is guided by the Scout Oath and Law. (24)

Business Planning 

•Most critical element in a successful business and the least focused on. • Some consider writing a business plan only

to get financing from a banker or investor but IT professionals need to understand that a business plan is not only a sales tool; • it is a powerful management tool that help

us focus on our goals, set objectives and avoid loss.

Employer Branding 

• Companies are getting aware of this powerful employer branding when trying to attract talents. • Creating a Worker-Friendly Culture, is the

way people perceive your company as a place to work, • just like what Google doing. • Google is one of the best companies on

the planet to work for.

SWOT

• Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. • To be able to create a strategic plan the IT

professional needs to identify these 4 key principles, • take some time to think about each of

these 4 and then list how and where the business relates to each one.

SWOT

• Strengths you start by asking: •What does the company do well?• what resources does it offer that are

important to you and how is the company making best use of information technology?

SWOT

•With Weaknesses ask: •What resources or services could the

company improve, • in what areas does the competition have

the technological edge• and what technology should the business

actually avoid?

SWOT

• Threats ask: •what is the competition doing well?• what information security threats should

the business be most worried about? • and what others bringing to the market

from new innovations?

SWOT

• For Opportunities: • think about how technology is

changing, • are there interesting trends in

technology that you would like to see used • and is there a need in the market that

no one is currently filling?

•Finally, organize the list by priority, choosing only a few for each SWOT item. •You’ll find that Weaknesses and Strengths the company is facing.

Steering Everyone in the Right Direction

• The challenge faced by workers in many organizations is to reach a strategic destination that they're all supposed to head to. • Teams & departments can get off course

that they seem not even to remember what the final destination was supposed to be!

This is where Hoshin’s system for strategic planning came to place, has the following steps:

• Step 1: Plan and define What You Want to Improve, a key objective.• Step 2: Plan and establish Sub-Goals to

Achieve Your Objective.• Step 3: Communicate the Plan throughout

the organization

Motivating Employees to Deliver Your Strategy

• By setting targets for employees,• and rewarding them when and if they

meet targets, • they'll often do all they can to achieve

them.

Strategy Guidelines

• 1. Establish a competitive-edge strategy for specific services;• 2. A mission/vision statement: defines the

organization's purpose and primary• objectives.• 3. Business Planning: force you to

concentrate on all the aspects of the project;• from identifying opportunities, to exploring

risks, to putting figures to ideas.

Strategy Guidelines

• 4. Bringing IT and business together in order to provide the best infrastructure.• 5. Identify your customer (Blackmer,

2005).• 6. Make the Help Desk’s effectiveness a

priority.• 7. Ensure that IT costs and cost recovery

methods are transparent and clearly communicated.

Strategy Guidelines

• 8. Use project management, change management and project review processes.• 9. Consider service level agreements

(SLAs) a formal contract between the IT department and the bureaus, and report on performance metrics specified in the SLA.

top guidelines

• Top guidelines ranked by over 100 CIO's over the world:• a. Align IT strategy with the business strategy and

governance.• b. Meet the business needs effectively.• c. Infrastructure and Service Management

(reliability and scalability).• d. Coping with the increase market change and

become one of the key drivers of innovation.• e. Dealing with senior management and the Board

top guidelines

• f. Managing costs, budgets and resources (internal and external).• g. Keeping up with technology Recruiting and

retaining staff.• h. Executing projects effectively

including time, cost and resource management. • g. Maintaining skills and knowledge by

continuous learning. (CIO Magazine, 2006)•

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