Documente Academic
Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
This chapter was written by Dave Aron and Louis Boyle. Subject matter
experts include Mike Kennedy.
CONCLUSIONS
Table of Contents
Analysis.................................................................................................................................................. 2
Framing the IT Plan...........................................................................................................................3
Strategy Document Template........................................................................................................... 6
Conclusions....................................................................................................................................18
CIO Call To Action.................................................................................................................... 18
Conclusions..............................................................................................................................18
Recommended Reading.......................................................................................................................18
List of Tables
Table 1. IT strategy & plan self-assessment............................................................................................ 5
Table 2. IT strategy template - section 1 - Executive Summary...............................................................6
Table 3. IT strategy template - section 2 - Demand................................................................................ 7
Table 4. IT strategy template – section 3 - Control................................................................................11
Table 5. IT strategy template - section 4 - Supply.................................................................................15
Table 6. IT strategy template - section 5 - Risks and Issues..................................................................17
Table 7. IT strategy template - section 6 - Appendices......................................................................... 18
List of Figures
Analysis
A concise IT strategy document is a key success factor and an indicator of a well-run IT
organization. The IT strategy document should be clear, compelling, and useful for business
executives, IT leaders and IT staff alike. It should summarize how the IT organization and IT services
will contribute to the success of the organization, but be specific enough to drive IT decision
making.
Always drive toward trade-offs in conversations about IT strategy. Describe the trade-offs involved
in, say, choosing efficiency over agility in IT. Illustrate as richly as possible what an efficient world
would look like versus an agile one, and where the trade-offs reside, so that stakeholders can make
more informed choices.
Some call this the counterstrategy test. The Counterstrategy test involves checking that every major
statement or concept in your IT strategy has a valid alternative, and modifying or removing those
that fail the test. Applying this test makes IT strategies briefer, more meaningful and more
actionable.
Typically, an IT strategy document can be used for three to five years, with annual updates.
An IT strategy document is one of the set of documents a well-run IT organization should maintain.
Others include the IT strategic plan, the IT budget, the IT architecture and the procedures for all the
key IT processes, such as help desk operations and risk management. Together with business
strategy, financial planning and other functional strategies (such as production and marketing
strategies), these form part of the overall enterprise strategic document set.
An IT strategy document is one of the set of documents a well-run IT organization should maintain.
Others include the IT strategic plan, the IT budget, the IT architecture and the procedures for all the
key IT processes, such as help desk operations and risk management. Together with business
strategy, financial planning and other functional strategies (such as production and marketing
strategies), these form part of the overall enterprise strategic document set.
Source: Gartner
■ Why an IT Plan – is it to address a real business need for a roadmap showing how IT aligns with
business objectives to optimize the business investment in IT? Is it to fulfill a regulatory
requirement? Or perhaps an executive fiat to “have an IT Plan”? In any case, leading CIOs
ensure their IT Plan is a useful, living, breathing tool for governing and managing the IT
organization and its value to the overall business.
■ What business objectives & strategies are IT aligning to, supporting – is there an existing
business plan to use, or will IT be creating a draft view of business objectives and strategies for
dialogue with business colleagues? If it proves to be difficult getting precise business
strategies, reference Toolkit: Questions to Ask Business Executives to Elicit the Business
Strategy to obtain the business statements needed to develop an IT strategy.
The self-assessment tool from Table 1 is a recommended step to provide input for framing the IT
plan. Completing this tool will provide further guidance for completing the list of IT goals as well as
the IT portfolio of initiatives, both presented in the IT Plan document set.
A best practice is to frame the IT plan via a facilitated IT planning workshop. This workshop should
include the IT Plan readiness self-assessment in Table 1.
This is an informal assessment. For each area rate these factors, where 1 = have not started or have
a largely ad ho approach, and 5 = have reached leading practice.
Score Comment
1. Executive Summary
Contents This section should capture the essence of the strategy, including the "trail of
evidence" from IT strategy to business value.
2. Demand
Purpose A summary of key facts about the area(s) of the business included in the scope of
this IT strategy, to provide context and to highlight challenges and opportunities the
business faces.
Contents ■ The value proposition (what value we provide to which customers and markets).
■ Our position in the value chain/business ecosystem.
■ Our business model.
■ The competitive environment (if one exists).
■ External macro-level drivers, such as regulatory, macroeconomic and political
environments. This section (along with the next one) should reference
organization and business unit strategy documents.
Counterstrategy Be very clear about who your business's customers are/will be and, ideally, who
success behaviors your customers won't be. also be clear on what needs you do/will fulfill and those
that you won't. Clearly identify scenarios and events that you will be ready for and
those that are not likely enough.
Counterstrategy ■ Mixing customers of your business and the internal customers of IT services
pitfalls
■ Making generic statements about the world getting faster
■ The need for efficiency and effectiveness, without being specific enough to be
helpful
Examples Sentence from strategy: We will grow by executing multiple acquisitions of smaller
companies each year.
Potential counterstrategy: We will grow purely organically.
Purpose A clear expression of the strategic posture of the business: why customers will buy
from us and/or why we will win. In a public sector context, this is about why we will
succeed in fulfilling and/or growing our mission.
Contents This section should clarify what will make the business win. Ideally, it will identify no
more than one or two aspects of our business. A powerful framework that can be
Counterstrategy It is most helpful for the rest of the strategy if this section talks about how your
success behaviors business will win (for example, having the best set of products), rather than
outcomes (such as having the highest market share).
It is also very powerful if this section can identify which business processes are
commodities and which are differentiators. A commodity business process is
needed to compete, but will not make you win, and, hence, should be managed for
maximum efficiency and simplicity for a given level of functionality, capacity and risk.
A differentiator is (part of) what makes you win and should be managed for
performance. For example, in a company that wins through superior products, the
R&D process may be a differentiator.
Counterstrategy If a business success section contains everything, it is useless. A section that states
pitfalls we will have the best products, processes, people, efficiency, innovation, agility etc.,
can be a great call to action, but not a useful strategy — there is no counterstrategy.
Examples Sentence from strategy: We will win primarily through having high availability and
low prices for products on the shelves of our retail stores. Hence, our supply chain
processes are what make us win, not our customer relationship management
processes.
Potential counterstrategy: We will win primarily through having unique, branded
products on our shelves that excite our customers. Hence, our customer relationship
management, customer analytics and product innovation processes are what make
us win. Our supply chain must be adaptive enough to respond to needs.
Purpose A description of the business capabilities that will be needed to support the strategic
posture described in the previous section.
Contents This section should clarify business capabilities required for the business to win, and
then outline the gaps between existing and needed capabilities. Examples Include
the ability to collaborate within the organization, the ability to conduct mergers and
acquisitions, product innovation capabilities and the transparency of performance
metrics. This should list capabilities at a strategic level; typically there should be no
more than five.
Counterstrategy For each capability, take the description beyond the buzzword level and describe
success behaviors where it is needed (which processes/business units) and what having that capability
would look like. Although there is not a definitive list of capabilities that should be
included here, it is helpful to include your business's approach to agility (What does
agile mean to us?), innovation (Where do we need to focus our innovation?) and
collaboration (What types of collaboration do we need to support?).
Examples Sentence from strategy: We need to be highly innovative in our financial services
product development process, so that we consistently produce genuinely new
financial services products every nine months that meet customer needs better than
competitors, resulting in 30% of revenue coming from products less than two years
old.
Potential counterstrategy: We need to focus innovation on customer service
processes, since our customers see products as a ticket to the game, and customer
service as the order winner.
Purpose An explanation of how IT capabilities and plans will contribute to business success.
This Is the IT equivalent of the enterprise mission and vision statements.
Contents This section specifically connects IT activities to business success and business
capabilities, as described in the previous sections. For example: "By making
business process costs in customer service more variable, IT will reduce the impact
of demand volatility." This section should be pulled out and used in very high-level
presentations (such as to the board of directors). It represents the "elevator pitch" as
to how IT adds value to the business.
Counterstrategy Focusing on two or three high-level contributions that IT will make to business
success behaviors success, clearly aligned with the three previous sections.
Examples Sentence from strategy: The IT systems underlying our supply chain processes
create superior agility — we can support three deliveries to customers per day.
3. Control
3. IT principles
Purpose A high-level set of five to ten principles that guide IT decision making and reflect the
IT contribution. IT principles guide day-to-day IT decision making and IT governance.
It is preferable to present the IT principles alongside a set of business principles, if
available.
Contents Typical topics covered by the IT principles include: where agility is needed, how the
IT organization will be structured, how to approach risk, how to approach sourcing
and what kind of staff/skills are key. An example of a principle concerning agility
would be: "We will prepare IT assets and services that can rapidly scale to support
acquisitions." An organizational structure example would be: "We will centralize
every asset and process identified as a business commodity." The test for inclusion
in this section is, will the principle guide decisions that contribute to business
success in my organization, or could it apply to any organization? A good principle
satisfies three criteria:
(i) Clearly connected to business success.
(ii) Specific to your organization. It is important to avoid truisms that apply to all IT
organizations (e.g., "We will provide high-quality, reliable IT services.").
(iii) Detailed enough to drive decisions, behaviors and trade-offs.
Counterstrategy The test for inclusion in this section is whether the principle guides decisions that
success behaviors contribute to business success in a particular enterprise, or whether it could apply to
any enterprise. A good principle satisfies four criteria:
■ Clearly connected to business success.
■ Specific to your enterprise. It is important to avoid truisms that apply to all IT
organizations (for example, "We will provide high-quality, reliable IT services.")
■ Detailed enough to drive decisions, behaviors and trade-offs.
■ Has a counterprinciple — that is, a principle.
Examples Sentence from strategy: We will ensure that our IT architecture, processes and
applications can support rapid scalability of volumes to support absorption-style
acquisitions.
Potential counterstrategy: We will create an IT architecture that is extremely flexible
to support the plug and play of partner systems to support best-of-breed mergers.
3.2 Governance
Contents For each type of IT-related decision (decision domain), this section explains who will
have input; who will make the decision; what tools and mechanisms will be used in
making, communicating and enforcing the decision; and how exceptions will be
handled. Typical types of decisions include strategy, IT principles, architecture,
investment prioritization, infrastructure, application portfolio, security and risk,
projects, program and benefit management, and business process change. Refer to
the Gartner documents on governance in the Recommended Reading section.
Counterstrategy Ensure that each type of decision is described separately, and all key decision areas
success behaviors are included. Be specific as to who is involved and how decisions get made.
Counterstrategy ■ Focusing on decision committees and not being clear on what scope of
pitfalls decisions they will make.
■ Being unclear about who owns input rights versus decision rights.
■ Omitting key decision domains. Important IT and IT-related decision domains
that often get omitted include benefits realization and change management.
■ Only focusing on which decisions will be made and not discussing how they will
be made. For example, for investment prioritization decisions, it is helpful to
explain how the value of potential investments will be measured and compared
— the value model. The financial component of the value model might be based
on measures such as net present value, return on investment or internal rate of
return.
Examples Sentence from strategy: The overall IT strategy will be decided by the central CIO
team, together with the CEO and CFO. Business unit CIOs will provide input.
Potential counterstrategy: The overall IT strategy will be decided collaboratively by
the group CIO and business unit CIOs, with input from business unit CEOs and
CFOs.
Contents This section explains whether the IT organization is operating as a cost center, profit
center or investment center. It also explains how funds will be supplied to IT— for
example, whether discretionary IT project funds will be separate from overall
business project funds, whether chargeback will be used for recovering IT costs and,
Counterstrategy Ensuring coverage of how IT-intensive projects are funded, how IT operations are
success behaviors funded, and whether chargeback is used, why, and to what level of granularity.
Counterstrategy ■ Failing to make the connection between project/capital budgets and their impact
pitfalls on ongoing operational budgets
Examples Sentence from strategy: IT costs that are directly attributable to a business unit will
be directly charged to that business unit. All other IT costs will be centrally absorbed
to minimize internal administration, avoid creating tensions in relationships with
internal customers or encouraging them to source services outside the IT
organization.
Potential counterstrategy 1: All IT costs will be charged back to business units based
on high-level proxies of activity, such as revenue or head count, to create a true
management accounting picture with limited administration needs.
Potential counterstrategy 2: All IT costs will be charged back to business units based
on measures of actual usage where possible, in order to create discipline in demand
for and use of IT.
3.4 Metrics
Contents This section summarizes the metrics used to measure the IT organization's
performance. Ideally, the number of high-level IT metrics will be small (four or five)
and will map directly to a similarly small number of business success metrics. The IT
metrics may then expand into a larger list. The business success metrics should be
those recognized by senior business leadership, if they exist. Ideally, both business
and IT metrics will be a mix of lead and lag indicators. The focus of this section
should be on how the metrics link to business success, rather than on specific
targets for the metrics over time. (The targets should be part of the IT strategic plan.)
Counterstrategy A small number of IT metrics, including some that directly connect to business
success behaviors success metrics
Examples Sentence from strategy: Maximize the proportion of IT cost that is variable — in
order to minimize overall operational leverage (fixed cost/total cost) — in order to be
more agile in the face of volatile demand.
Potential counterstrategy 1: Minimize variable IT cost and maximize fixed IT cost in
order to increase profitability while scaling up the business.
Potential counterstrategy 2: Simplify overall IT cost, with a goal of reducing it at all
costs, even if the amount that is fixed increases, reducing financial agility.
4. Supply
Purpose An explanation of the scope of, and the approach to, IT services.
Contents ■ A list of services provided. This should be a relatively small, high-level list of up
to 15 items. Similar services should be grouped together in a way meaningful
to a senior business person. Focus on any nonstandard choices of services
included/excluded that differ from the normal scope of an IT organization — for
example, inclusion of business process design/change services, information
management services or services that form part of the end-customer product
(as opposed to services for employees only).
■ A summary of the approach to services and processes (for example, the use of
standards such as ISO 20000 or Information Technology Infrastructure Library
[ITIL]).
Counterstrategy Provide a clear, short, high-level list of what services are provided (as-is), what
success behaviors services will be provided (to-be) and services that won't be provided by the IT
organization, but are needed for success (and, hence, must be provided by another
group). Also include a description of the approach to services, including which
standards (such as ITIL) will be used to what level. (Some IT organizations feel that
they can get the benefits of service management standards without implementing
all the aspects of them.)
Examples Sentence from strategy: The IT organization will provide services to develop,
procure and run all IT systems. Overall project, program, portfolio, and change
management and business process improvement will be provided outside the IT
organization, as will information management.
Potential counterstrategy: The IT organization will provide all conventional IT
services, as well as information management, and will also perform project,
program and change management for all IT-intensive initiatives, as well as leading
business process improvement initiatives.
Purpose A clarification of how business processes, IT assets and services are designed to
support current and future business models.
Contents This section presents a high-level overview of the as-is and to-be enterprise
architecture, as well as the benefits of moving from as-is to to-be. It should include
business process, information, application and infrastructure layers. In addition, it
should explain the approach to architecture and whether any architecture standards
are used, such as Zachman or The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF).
Details, such as the list of applications in the portfolio and components of the
infrastructure, should be left to appendixes or separate documents.
Counterstrategy Distill the highest-level strategic messages and/or visuals around architecture — for
success behaviors example, the need to reduce the size of the application portfolio or create shared
services.
Examples Sentence from strategy: We will move from 15 disparate ERP solutions to three
instances of the same version of SAP — one per continent to reduce complexity,
risk and cost, and make it easier to roll out global changes.
Potential counterstrategy: We will allow each country to run its own ERP system,
because supply chains are different and an important source of advantage in each
country.
4.3 People
Purpose A summary of the key human capital management aspects of the IT strategy
Contents This section summarizes the as-is and to-be human capital management picture,
including current and needed IT organizational structure (org chart), and current and
needed skill inventories.
Counterstrategy Identify skills in a small number of high-level categories, with as-is and to-be
success behaviors capacity. Provide a description of your approach to using temporary versus
permanent staff.
Counterstrategy ■ Simply reporting the as-is organizational structure with no explanation of to-be
pitfalls or why the as-is is sufficient
Examples Sentence from strategy: We will use permanent staff for all positions, except the
management of legacy and nonstrategic systems, as we don't need to build long-
term skills in those areas.
Potential counterstrategy: We will use temporary staff in all areas, except for key
design and interface roles, such as strategy, architecture, relationship management
and vendor management.
4.4 Sourcing
Contents This section explains the approach to sourcing, along with the rationale. This may
be expressed as a set of sourcing principles. In addition, any important
relationships (such as a long-term contract with a provider of support services)
should be highlighted, with relevant details, such as the relationship's scope and
duration.
Examples Sentence from strategy: We aim to minimize the number of IT partners we work
with and develop long-term win-win relationships with them.
Potential counterstrategy: We will ensure that we are never locked into a
relationship with any partner for more than three years.
Purpose An outline of the major risks and issues associated with the IT strategy, with
approached for mitigating them.
Contents This section, similar to the risks section of annual reports and business plans,
should focus on the most material high-level categories of risk and not be a laundry
list of hundreds of detailed risks. For example, an IT strategy heavily dependent on
external partners is a high-level category of risk, and the mitigation might be to
ensure that partners use standard methodologies that are well documented. Ideally,
there should be less than 10 risks covered here. If there are more, shorten the list by
combining several related issues into one, and then choose only the highest-impact
ones.
6. Appendices
Purpose A collection of detailed facts and figures, not easily available from other
documents, that supports statements made in the main document.
Contents This section typically includes a glossary and further details on subjects covered
in the previous sections, as well as references to other documents.
Conclusions
Conclusions
■ The strategy document should be a brief, high-level, business-oriented IT strategy, about 15
pages long, that refers to supporting detailed documents.
■ Gartner’s experience is that an IT strategy document prepared in this way is more widely read,
better understood and hence more influential with a range of stakeholders.
Recommended Reading
Some documents may not be available as part of your current Gartner subscription.
Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance, Michael Porter, 1998, New
York, NY: The Free Press, 1998
The Discipline of Market Leaders: Choose Your Customers, Narrow Your Focus, Dominate Your
Market, Treacy, M. and Wiersema, F., 1997, New York, NY: Perseus Books Group
IT Governance: How Top Performers Manage IT Decision Rights for Superior Results, Weill, P. and
Ross, J., 2004, Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press
Corporate Headquarters
56 Top Gallant Road
Stamford, CT 06902-7700
USA
+1 203 964 0096
Regional Headquarters
AUSTRALIA
BRAZIL
JAPAN
UNITED KINGDOM
© 2011 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Gartner is a registered trademark of Gartner, Inc. or its affiliates. This
publication may not be reproduced or distributed in any form without Gartner’s prior written permission. If you are authorized to access
this publication, your use of it is subject to the Usage Guidelines for Gartner Services posted on gartner.com. The information contained
in this publication has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable. Gartner disclaims all warranties as to the accuracy,
completeness or adequacy of such information and shall have no liability for errors, omissions or inadequacies in such information. This
publication consists of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. The opinions
expressed herein are subject to change without notice. Although Gartner research may include a discussion of related legal issues,
Gartner does not provide legal advice or services and its research should not be construed or used as such. Gartner is a public company,
and its shareholders may include firms and funds that have financial interests in entities covered in Gartner research. Gartner’s Board of
Directors may include senior managers of these firms or funds. Gartner research is produced independently by its research organization
without input or influence from these firms, funds or their managers. For further information on the independence and integrity of Gartner
research, see “Guiding Principles on Independence and Objectivity.”