Simplifying IT strategy: How to avoid the annual planning panic

What major challenges and risks stand between the current state and the vision?

If you’re like most CIOs, you have technical debt, talent shortages, a supply-and-demand imbalance of IT resources, and many IT capabilities immature enough to compromise your vision. Address these issues head on. Clarify how they will obstruct your achieving the IT vision and any overarching business objectives.

Does someone in the audience have an ax to grind with you? Disarm them early by putting their concern on the page. Some CIOs also use these presentations as a chance to remind their audience of the inherent complexity in the technical estate. They’ll drive home the point by listing the number of users, devices, geographies, applications, and vendors within their purview. 

What IT strategic objectives will move us toward the vision?

Think of strategic objectives as buckets of related projects that, collectively, will build new capabilities or alleviate problem areas. The CIO of one high-tech company, for example, envisioned making IT the great enabler of scale, which aligned with one of the company’s strategic objectives: to accelerate non-linear scale. Effectively, this objective was the wrapper for a group of projects that would integrate recent bolt-on acquisitions, standardize technology across BUs, and reduce manual processes through automation.

Aim to define three to five objectives that together envelop projects proposed for 2024, ongoing and new. Remember, too, that not all objectives will link directly to commercial endeavors. Some will be worthy but time-consuming ones that stand alone—for example, improving the employee experience, modernizing the technical estate, or changing the way IT works.

What projects are needed to advance the strategic objectives? And when will we work on them?

Your projects are how you achieve your strategic objectives and fulfill your vision. For each objective, identify which projects will continue from the current year and what new projects must be mobilized. Tell a cohesive and logical story: all of your projects should align with one of your strategic objectives. If a majority don’t, revisit them.

Also, don’t commit to more projects than you have capacity for. And beyond capacity, consider how much change the organization can stomach at once and reflect this in the sequencing of the roadmap. Explain why certain projects were prioritized over others.

About Author

AndyC

Andy Curtis is an award-winning security consultant, researcher and public speaker. He has been working in the computer security industry since the early 1990s, having been employed by state and federal government, leading healthcare and banking providers across three continents. He has given talks about computer security for some of the world’s largest companies, worked with law enforcement agencies on investigations into hacking groups, and is a regular voice on TV and radio explaining IT security threats.

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