tIT Strategy: The Critical Link Between

Success and Failure

• IT Strategy Concepts

• IT Strategy Components

• IT Contribution to Mission Success

• IT Principles

• Wrap Up

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Plan for the Day

IT Strategy – Just Part of the Picture

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Detailed description of current IT operations, including budgets, service catalogs, staff and skills, application portfolio, infrastructure assets

IT Operating Plan

A description of the plan to get from as-is to to-be states —fundamentally an elaborated Gantt chartIT Strategic Plan

Fifteen- to twenty-page description of the direction, as-is to to-be states, typically in a vertical (Word) or horizontal (PowerPoint) format

IT Strategy

One- or two-page summary of the strategy board, typically in a horizontal (PowerPoint) format

Executive Leadership Summary

The IT Strategy CanonThe IT Strategy Canon

Political or Political or Legislative Legislative

AgendaAgenda

IT BudgetIT Budget

Detailed description of current IT operations, including budgets, service catalogs, staff and skills, application portfolio, infrastructure assets

IT Operating Plan

A description of the plan to get from as-is to to-be states —fundamentally an elaborated Gantt chartIT Strategic Plan

Fifteen- to twenty-page description of the direction, as-is to to-be states, typically in a vertical (Word) or horizontal (PowerPoint) format

IT Strategy

One- or two-page summary of the strategy board, typically in a horizontal (PowerPoint) format

Executive Leadership Summary

The IT Strategy CanonThe IT Strategy Canon

Political or Political or Legislative Legislative

AgendaAgenda

IT BudgetIT Budget

IT Strategy Template

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Demand Control

C2. IT Governance

C1. IT Principles

C3. IT Financial Management

C4. Metrics

Supply

S1. IT Services

S3. People

D2. Business Success

D3. Business Capabilities

D4. IT Contribution

S2. Enterprise Architecture

R1. Risks and IssuesR1. Risks and Issues

Detailed AppendixesDetailed Appendixes

Executive Summary

S4. Sourcing

D1. Business Context

Demand Control

C2. IT Governance

C1. IT Principles

C3. IT Financial Management

C4. Metrics

Supply

S1. IT Services

S3. People

D2. Business Success

D3. Business Capabilities

D4. IT Contribution

S2. Enterprise Architecture

R1. Risks and IssuesR1. Risks and Issues

Detailed AppendixesDetailed Appendixes

Executive Summary

S4. Sourcing

D1. Business Context

IT Contribution to the Business Success

• Connects IT activities to mission success and mission capabilities.

• This section should be used in very high-level presentations (for example, the most senior leadership team) and represents an two minute overview of how IT adds value to the organization.

• For example, it could be, "By making mission and business process costs more variable, IT will reduce the impact of demand volatility.”

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Examples: IT Contributions to Business Success

Workforce Productivity By reducing the complexity of the information access, users will be able to access and

use a broader variety of business and partner systems without additional training and minimal loss of time – thereby improve workforce productivity.

Collaboration By implementing an enterprise security model coupled with a tiered collaboration

capability, users can rapidly create planning and coordination teams across lines of business and agencies in response to Ad Hoc or newly formed organizational alignments

This same tiered collaboration capability can be used to provide sustained partner engagement with the various key partner organizations before, during, and after new product rollout

Decision Support By implementing Authoritative Source Data and reducing data clutter, decision makers

will be able to access the correct information faster in support of their decision making process.

Breakout Assignment

• 6 minutes• Identify 2-3 IT commitments to help your organization achieve success

• 2 minutes to present findings to the person next to you

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IT Principles

• Clearly connected to mission or organizational success.

• Specific to the enterprise — it should avoid truisms that apply to all IT organizations, such as, "We will provide high-quality, reliable IT services."

• Detailed enough to drive decisions, behaviors and trade-offs.

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Why IT Does Things• Governance — How do we make decisions?

Is decision-making centralized or decentralized? How fast do we need decisions to be made?

• Architecture — Where do we need to build for growth? Divestment? Efficiency? Agility? Where should the architecture be standardized, and where should it be differentiated?

• Investment Prioritization — What investments do we prioritize? Based on what? How do we fund our development?

• Innovation — How innovative do we need to be? Where is it most important to innovate?

• Standardization and Integration — How do we balance these two processes in a way that meets the need for central compliance and local responsiveness? Where should we be globally standard? Where should we allow for local differentiation?

How IT Does Things• Risk — Where is it acceptable to take more

risk? Where does risk have to be minimized as much as possible? What is the threshold of risk beyond which we will never go?

• Staffing — How do we hire? How do we treat our employees? Do we promote from within or hire from outside?

• Security — When does security trump all other considerations? Where do we need to trade security for speed?

• Benefits Realization — What benefits are most important? Which ones will we prioritize, and where? How crucial is it to see benefits accrue quickly?

• Sourcing — What will we always outsource? What will we never outsource?

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Common Areas for IT Principles

Examples of IT Principles

EnterpriseStrategic

Success Driver IT PrinciplesGaming Enterprise

Agility in the face of regulatory change

We must be able to disengage from any vendor within two to three years

Insurance Enterprise

Excellence in absorption-style acquisitions

The company must be able to grow on demand, possibly in large steps

Hospitality Enterprise

Growth through cross-sales where business units do not like to collaborate

Everything should be decentralized unless we agree it is a commodity

Retail Enterprise

Operational excellence We will converge to a single operating model across all our lines of business

Public Agency Need to support extremely remote sites

All DFID systems to be used overseas must deliver acceptable performance over satellite connections.

Format for IT Principles

• Principle X – Title

• Statement

–Sentence or two that defines the principle

• Rationale

–Sufficient discussion to explain to both IT and non-IT readers the rationale for this principle.

• Implications

–Series of bullets or statements that illustrate what this principle will mean in daily application. Use as many as necessary.

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Breakout Assignment

• 5 minutes• Identify 1 IT Principle, the Organization Strategic Success Driver, and the Rationale to guide your organization’s decision making process

• 2 minutes to present findings to the other person next to you

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What Next

• Engage with Organizational Leadership to clarify the Demand Sections of the IT Strategy

• Get Agreement from Organizational Leadership on the IT Contributions to Business/Mission Success

• Work with your IT leadership team to draft a set of IT Principles

• Validate the IT Principles with Organizational Leadership

• Work the remaining sections of the IT Strategy Template

Related Gartner Research

• IT Strategy Template, 06 April 2009, Dave Aron  G00167280

• Toolkit: How to Create a One-Page IT Strategy, 22 February 2013, Heather Colella  G00245389

• Effective Communications: IT Strategy, 11 September 2009, Heather Colella  G00170978

• Gartner's Guide to Creating World-Class IT Principles, 26 July 2013, Mary Mesaglio | Jose Ruggero  G00253902

For Research Documents, please leverage the sign up sheet to request or contact Jannine Salo at jannine.salo@gartner.com

Gartner has been working with and supporting Tribal Nations and Enterprises for over thirteen years delivering the technology-related insight necessary for our clients to make the right decisions, every day.

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Artifact Descriptions• IT strategy:

–Meets the three- to five-year business needs from IT

–Provides high-level direction and constraints on IT decisions

–Identifies current and desired future state for IT operations and services

• IT strategic plan:–Lays out a road map of initiatives and capability building to get from current to future IT state

–Contains a 12- to 18-month prioritized plan and key programmatic initiatives with longer-term road map

–Describes the plan — when, how and what will be affected

• IT operating plan:–Summarizes the people, processes and budgets that are necessary for the IT strategic plan to

be delivered; it is often referred to as a "concept of operations"

–Includes organizational structures, operations and processes

–Establishes the estimated budget of the investment plan, as well as the financial and performance management process for accountability

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Example Mission Strategic Capability Statements – Public Sector

• Cost focus (drawing on the value discipline of operational excellence):

– Provide services at the lowest cost.– Drive economies of scale through shared best

practices.

• Value or performance as perceived by customers or citizens (drawing on the value discipline of customer intimacy):

– Meet citizen expectations for quality at a reasonable cost.

– Make citizen access as easy as possible.– Provide all the information needed to service any

client from any service point.

• Management orientation (different aspects of business governance and decision making):

– Maximize independence in local operations with a minimum of mandates.

– Make management decisions close to the line.– Create a management culture of information

sharing.

• Increase service (how the base services will expand):

– Deliver new/expanded services as promised by political leaders or mandated legislatively.

– Expand aggressively into underserved communities.

– Carefully grow nationally to meet the needs of customers who are growing in different parts of the country.

– Target adoption through specific demographic or citizen segments.

• Human resources (where people policies fit in):

– Create an environment that maximizes intellectual productivity.

– Identify and facilitate the movement of talented people.

• Flexibility and agility (drawing on the value discipline of service innovation):

– Grow in cross-delivery capabilities.– Develop new or expanded services rapidly.– Create the capacity to deliver services in any

location for a particular entitlement.

Business Context

• The value proposition (what role, responsibility or value the organization provides to which demographic groups and citizens)

• The organization’s position relative to other companies, organizations, or agencies about the provisioning or delivery of products or services

• The organization’s operating and delivery model — for example, decentralized operations, delivery direct to consumers, etc.

• The demographic or social trends impacting the organization’s business

• External macro level drivers, such as policy, macroeconomic and political environments

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Business Success

• This section clarifies what will make the enterprise deliver on its promises.

• Ideally consists of no more than the two or three major strategies

• Contains the organization’s mission, vision, goals and mission/operating principles.

• This is a critical section of the strategy, because it defines the focus of the organization, which is used to drive the investments and trade-offs in IT.

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Business Capabilities

• Defines what business capabilities are required to make the organization successful

• Identifies where the gaps are between existing and needed capabilities.

• Examples of mission capabilities include

–Ability to partner with other tribal, federal, or private organizations

–Ability to respond to the unexpected

–Transparency of performance metrics.

–This list should be at a strategic level; typically, there should be no more than four or five capabilities.

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Remaining Control Sections

• C2 — A demand-side and supply-side governance strategy. This will facilitate and enable the work to proceed smoothly and provide the necessary decision making, policy definition, oversight and problem resolution.

• C3 — IT funding and financial management options. It develops an approach to how the IT organization is operating as a cost center, profit center or investment center. It also explains how funds will be supplied to IT.

• C4 — A performance management plan. This identifies the elements of performance to be measured and the metrics that will be used to measure them.

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Examples of Alternate Strategies

Component Example

Example Goal 1 The XYZ casino will expand facilities by 30% in the next 4 years.

Alternative Strategy Examples for Goal 1

Expand organically by reinvesting current revenues into expansion of facilities.

Partner with external gaming operator to fund expansion.

Explore the opportunity a public debt offering to fund the expansion.

Example Goal 2 Within three years, the XYZ casino will decrease cost of sales by 15%.

Alternative Strategy Examples for Goal 2

Focus marketing to increase attendance during non-peak times to leverage existing fixed cost operations.

Adopt an overtime policy to reduce new hire and personnel costs.

Move to automated self-service for food, drink, and information services.

Increase use of data analytics to reduce fixed cost operations and move to 95% variable cost operations.