5 Tips for a Better IT Strategic Plan
A strategic plan is crucial to the success of any organization, and it is what separates the top performing IT organization from the rest. nevertheless, most organization does not follow a formal strategic planning process, instead they focus on the day to day operations and navigate in the market without clear direction. Below are some tips that will help you improve your IT Strategy:
1- Make Sure your Plan is Aligned with the Business Goals
The first step is to understand and align with the business goals, you need to understand your core business, and how will your business win? what will differentiate you organization from the rest of the competitors (e.g. lower cost, innovative solutions, customer experience …etc). After knowing your business edge you need to identify what capabilities you will need to meet those needs and how IT can contribute towards achieving them.
2- Engage your employees
A common mistakes that organizations tends to make instead of having a defined strategy that is to rely instead on a group of senior leaders for making key decisions. Employees are the core of every organization’s success, and having your employee involved and aware of the organization vision and strategy is a key component for achieving success. so try to make sure every employee understands their role in achieving the organization’s strategy.
3- Have a Separate Strategic plan and IT Plan
A strategy is not a plan. A plan essentially is a detailed Gantt Charts the details who will do what, where, when, at what cost, and under which risks. having a separate action plan is useful since plans are not fixed. they can be affected by a number of factors internally and externally and accordingly you plan needs to change and adapt. On the other hand your strategy will remain fixed for the medium term (5–7 years) and provide clear direction for you organization whenever a change in plan is needed.
4- Have Clear Processes and Control
There needs to be a set of principles and guidelines to make sure day to day decisions and activities are tracked and are consistent with the business strategy. Other factors you will need to think of are: IT Governance, Financial Management, and what metrics will are needed to measure the success of the IT contribution, and how does it map to the business success metrics.
5- Define the Execution Plan
This is the area which most IT Professionals tends to think of when developing an IT strategy. Here you need to establish what is your current service catalogue and what it should be. what needs to be improved in the current architecture to reach the desired goal. what will be outsourced and what will be insourced. finally what is the IT staff talents level and what gaps needs to be filled in terms of training and capacity building.
Final thoughts
Having a solid IT strategic plan that is very much aligned with the organization’s goals and that provides a fix direction for all level of employees, increases your chance for improving the organization business and realizing it’s goals.
