5 key steps for creating an IT strategy plan
Current process analyses
To learn more about the areas of improvement, understand your organization’s current IT position considering the competitors. Afterward, perform a SWOT analysis and assess your IT needs to check how your IT infrastructure performs.
After evaluation, make a decision on improving the areas of improvement and how. Under the evaluation process, consider evaluating customer focus groups, employee surveys, and stakeholder feedback. It helps you to overcome the inefficiencies.
Secure consulting partner
Since you will be changing the IT processes and technology, ensure your chosen IT strategy facilitates a smooth transition. Therefore, after assessing your business, consult your IT strategy partner about upcoming changes and brief them about your current position and what it lacks. Seek their input and discuss the comparative advantages of one goal over another. It helps to make collective decisions for IT strategy.
To make the decision-making process smooth, you can break down this process into two:
- What business outcome do you expect from the IT strategic plan?
- To what extent are you willing to spend?
Objectives & roles assignment
After confirming your IT strategy partner, seek what steps they will take to attain your organization’s short-term and long-term goals. To whom they will be assigning the task appropriately to leadership and IT staff. Look for training resources and timeframe to keep the employees on track. Don’t forget to discuss team dependencies, security threats, and potential roadblocks throughout the process. State your strategic objective, current & desired IT capabilities, staff, governance information, KPIs, timelines, etc., with your IT strategy partner.
Plan execution
Once you complete the preparation for IT strategy consulting, it’s time to implement the strategy. As the results shake out, communicate with your IT strategy development partner and discuss the outcome. Always remain on top of the involved team and ensure they follow the given process.
Reviewing & iterating
IT strategic planning becomes more successful with iteration as time goes by. Once you attain the short-term goals, review the outcome and proceed further with the long-term objective. In case the implemented strategy misfires, revise the strategy and bypass any issue through research and studying the shortfalls of the current strategy.