Focusing Strategic Technology Planning

In this blog, I intend to bring focus on managing technology services as a set of strategic initiatives. This is not a new topic in our field, but one that is little discussed or not implemented successfully in most organizations.

An iterative strategic planning program is called for to establish strategic management with strategic leadership and other best practice components appropriate to technology services and aligned with organizational goals or needs. There are four strategically significant reasons for planning – to:

• Do the Right Job
• Do the Job Right
• Adapt to Change
• Leverage Opportunity

Improvements in use of technology represent a key organizational strategy that supports all other strategies. In the first iteration of strategic planning, the focus is primarily on processes needed for effective Strategic Technology Services Management (STSM). STSM encompasses four primary management disciplines:

• SM: Strategic Management
• PPM: Project Portfolio Management
• ITSM: Information Technology Service Management
• ITIM: Information Technology Infrastructure Management

The strategic plan sets high-level directions of strategic focus, initiatives, and strategies appropriate to a planning horizon, typically five or ten years in the future. It is broad and generic in much of its content to avoid limiting technology operations and innovation over this period, while providing a framework to support adaptation to changes in the organizational environment. Some planning goals set for this first iteration could include:

• Identify expected expansion or growth
• Identify resource constraints (people, funding, etc.)
• Improve inter-departmental understanding such as:
• Better tie-ins
• Know what they are doing
• Coordinate planning

• Plan to study the many initiatives, strategies, and programs identified in this first plan in more iterations of strategic, tactical, and operational planning
• Define an entire technology organizational and governance model with resource requirements.

A typical technology services organization has responsibilities similar to these:

• Oversee the design and construction of voice, data, or video network infrastructure
• Build a collaborative technology infrastructure (directories, e-mail, calendaring, document management, Web portal) and deploy major applications
• Oversee the installation of technology facilities
• Deploy, manage, and maintain computers
• Develop a support organization for all of the above.

These responsibilities require governance structures in place for defining a vision or mission, setting goals, identifying principles, developing strategies, prioritizing needs, and determining policy. These structures must enable staff to make quick decisions about interim solutions compatible with long-term strategy.