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Build a Business-Aligned IT Strategy

Success depends on IT initiatives clearly aligned to business goals, IT excellence, and driving technology innovation.

IT strategies are often nonexistent or ineffective:

  • 74.6% of organizations have an IT strategy process they feel is ineffective.
  • IT does not do a good job of communicating its support for business goals; therefore, 23.6% of CXOs still feel that their goals are unsupported by IT.

IT departments that have not developed IT strategies experience alignment, organization, and prioritization issues.

Our Advice

Critical Insight

  • A CIO has three roles: enable business productivity, run an effective IT shop, and drive technology innovation. Your key initiative plan must reflect these three mandates and how IT strives to fulfill them.
  • Don’t project your vision three to five years into the future. Dive deep on next year’s big-ticket items instead.
  • Developing an IT strategy is a wasted effort if no mechanisms are put in place to govern the journey.
  • If you don’t communicate it, it doesn’t exist; simple, appealing, and inspirational communication is needed.

Impact and Result

  • Establish the scope of your IT strategy by defining IT’s mission and vision statements and guiding principles.
  • Perform a retrospective of IT’s performance to recognize the current state while highlighting important strategic elements to address going forward.
  • Elicit the business context and identify strategic initiatives that are most important to the organization while building a plan to execute on it.
  • Evaluate the foundational elements of IT’s operational strategy that will be required to successfully execute on key initiatives.
  • Wrap all strategic information into a highly visual and compelling presentation that enables easy customization and executive-facing content.

Build a Business-Aligned IT Strategy Research & Tools

1. Business-Aligned IT Strategy Deck – A step-by-step document that walks you through how to properly align with the business, achieve IT excellence, and drive technology innovation.

Align with the business by creating an IT strategy that documents the business context, key initiatives, and a strategic roadmap. To create a business-aligned IT strategy, you must understand what the business does and what the business will need. Only then can a carefully thought-out, strategic and tactical plan be created for execution.

This storyboard will help you build your IT mission and vision statements and IT guiding principles, elicit business context from the CIO and the IT team, identify your key initiatives and build their profiles, construct your strategic roadmap, and evaluate your governance structures, budget, and organizational changes.

2. Business Context Interview Guide – An interview guide to help you elicit the business context by interviewing business leaders and peers.

Use this template as a starting point to interview your business leaders to elicit the business context. The goal of the interviews is to extract business goals, organizational priorities, and business initiatives that will play a critical role in building your IT strategy. Meet with your executive team and work with them to identify essential knowledge.

3. IT Presentation Template – A best-of-breed template to help you build a clear, concise, and compelling strategy document for stakeholders.

This presentation template uses sample data from "Acme Corp" to demonstrate an ideal IT strategy. Use this template to document your final strategy outputs including executive-facing business alignment and strategy highlights, key initiatives and summaries, strategic roadmap, budget proposal, IT goals and operating model, functional project roadmaps, and year-in-review data to highlight IT success stories.

4. IT Strategy Workbook – A structured tool to help you prioritize IT strategy activities and build a roadmap to ensure success.

This tool guides an IT department in planning and prioritization activities to build an effective IT strategy. This Excel workbook guides you through making key decisions regarding the visuals that should be incorporated into your final presentation document. Key activities include building a goals cascade visual that shows the relationships between business and IT goals, initiatives, and capabilities; prioritizing key initiatives using a balanced scorecard approach; and building the IT strategy roadmap using a Gantt chart visual to showcase project execution timelines.


Member Testimonials

After each Info-Tech experience, we ask our members to quantify the real-time savings, monetary impact, and project improvements our research helped them achieve. See our top member experiences for this blueprint and what our clients have to say.

9.4/10


Overall Impact

$72,639


Average $ Saved

34


Average Days Saved

Client

Experience

Impact

$ Saved

Days Saved

City of Arlington

Workshop

10/10

$64,999

10

The workshop afforded our IT team members an opportunity collaborate and establish a renewed focus for our organizational IT Strategy. Our initial ... Read More

Bob Barker Company, Inc.

Guided Implementation

10/10

$12,999

10

Best - Having someone to bounce ideas off of. Worst - Trying to create a 5-year strategy.

United Nations Office at Vienna (UNOV)

Workshop

10/10

N/A

50

Only good words to give. Outcomes were beyond my expectations -- beyond what we set off to produce, we had a joint learning and teambuilding experi... Read More

Frederick County Maryland

Workshop

7/10

N/A

N/A

The true value of this effort canot be assessed ubtil we publish a strategic plan and use it to guide our effort moving forward. This excercise wa... Read More

City Of North Port

Guided Implementation

10/10

N/A

20

This saved me a ton of time and presents more information in a better format than I would have ever been able to create on my own. I wasn't sure ho... Read More

City of Atlanta / Atlanta Information Management (AIM)

Workshop

10/10

$45,499

35

Exceeded expectations. Chuck was excellent to work with and I’m happy with the tools and topics covered.

Dakota County Government Center

Workshop

10/10

$1.3M

120

Best parts were: 1. seeing key stakeholders in person and having them particpate in conversation with the other stakeholders 2. The herding of c... Read More

Hume City Council

Guided Implementation

10/10

$64,999

10

Great template, good knowledge of the domain in which industry we operate. Great guidance and assistance in challenging the status quo, ideas and ... Read More

Lake County, FL

Workshop

10/10

$32,499

29

Being able to complete this within a few days was extremely valuable. I think it would have taken us at least an additional 30 days or longer to co... Read More

Xavier University

Workshop

9/10

$64,999

41

Worst - It is hard to commit to so much time in one week. There is no way around such a time commitment. Best - walking away from the table hav... Read More

Jake's Finer Foods, Inc

Workshop

10/10

$64,999

10

MDU Services LTD

Workshop

9/10

$16,400

10

Best part great group participation and agreed outputs - great facilitation worst part this year we were at a rush to get this delivered. We will ... Read More

Government of Bermuda

Workshop

10/10

$12,999

23

Chuck French and team did a wonderful job in capturing and condensing the workshop information into a few informative slides. Janice did a great j... Read More

OTIP/RAEO Benefits Incorporated

Guided Implementation

10/10

$25,000

20

Best - Toolsets and process look to fit very well with what i want to accomplish and the time i have available. Worst - don't have one at this p... Read More

County of Los Alamos

Workshop

10/10

$97,499

41

Best - how prepared your Team was. How they knew exactly where to lead us very quickly. How understanding and insightful they were Worst - the poo... Read More

Pitt County

Guided Implementation

9/10

N/A

20

The conversation was a dialogue between us and different perspectives were discussed that added so much more value. Previous reviews and discussio... Read More

Wiginton Corporation

Guided Implementation

8/10

N/A

5

Dataflux Pty. Ltd.

Guided Implementation

8/10

$3,899

5

Best - knowledgeable input regarding the blueprint Worst - n/a

County of San Luis Obispo

Workshop

10/10

$32,499

10

Best: Continued to be extremely impressed with Infotech's workshop methodology and its ability to produce a comprehensive draft with finding and re... Read More

Oregon State Police

Guided Implementation

10/10

$6,499

14

Working with Manish was very helpful for me to float ideas back and forth, his knowledge really helped make my Strategic plan document to a solid f... Read More

Commonwealth of Virginia - Office of the Attorney General

Workshop

10/10

$2,469

12

Chuck was able to keep us on track and offer relevant suggestions and guidance, using appropriate questions to draw out key details from the team. ... Read More

Yamaha Motor Corporation, U.S.A.

Workshop

10/10

$519K

23

Areez was totally engaging, jelled well with the team and help lead them along the journey. He was clear and articulate, answered questions on poin... Read More

East Bay Municipal Utility District

Workshop

9/10

$32,499

32

I am still estimating time and money saved, so this is a rough, rough estimate in terms of how much less time the EBMUD IT strategic planning proce... Read More

University of Southern Indiana

Workshop

10/10

$20,799

10

Our workshop went very well! Very much appreciated some of the time saving techniques Claudia used to allow us to focus discussion on things that w... Read More

South African Reserve Bank

Guided Implementation

9/10

$7,799

18

I had a very good engagement with Ross and my experience so far is excellent.

City of Flagstaff

Workshop

7/10

N/A

20

Overall, I would say Denis was a mix of excellent advice mixed with a bit too much talking about his personal opinion. We got a lot of value but sp... Read More

Mille Lacs Corporate Ventures

Workshop

10/10

$32,499

10

It was a Great week and thought everything was done Professionally. Thanks for all the hard work and now we need to get to work. Loved how ev... Read More

City of St. Louis

Guided Implementation

10/10

$64,999

115

Ross really helped me frame our first ever strategic plan. He was excellent at explaining concepts and helping me see how I could articulate our I... Read More

Oregon State Fire Marshal

Guided Implementation

8/10

$12,999

20

AWJ Tamkeen Company

Guided Implementation

9/10

$5,000

20

Only best part; deep knowledge and expertise, provide valuable insights by strong communication skills were they clear, concise with professional b... Read More


IT Strategy

Develop a data-driven, fit-for-purpose plan with a strong link to execution.

This course makes up part of the Strategy & Governance Certificate.

Now Playing:
Academy: IT Strategy | Introduction

An active membership is required to access Info-Tech Academy
  • Course Modules: 7
  • Estimated Completion Time: 1.5 hours
  • Featured Analysts:
  • Kim Osborne Rodriguez, Research Director

Workshop: Build a Business-Aligned IT Strategy

Workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.

Module 1: Pre-Workshop: Elicit Business Context

The Purpose

Conduct analysis and facilitate discussions to uncover what business needs mean for IT and how IT plans to support the business.

Key Benefits Achieved

Build an understanding of what business needs mean for IT, the business strategy, and a clear alignment between the two.

Activities

Outputs

1.1

Complete recommended diagnostic programs.

  • Diagnostic reports (CIO Business Vision, Management & Governance Diagnostic, CEO-CIO Alignment)
1.2

Interview key business stakeholders, as needed, to identify business context: business goals, initiatives, and the organization’s mission and vision.

  • IT Strategy Workbook – Business Context
1.3

(Optional) CIO to compile and prioritize IT success stories.

Module 2: Establish the Scope of Your IT Strategy

The Purpose

Define statements, principles, and goals to establish the scope of your IT strategy and assess IT’s past performance.

Key Benefits Achieved

Identify and document the scope of your IT strategy and the successes from IT’s past performance (business value realized, key milestones and successful projects, etc.).

Activities

Outputs

2.1

Review/validate the business context.

2.2

Construct your mission and vision statements.

2.3

Elicit your guiding principles and finalize IT strategy scope.

  • IT strategy scope (IT mission, vision, and guiding principles).

Module 3: Build Your Key Initiative Plan

The Purpose

Identify high-priority key initiatives to support the business, enable IT excellence, and drive technology innovation.

Key Benefits Achieved

Build your key initiative plan along with your goals cascade visual to clearly communicate business alignment back to your key initiatives.

Activities

Outputs

3.1

Identify key IT initiatives that support the business.

3.2

Identify key IT initiatives that enable operational excellence.

3.3

Identify key IT initiatives that drive technology innovation.

3.4

Consolidate and prioritize (where needed) your IT initiatives.

  • List of key IT initiatives

Module 4: Build Your Key Initiative Plan (Continued)

The Purpose

Identify high-priority key initiatives to support the business, enable IT excellence, and drive technology innovation.

Key Benefits Achieved

Build your key initiative plan along with your goals cascade visual to clearly communicate business alignment back to your key initiatives.

Activities

Outputs

4.1

Determine IT goals.

4.2

Complete goals cascade

  • Goals cascade
4.3

Build your IT strategy roadmap.

  • Roadmap (Gantt chart)

Module 5: Define Your Operational Strategy

The Purpose

Evaluate the key components on an operational strategy that will help your team execute on your key strategic initiatives.

Key Benefits Achieved

Build a strong operational strategy to ensure IT can deliver what they promise and put in place the mechanisms to govern your journey.

Activities

Outputs

5.1

Identify metrics and targets per IT goal.

  • IT metrics and targets
5.2

(Optional) Identify required skills and resource capacity.

  • IT resourcing changes
5.3

Discuss next steps and wrap-up.

  • Next steps and strategy refresh schedule

Module 6: Document Strategy

The Purpose

Complete your strategy by building a highly visual and compelling presentation that enables easy customization and executive-facing content.

Key Benefits Achieved

Simple, appealing, and inspirational communication of your strategy to all key stakeholders is a must to ensure IT’s success.

Activities

Outputs

6.1

Complete in-progress deliverables.

  • IT strategy presentation
6.2

(Optional) Set up review time for workshop deliverables.


Build a Business-Aligned IT Strategy

Success depends on IT initiatives clearly aligned to business goals, IT excellence, and driving technology innovation.

Executive Summary

IT strategies are often nonexistent or ineffective.

  • According to the Management and Governance diagnostic (MGD), 74.6% of organizations have an IT strategy process they feel is ineffective (Info-Tech, Management and Governance Diagnostic; n=1,931).
  • IT does not do a good job of communicating their support for business goals, therefore, 23.6% of CXOs still feel that their goals are unsupported by IT (Info-Tech, CEO-CIO Alignment Diagnostic; n=863).

IT departments that have not developed IT strategies experience alignment, organization, and prioritization issues.

Three-quarters of surveyed CEOs value tech leaders with experience fostering operational stability and strategic business alignment (CIO Journal, 2020), however…

  • The CIO is seen as an order taker by business executives. This usually results in the demands on IT far outstripping the IT budget.
  • Projects and initiatives are not prioritized around business objectives. Synergies and dependencies are recognized too late. Projects are often late or put on hold because of sudden changes to business requirements.

Follow Info-Tech’s approach to developing a strong IT strategy.

  • Use Info-Tech’s industry-focused approach to discern the business context.
  • Clearly communicate to business executives how IT will support the organization’s key objectives and initiatives using the Strategy Presentation Template.
  • Use Info-Tech’s Prioritization Tool to help make project decisions in a holistic manner that allows for the selection of the most-valuable initiatives to become part of the IT strategic roadmap.

Info-Tech Insight

A CIO has three roles: enable business productivity, run an effective IT shop, and drive technology innovation. Your IT strategy must reflect these three mandates and how IT strives to fulfill them.

Info-Tech’s approach

Image is four intertwined circles that are labelled 1-4.

1. Establish the Scope of Your IT Strategy

Establish the scope of your IT strategy by defining IT’s mission and vision statements and guiding principles.

2. Review IT Performance From Last Fiscal Year

A retrospective of IT’s performance helps recognize the current state while highlighting important strategic elements to address going forward.

3. Build Your Key Initiative Plan

Elicit the business context and identify strategic initiatives that are most important to the organization and build a plan to execute on them.

4. Define IT’s Operational Strategy

Evaluate the foundational elements of IT’s operational strategy that will be required to successfully execute on key initiatives.

Info-Tech’s methodology for IT Strategy

01 Business Context 02 Key Initiative Plan 03 Operational Strategy 04 Executive Presentation
Inputs
  • Business Strategy
  • Industry Capability Map
  • Business Context Information
  • Diagnostic Reports to Assess Current State
  • Last Fiscal Strategy
  • Key Initiatives List
  • Last Fiscal Operational Strategy
  • Initiatives & Roadmap
  • Operational Strategy
Outputs

Business Context Information for Step 2:

  • Business goals
  • Organizational objectives & initiatives
  • Industry customized capability map

IT Strategy Information for Approval:

  • Strategy scope
  • Year in review
  • Key initiative plan & profiles
  • Goals cascade
  • Roadmap

Operational Strategy Information for Step 4:

  • Stakeholder management
  • Metrics & targets
  • Risk management
  • Organizational changes
  • Budget
  • Functional roadmap & next steps

Executive Presentations for:

  • Business executives
  • IT team
  • Board
  • Org-wide key highlights
Service

Pre-Workshop Industry-Specific Guided Implementation

IT Strategy Workshop

IT Strategy Workshop

IT Strategy Workshop

Info-Tech’s methodology for IT Strategy

Image shows Info-Tech's methodology for IT strategy. It covers the four approaches listed above and includes their light weight assessment and thorough analysis

Blueprint deliverables

The IT Strategy Workbook supports each step of this blueprint to help you accomplish your goals:

Screenshot taken from the IT Strategy Workbook

Goals Cascade Visual

Elicit business context and use the workbook to build your custom goals cascade.


Screenshot taken from the IT Strategy Workbook

Initiative Prioritization

Use the weighted scorecard approach to evaluate and prioritize your strategic initiatives.

Screenshot taken from the IT Strategy Workbook

Roadmap/Gantt Chart

Populate your Gantt chart to visually represent your key initiative plan over the next 12 months.

Key deliverable:

IT Strategy Presentation Template

A highly visual and compelling presentation template that enables easy customization and executive-facing content.

Screenshot of IT Strategy Presentation Template

Info-Tech offers various levels of support to best suit your needs

DIY Toolkit

"Our team has already made this critical project a priority, and we have the time and capability, but some guidance along the way would be helpful"

Guided Implementation

"Our team knows that we need to fix a process, but we need assistance to determine where to focus. Some check-ins along the way would help keep us on track."

Workshop

"We need to hit the ground running and get this project kicked off immediately. Our team has the ability to take this over once we get a framework and strategy in place."

Consulting

"Our team does not have the time or the knowledge to take this project on. We need assistance through the entirety of this project."

Diagnostics and consistent frameworks are used throughout all four options.

Guided Implementation

What does a typical GI on this topic look like?

Image outlines the guided implementation process.

A Guided Implementation (GI) is a series of calls with an Info-Tech analyst to help implement our best practices in your organization.

A typical GI is between 8 to 12 calls over the course of 2 to 4 months.

Workshop Overview

Contact your account representative for more information.

workshops@infotech.com 1-888-670-8889

Session 0 (Pre-Workshop) Session 1 Session 2 Session 3 Session 4 Session 5
Elicit Business Context Establish Scope and Review IT Performance Build Your Key Initiative Plan Build Your Key Initiative Plan Define Your Operational Strategy Next Steps and Wrap-Up
Activities

0.1 Identify business context and business goals.

0.2 Customize your organization’s capability map.

0.3 (Optional) Compile and prioritize IT success stories.

1.1 Create the IT vision statement and IT mission statement, and identify IT guiding principles.

1.2 Define the IT strategy scope.

1.3 Determine business value realized from the last fiscal year.

1.4 Evaluate diagnostic data and evaluate IT performance.

2.1 Determine goals cascade from business goals to IT goals:

  • Required IT capabilities
  • IT initiatives
  • IT goals

3.1 Prioritize your IT initiatives.

3.2 Build your roadmap.

3.3 Develop business-focused sunshine diagram.

4.1 Identify metrics and targets per IT goal.

4.2 Establish stakeholder communication approach.

4.3 Identify organizational changes required.

4.4 Identify key IT budget elements.

5.1 Discuss next steps and wrap-up.

5.2 Complete in-progress deliverables from previous four days.

5.3 Set up review time for workshop deliverables.

Outcomes
  1. Business Context and Business Goals
  2. Customized Capability Map
  1. IT Vision Statement
  2. IT Mission Statement
  3. IT Guiding Principles and Scope
  4. Business Value Realized
  1. List of IT Initiatives
  2. Goals Cascade
  1. IT Roadmap
  2. IT Initiative One-Pagers (Sample)
  1. IT Metrics and Targets
  2. Stakeholder Communication Plan
  3. IT Resourcing Changes
  1. IT Strategy Presentation

Workshop Requirements

Launch Diagnostics Business Inputs IT Inputs

Launch the CIO Business Vision diagnostic.

Launch the CEO-CIO Alignment diagnostic.

Launch the Management and Governance diagnostic.

Gather all historical diagnostic reports (if they exist).

Contact your Account Manager to get started.

Gather business strategy documents and find information on:

  • Business goals
  • Business initiatives
  • Business capabilities to create or enhance

(If this doesn’t exist for your organization, contact your Info-Tech Account Manager to get started.)

Interview the following stakeholders to uncover business context information:

  • CEO
  • CFO

Download the Business Context Discovery Tool

Gather information on last fiscal year’s strategy. Particularly information on:

  • IT goals
  • Specific IT initiatives/projects completed
  • Project start and end dates
  • Metrics and targets and progress made towards them
  • Last fiscal year’s budget information
  • Organizational structure

Phase 1

Establish Scope of Your IT Strategy

Model of the four phases is shown, and lists activities for the highlighted phase. Phase 1 is highlighted.

This phase will walk you through the following activities:

  • How to build IT mission and vision statements
  • How to elicit IT guiding principles
  • How to finalize and communicate your IT strategy scope

This phase involves the following participants:

  • CIO
  • Senior IT Team

To complete this phase, you will need:

IT Strategy Presentation Template

Screenshot of first slide of IT Strategy Presentation Template

Use the IT Strategy Presentation Template to document the results from the following activities:

  • Mission and Vision Statements
  • IT Guiding Principles

IT must aim to support the organization’s mission and vision

A mission statement:

  • Focuses on today and what an organization does to achieve it.
  • Drives the company.
  • Answers: What do we do? Whom do we serve? How do we service them?

"A mission statement focuses on the purpose of the brand; the vision statement looks to the fulfillment of that purpose."

A vision statement:

  • Focuses on tomorrow and what an organization ultimately wants to become.
  • Gives the company direction.
  • Answers: What problems are we solving? Who and what are we changing?

"A vision statement provides a concrete way for stakeholders, especially employees, to understand the meaning and purpose of your business. However, unlike a mission statement – which describes the who, what, and why of your business – a vision statement describes the desired long-term results of your company's efforts."

Source: Business News Daily, 2020

Characteristics of a mission & vision statement

A strong mission statement has the following characteristics:

  • Articulates the IT function’s purpose and reason for existence
  • Describes what the IT function does to achieve its vision
  • Defines the customers of the IT function
  • Is:
    • Compelling
    • Easy to grasp
    • Sharply focused
    • Concise

A strong vision statement has the following characteristics:

  • Describes a desired future achievement
  • Focuses on ends, not means
  • Communicates promise
  • Is:
    • Concise; no unnecessary words
    • Compelling
    • Achievable
    • Measurable

Derive the IT mission and vision statements from the business’

Begin the process by identifying and locating the business mission and vision statements.

Image shows three small pictures. One is a computer and labelled corporate websites. The second one is map labelled business strategy documents. The last is an image of three people, labelled business executives.

Ensure there is alignment between the business and IT statements.

Note: Mission statements may remain the same unless the IT department’s mandate is changing.

Four circles are shown. On the top left is a circle labelled business mission. A squiggly line is in-between it and another circle. The circle it is connected to is labelled IT mission. On the bottom left the circle is labelled business vision and the circle connected to it is labelled IT vision.

1.1 Construct mission and vision statements

Objective: Help teams define their purpose (why they exist) to build a mission statement (if one doesn't already exist).

30 minutes

Step 1:

  • Gather the IT strategy creation team and revisit your business context inputs, specifically the corporate mission statement.
  • Begin by asking the participants:
    • What is our job as a team?
    • What’s our goal? How do we align IT to our corporate mission?
    • What benefit are we bringing to the company and the world?
  • Ask them to share general thoughts in a check-in.

Step 2:

  • Share some examples of IT mission statements.
    • Example: IT provides innovative product solutions and leadership that drives growth and success.
  • Provide each participant with some time to write their own version of an IT mission statement.

Step 3:

  • This step involves reviewing individual mission statements, combining them, and building one collective mission statement for the team.
  • Consider the following approach to build a unified mission statement:
    • Use the 20x20 rule for group decision making. Give the group no more than 20 minutes to craft a collective team purpose with no more than 20 words.
  • As a facilitator, provide guidelines on how to write for the intended audience. Business stakeholders need business language.
  • Refer back to the corporate mission statement periodically and ensure there is alignment.
  • Document your final mission statement in your IT Strategy Presentation Template.

1.1 Construct mission and vision statements (cont.)

Objective: Help teams define their ideal culture (how they work together to achieve their purpose) to a vision statement.

60 minutes

Step 4:

  • Gather the IT strategy creation team and revisit your business context inputs, specifically the corporate vision statement.
  • Share one or more examples of vision statements.
  • Provide participants with sticky notes and writing materials, and ask them to work individually for this step.
  • Ask participants to brainstorm using the following questions:
    • What is the desired future state of the IT organization?
    • How should we work to attain the desired state?
    • How do we want IT to be perceived in the desired state?
  • Provide participants with guidelines to build descriptive, compelling, and achievable statements regarding their desired future state.
  • Regroup as a team and review participant answers.

Step 5:

  • Ask the team to post their notes on the wall.
  • Have the team group the words that have a similar meaning or feeling behind them – these will create themes.
  • When the group is done categorizing the statements into themes, ask if there's anything missing. Did they ensure alignment to the corporate vision statement? Are there any elements missing when considering alignment back to the corporate vision statement?

Step 6:

  • Consider each category as a component of your vision statement.
  • Review each category with participants; define what the behavior looks like when it is being met and what it looks like when it isn’t.
  • As a facilitator, provide guidelines on word-smithing and finessing the language.
  • Refer back to the corporate vision statement periodically and ensure there is alignment.
  • Document your final mission statement in your IT Strategy Presentation Template.
Source: Hyper Island Toolbox

Tips for Online Facilitation

Pick an online whiteboard tool that allows participants to use a large, zoomable canvas. Set up each topic at a different area of the board; spread them out just like you would do it on the walls of a room. Invite participants to zoom in and visit each section and add their ideas as sticky notes once you reach that section of the exercise. If you’re not using an online whiteboard, we’d recommend using a collaboration tool such as Google Docs to collect the information for each step under a separate heading. Invite everyone into the document but be very clear in regard to editing rights. Pre-create your screen deck and screen share this with your participants through your videoconferencing software. We’d also recommend sharing this so participants can go through the deck again during the reflection steps. When facilitating group discussion, we’d recommend that participants use non-verbal means to indicate they’d like to speak. You can use tools like Teams’ “raise hand” tool, a reaction emoji, or just have people put their hands up. The facilitator can then invite that person to talk.

Input

  • Business mission statement
  • Business vision statement

Output

  • IT mission statement
  • IT vision statement

Materials

  • Screen
  • Projector
  • Sticky notes
  • Markers
  • Whiteboard
  • Paper
  • Collaboration/brainstorming tool (whiteboard, flip chart, digital equivalent)

Participants

  • CIO
  • Senior IT Team

Download the IT Strategy Presentation Template and document your mission and vision statements in section 1.

IT mission statements demonstrate the IT function’s purpose

The IT mission statement specifies the function’s purpose or reason for being. The mission should guide each day’s activities and decisions. The mission statements use simple and concise terminology and speak loudly and clearly, generating enthusiasm for the organization.

Strong IT mission statements have the following characteristics:

  • Articulates the IT function’s purpose and reason for existence
  • Describes what the IT function does to achieve its vision
  • Defines the customers of the IT function
  • Is:
    • Compelling
    • Easy to grasp
    • Sharply focused
    • Inspirational
    • Memorable
    • Concise

Sample IT Mission Statements:

  • To provide infrastructure, support, and innovation in the delivery of secure, enterprise-grade information technology products and services that enable and empower the workforce at [Company Name].
  • To help fulfil organizational goals, the IT department is committed to empowering business stakeholders with technology and services that facilitate effective processes, collaboration, and communication.
  • The mission of the information technology (IT) department is to build a solid, comprehensive technology infrastructure; to maintain an efficient, effective operations environment; and to deliver high-quality, timely services that support the business goals and objectives of ABC Inc.
  • The IT department has operational, strategic, and fiscal responsibility for the innovation, implementation, and advancement of technology at ABC Inc. in three main areas: network administration and end-user support, instructional services, and information systems. The IT department provides leadership in long-range planning, implementation, and maintenance of information technology across the organization.
  • The IT group is customer-centered and driven by its commitment to management and staff. It oversees services in computing, telecommunications, networking, administrative computing, and technology training.

Success depends on IT initiatives clearly aligned to business goals, IT excellence, and driving technology innovation.

About Info-Tech

Info-Tech Research Group is the world’s fastest-growing information technology research and advisory company, proudly serving over 30,000 IT professionals.

We produce unbiased and highly relevant research to help CIOs and IT leaders make strategic, timely, and well-informed decisions. We partner closely with IT teams to provide everything they need, from actionable tools to analyst guidance, ensuring they deliver measurable results for their organizations.

MEMBER RATING

9.4/10
Overall Impact

$72,639
Average $ Saved

34
Average Days Saved

After each Info-Tech experience, we ask our members to quantify the real-time savings, monetary impact, and project improvements our research helped them achieve.

Read what our members are saying

What Is a Blueprint?

A blueprint is designed to be a roadmap, containing a methodology and the tools and templates you need to solve your IT problems.

Each blueprint can be accompanied by a Guided Implementation that provides you access to our world-class analysts to help you get through the project.

Need Extra Help?
Speak With An Analyst

Get the help you need in this 5-phase advisory process. You'll receive 8 touchpoints with our researchers, all included in your membership.

Guided Implementation 1: Pre-Project Call
  • Call 1: Discuss business context and customize your organization’s capability map.

Guided Implementation 2: Establish the scope of your IT strategy
  • Call 1: Identify mission and vision statements and guiding principles to discuss strategy scope.

Guided Implementation 3: Review performance from last fiscal year
  • Call 1: Assess year-in-review data and evaluate performance.
  • Call 2: Discuss diagnostic data results and success stories.

Guided Implementation 4: Build your key initiative plan
  • Call 1: Identify strategic initiatives and required information.
  • Call 2: Discuss how to build your roadmap.

Guided Implementation 5: Define your operational strategy
  • Call 1: Discuss and identify appropriate operational strategy components.
  • Call 2: Summarize results and plan next steps.

Authors

Sanchia Benedict

Gord Harrison

Jack Hakimian

Contributors

  • Luis Ramón Ramos Espinoza, Chief Information Officer, Suramericana
  • Kyle Saverance, Chief Information Officer, Coker College
  • Scott Ross, SVP Omni-Channel Technologies, Lowe’s Companies
  • Max Min, Director, Waterloo City Centre
  • Philip D’Aurelio, Development Solutions Supervisor, City of Hamilton
  • Michael Dieckmann, Chief Operating Officer, Florida Virtual Campus
  • Joe Evers, Consulting Principal, JcEvers Consulting Corporation
  • Ken Piddington, Chief Information Officer, MRE Consulting
  • 2 anonymous contributors
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