Every business and organisation is unique. A one-size-fits-all approach to IT doesn’t exist. With a high-performance IT strategy, you will tailor your capabilities — technologies, skills, and practices — to continuously improve business outcomes with technology, whatever those outcomes are for that year or for that initiative. To start your journey to a high-performance IT organisation, assess your business needs, your current technology styles, and your organisation’s execution readiness for high-performance IT.
Identifying gaps
Forrester has developed a series of assessments to identify gaps in your ability to execute and your technology capabilities, kicking off your journey to high performance in four steps:
Assess your business’s dominant need for this year, group, or initiative. The journey to high-performance IT starts with a fundamental understanding of the primary business strategy, where speed and scale serve as critical levers.
Baseline your organisation’s current IT style to see where you spend, excel, and lag. Informed by the dominant business demand for technology, you are ready to take stock of your current technology capabilities. Framing your capabilities against the four styles of high-performance IT will reveal where you are strong and where you need to shift or expand investments.
Assess your IT organisation’s execution readiness for high performance. The next step is to assess your IT organisation’s execution readiness against the three principles: business alignment, technology trust, and IT adaptivity. This will help you understand where you are strong and where you need to make changes to your organisation or operating model.
Activate your high-performance IT strategy to deliver what your business needs. The final step in your high-performance journey takes you into the details of your capability maps, investment and communications strategy, and operating model.
Refining the roadmap
Fueled by this detailed understanding of needs, capabilities, gaps, and readiness, you are ready to communicate your priorities and refine your IT roadmap and investment plan.
The details you develop will help technology leaders and practitioners build consensus with IT and with business leaders, working together to:
1) enhance IT capabilities; 2) align the investment portfolio and roadmap; 3) invest strategically to achieve the goals; and 4) optimise the operating model for IT style effectiveness.
Originally posted on Forrester
