In a March 2010 column in Tech Republic (http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/tech-manager/?p=3113&tag=rbxccnbtr1), Marc Schiller writes that to prepare a Vision of IT for his/her enterprise, the CIO should “network with your peers to learn about their key IT investments. What projects they are protecting no matter what and what projects they are killing. Find out what big investments they’re planning for the next five years and why they’re doing it. Try to understand where their business customers are pushing them and why.” The CIO can then discuss “the potential threats and opportunities depending on your company’s choices and evolving strategy.”
An IT Strategy presentation, Schiller writes (http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/tech-manager/?p=3148&tag=rbxccnbtr1), should contain the IT organization’s: “(1) mandates and scope of services
(2) their organizations and service delivery models, (3) their IT investment portfolios.
“Mandate and Scope of Services
Your strategy must answer the questions that everyone has, ‘What do you do for me? When do I come to you? And how do you fit in with the other IT service providers that work for our company?’”, particularly in a world of business users who use 3rd party IT providers and departmental IT.
“The IT Organization and Service Delivery Model
Most IT leaders make the mistake of thinking that the way to align with the business is to ensure that their specific projects support very specific business goals. The more important alignment is around the basic operating model of the company and how it connects to the operating model of IT. Answer the questions: “How do I get the services I need?” or “How are our IT services aligned to our business?” ”
The IT Investment Portfolio
It’s important to provide a 50,000-foot view into the IT investment portfolio that explains what sits in infrastructure, what sits in shared services, what sits in departmental functions, and what tradeoffs are being made across the company. Doing that helps all the executives understand what compromises they need to make in terms of their consumption of IT services, whether its slower response times or using outsourced service providers for help desk support or upgrading computers faster. This complete view of the IT investment portfolio and the business priorities to which the investments are attached lend tremendous credibility to the IT leader.
The Business Presentation
Provides an overview of the IT services that the corporation as a whole, and each particular group, is consuming including metrics such as trends over time in user counts and application uses, helpdesk volumes, second- and third-tier support calls, allocated costs.
