What do we mean by "strategy"?
What do you mean by strategy? The word gets dropped into lots of conversations within IT teams. I might hear:
Are these all referring to some golden bible of IT messages? Perhaps they mean go to talk to the guru in the Strategy and Architecture team. They have strategy in their name, so much be able to find where this is written down, right?
The dictionary definition of strategy which seems to fit out context is, s “a plan of action designed to achieve a long-term or overall aim”. This is broad but does bring in two key concepts for what we mean by strategy. Firstly it is long term, in our fast moving world of IT that is probably a horizon of 18 month to 3 years. Secondly it involves some form of plan of action to move towards an aim or goal.
In 2013 Henry Mintzberg published The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning focused on business strategy. This presents four specific definitions of strategy.?
Putting this into an IT context these can be used to more specifically describe the artefacts?that would answer our conversation snippets above.?
“What is our strategy around BYOD adoption”??
This is asking a question about a strategy plan. What is the plan to grant BYOD as a service to our employees. From work to securing and releasing the services, through to communicating and publishing the policies to manage BYOD. A strategic initiative to change the service offered by IT to the business for which we have a plan of action to achieve the goal.
“What is our environment strategy for SAP Hana”?
This is asking a question about a pattern of usage, so Strategy as a pattern in action over time. This may be written down as a policy on how we manage environments for changes to our SAP Hana estate. In IT it is also possible that knowledge is held as tribal knowledge rather than written in a specific asset. That does not prevent it being strategy though and suggests that strategy can be held as tribal knowledge.?
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“We should not use Java as it is not strategic”
A bold statement as an example, but may well be true in a organisation that is C# or Node focused as the primary development languages. In such a statement we are referring to a strategy position or decision paper. A document that creates a mandate on what should be used and what should not. This might fit as a strategy that supports a design principle for our future systems. This could then be managed through the architectural governance processes.?
“How will the change in business strategy affect IT”?
This question is clearly about the alignment of the IT Vision and direction with the business. To me this is one of the most critical uses of the term strategy in the IT content. It forms what I might call THE IT STRATEGY. When we talk about The IT Strategy to align our business and IT function, we are talking about Strategy is perspective. Positioning what IT offers as a service, its alignment to the business function and goals, and it’s evolution plan.
Strategy in this context will focus on the IT function as a hole, the current state and evolution plan. For me such a strategy should cover three dimensions:
IT strategy is a large subject and one that I think is vital to any IT organisation. If you are interested in IT Strategy I recommend taking a look at my course on Udemy which goes into this in much more detail.