Recently, I had a client who's company is transitioning from "start up" to "growth/sustain mode" cold call me, inquiring about some tactical technology changes. After a few minutes of talking it became evident that they had a number of disparate systems running their enterprise. It was evident that due to their significant growth (100% year over year) the systems they used when they just started the company, are no longer able to support their growing demands.
I spoke to them about a technology strategy and they were not sure of what it means and where to even start. As a result of that conversation, I thought I'd put together some of my thoughts on what to think about when making your tech strategy.
A technology strategy doesn't need to be a 500 page document that your organization spends significant $$'s towards creating and then never looks at again. A good strategy can be distilled easily to 5 slides, communicated clearly across your organization (even non-tech) and has clearly defined targets. It helps to map out your team's growth and shift towards your "end-state vision".
As with any goal you set for yourself (savings, weightloss, a new skill) it is only good if you and your team use the roadmap, make decisions to help enable it, and track your progress.
Nith's Generic High-level List of Things to Consider:
Identify your goals and vision
You will need to understand what is working in your organization and what is not working in your organization today. Look at your business strategy/business goals. Objectively consider "what are the things IT must do/invest in to be ready to support the business" when they “grow 5x in 3 years” or “want to run 1000 transactions/week in ecommerce” or “want to accelerate how they develop and deliver new product”
Plan for the future
You want to invest in solving problems for today but also you want to have activities on the roadmap to enable future technology, solve long-term complex problems, and bring new innovations to the table. Think about technologies that will enable your business that are on the horizon "Can our business handle AI Computer-vision? What about automated warehouses?". You want to make sure that you have some flexibility to integrate and support tech that is on the horizon without sacrificing your foundational needs.
Define functional needs and priorities (I like to do these by capability vs function) to understand low, medium, and high priority functionality/capabilities that are required to achieve your future-state. This is where understanding and partnering with your business is critical to building your strategy.
Consider the costs and benefits
Leveraging vendor relationships to size projects and build out high-level benefits plans to identify (in a general scale) roadmap projects by priority
It doesn’t matter how evident your limitations are. Making sure you understand the high-level costs and benefits will be inputs to your KPI’s as well. Plus, I’ve yet to see a CFO tell a CIO “hey I trust you… here’s a blank cheque” (I still dream of that day though)
Establish reasonable timelines
Rome was not built in a day. Neither will your future-state IT capabilities. You need to build good habits, implement projects over time to achieve your tech strategy, architecture or application strategy. To do this, listen to your vendors, your BA's, and PM's and delivery teams to get a good understanding of how long projects will take and DON’T arbitrarily choose dates. That will all but guarantee your failure. The biggest risk to your executional performance is having unreasonable timelines without understanding the nuances of your complex business. Although it is easy to say "we're going to implement this technology/capability/function out of the box" it is never that simple. Change management has to be wrapped around any project.
Manage and Track Progress
Critical to any strategy or undertaking is being able to see how far from the start line you and your organization have come. It's important to track your KPI's monthly/quarterly and do YOY comparisons to ensure you are moving your team forward. You may not make progress in leaps and bounds some quarters but strategies are not achieved overnight. This is a long-play initiative where every milimeter of ground made is a significant achievement.
Leave some room for changes/updates
Technology changes, people change, your business changes, and most importantly your customer preferences change. You need to leave room in your execution to allow new ideas, and new priorities to help you achieve success. Strategies must be revisited at least once/year (I recommend every 6 months) to ensure what you're doing is still relevant and critical to enabling your business strategy and if not, now is the time to change it.
Celebrate
Most critical of any strategy is celebrating your successes. How you celebrate can be a small thank you email or a cake party (post pandemic) or how we do it at Helios – uber eats gift cards and a Zoom meeting. A strategy is not achieved through one individuals leadership or another individuals contributions. It is a team effort and you need your entire organization to be on board. Celebrate all the wins across the board to ensure your team are engaged and will continue to travel down this path with you.
If you need help thinking about how you approach your strategy feel free to reach out to me. Our team of consultants is highly experienced in delivering Technology, Application, and Architecture Strategies for organizations of all sizes.