Every business and organization 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 that year or for that initiative. To start your journey to high-performance IT, assess your business needs, your current technology styles, and your organization’s execution readiness for high performance IT. Forrester has developed a series of assessments to identify gaps in your ability to execute and your technology capabilities and kick 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 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 organization’s execution readiness for high-performance. The next step is to assess your IT organization’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 organization 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.
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 and work together to: 1) enhance IT capabilities; 2) align investment portfolio and roadmap; 3) invest strategically to achieve the goals; and 4) optimize the operating model for IT style effectiveness.
Let’s Connect
If you’re a Forrester client and would like to learn more, please set up a time for us to talk. If your company has expertise to share on high-performance IT, feel free to submit a briefing request.
