STRATEGIC INTENTIONS

by Bob Benson, Tom Bugnitz, and Bill Walton, Senior Consultants, Cutter Consortium

The issue of IT alignment with the business has perennially been at or near the top of the charts of hot IT management issues. The reason is obvious: a lot of money is spent on IT-related initiatives, and management needs a method of understanding whether IT resources are being applied to the right things.

A key enabler of alignment is IT's understanding of the business's strategic and operational requirements. These business requirements form the frame of reference against which IT activities and resources are to be aligned; without them, alignment cannot occur. Business requirements need to occur in at least two forms: (1) project-specific requirements and (2) transproject, enterprise-level requirements.

The first group is necessary for a specific project's functionality to be aligned with the specific business needs that generated the initial energy for the project. The second category is necessary for the company's IT portfolios (project, application, infrastructure, etc.) to be aligned with the company's larger strategic and operational themes. We call these broader themes "strategic intentions."

Who Should Develop Strategic Intentions?

The first source of strategic intentions should be the company's senior management team. If the senior management team doesn't provide them, the IT steering committee (or its equivalent) can provide them. According to a recent Cutter survey, 68% of companies have IT steering committees, and of this 68%, committees' most common roles are project approval (75%) and project prioritization (71%). Strategic intentions must be viewed as a necessary document for any steering committee to use in its approval and prioritization activities.

At first, the IT steering committee may be hesitant to develop strategic intentions, believing that its role is to execute rather than develop strategy. The development of strategic intentions should not be viewed as developing strategy, but rather as developing public and shared statements that describe already existing strategic elements. The development of strategic intentions is like dusting for fingerprints: the process makes visible what is already present but has been hidden or obscured.

In developing a set of strategic intentions, an IT steering committee can start by addressing the following questions:

• What are my company's goals and strategies?

• What are the key initiatives we're currently working on?

• Where does senior management spend its time and resources? What is it focused on?

The answers to these questions can then be used to develop an initial set of strategic intentions, which can be vetted with members of the senior management team after being provided with the explanation that these strategic intentions will be used to guide IT resource decisions. Senior management's responses can then be worked into the final set of strategic intention statements.

-- Bob Benson, Tom Bugnitz, and Bill Walton, Senior Consultants, Cutter Consortium