Pragmatic IT Strategy

We define IT strategy as the clear connection between technology and business perspectives. Our goal: to develop an IT strategy that gives executives and the board concrete guidance on investments, risks, and priorities.

In most projects, we encounter something labeled “IT strategy,” but in very different forms:

IT visions or missions – often text-heavy, created with a lot of effort, but rarely actionable
IT principles – e.g., ten guidelines that describe topics like cloud usage in principle
System landscapes – often broadly depicted as a “House of Technology”
Loose collections of technology topics – extensive, but without a clear strategic direction

These documents have one thing in common: they are rarely suitable for providing sound support for strategic decisions in management and supervisory boards. We do things differently. We take a pragmatic, comprehensive approach that yields directly usable results.

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Pragmatic IT Strategy

What “pragmatic” IT strategy means:

Builds on existing work and documentation, e.g., IT vision and mission, IT principles, system landscape overviews
Does not aim for completeness, but focuses on key areas – covering not only technology, but also topics such as organization and finance
Addresses specific questions, such as investment security, IT investments in server and cloud infrastructure, future-proofing Enterprise Architecture, or vendor dependencies
Takes limited resources into account (budget, personnel, time)

Initial Analysis – Phase 1

Lean Entry – Two Weeks to Key Insights

Review of existing and relevant strategy documents and prior work
Alignment of strategic perspectives and integration with existing strategies or target objectives
Focused meetings to examine specific parts of the IT landscape and systematically analyze knowledge or skill gaps
Preparation and alignment of analysis results, including definition of relevant focus areas and scope for the IT strategy (see below)

Strategy – Phase 2

Focused Approach – Two Months to Strategy & Roadmap

Development of the IT strategy according to the defined focus areas (see above), covering both technology and business perspectives: aligned with business objectives, including investments & risks, organization & governance, security & compliance, architecture & applications, infrastructure / cloud
Comprehensive transformation roadmap with investment recommendations and organizational input for the next steps
Final presentation to the IT committee or executive board

Typical Focus Areas

Typical elements of a pragmatic IT strategy include

Alignment with business objectives / cost management
Security and compliance / scalability and flexibility
Competence development and employee training – building skills and capacity within the organization
Applications – overall solution architecture & tool/vendor strategies
Infrastructure – on-premises vs. SaaS
Enterprise Architecture – business-IT alignment
Sourcing – in-house vs. external, in collaboration with external service providers