IT Strategy in a Nutshell

I wanted to reflect on what it really means to build a tech or an IT strategy. One of the key roles of a CTO is to create or facilitate the IT strategy of a company. Here is my take on it.

Assuming we have an idea about the general business strategy, which of course is strongly dependent on the tech strategy, we can try to answer the same questions as in general strategy: why, how, what. In my experience, the most useful tool in an agile, innovative environment is the roadmap. The roadmap is a document shared between stakeholders which defines key objectives in the short term, near term (6 months) and longer term. The OKR (Objectives and Key Results) framework can also be used to define those objectives. This document is constantly evolving based on progress, feedback and new realities. It is typically updated every few months or more often when needed.

How do we define what is in the roadmap and how do we prioritise? Key objectives are driven by:

• technical priorities
• business strategy
• customer requirements

Why not only customer requirements? That is the case for service companies who work exclusively for their customers. But when building a product, we must take into consideration what contributes to strategic objectives also what is technically feasible or what needs R&D in order to answer questions around feasibility and cost.