The IT Strategy

Management Process
Supporting IT Services
Through Effective Knowledge
Management

Eugen Oetringer
Table of Contents

Introduction 7
Chapter 1 – Today’s Challenges 9
Chapter 2 – The Solution 15
Chapter 3 – Benefits of the IT Strategy Management Process 19
Chapter 4 – Process Layers 31
Chapter 5 – Avoiding Pitfalls 33
Chapter 6 – The Business Case 37
Chapter 7 – Meeting the itSMP Objective 41
Chapter 8 – The IT Strategy Management Process 43
Element 1: Technology Repository/Definitive Document Library 43
Element 2: The Technical Community 79
Element 3: Incentive Techniques 93
Element 4: Integration Between Elements 102
Element 5: The Right Balance 105
Element 6: Ground Rules 107
Chapter 9 – The Document Life Cycle 109
Chapter 10 – Conclusion 113
Appendix A: Technology Repository Requirements 115
Appendix B: Directive Examples 119
Appendix C: Frequently asked Questions 127
Appendix D: Glossary 133
Appendix E: Figures 135
Introduction

Background and Applicability

During the1980s and the early ’90s one manufacturer’s computers dominated data centers
around the world. At the time, information technology (IT) was thought to be something
complex, and difficult to direct and manage. Looking back on those days, it appears it
was relatively simple.
Today, corporate and government organizations are faced with a large variety in IT
choices, technology changing at an incredible speed and ever-increasing complexity. For
medium and large companies, these factors alone create enormous challenges, and yet it
isn’t IT that matters. What matters is the well-being of the business function supported by
IT, the speed at which the business function can be adapted to new developments and how
quickly innovation can be brought to market. In effect, the agility with which an enterprise
adapts to changing market conditions can be key to its survival.
Because of the importance of agility, the company that more effectively manages its IT
is in a better competitive position. An important piece of the puzzle are the structures
to direct and manage IT in an optimum way while positioning it for quick – but smooth
– changes.
Typically, processes and quality management systems (QMSs) provide structure to better
direct and manage complex IT environments. Most well known are those processes
defined under the umbrella of ITIL® (IT Infrastructure Library), which is published by
the Office of Government Commerce (OGC) in the United Kingdom. Among others, ITIL
outlines the processes for service level management, configuration management, problem
management, change management, availability management and capacity management.
These processes and related QMSs bring structure into most parts of the data centers,
and may describe the processes for application development organizations and for the
central IT organization. However, they are insufficient to address the complexities of
the relationships needed between the many processes, organizations, departments and
locations. Complexity leads to complications such as confusion, unnecessary cost and
delays, as well as project failures. Obstacles resulting from independent departments,
cultural differences, country barriers and so forth may further complicate things.
Something is needed to “glue” them together at a fundamental level. This publication
addresses that issue and attempts to meet this objective:

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 Provide the fundamental structures that continuously push for creating,
using and executing well-balanced, smart, complete and up-to-date
IT Directives1 and solutions throughout corporate and government
organizations.

This objective may look ambitious, because it may suggest the need for extensive
integration into organizations and processes - which makes implementation a high-risk
project. The IT Strategy Management Process avoids extensive integration by keeping
the solution as simple as possible while positioning it as a lead process to other processes
and to organizations. Moreover, this publication describes the critical pieces to a level
that helps IT management, process specialists and senior technical staff understand what
is required to make things happen. Special attention is given to practical aspects such as
human interaction. Through this approach, it may not be obvious that this is, indeed, a
process. However, it does meet the ITIL criteria for process.
The objective further implies that the process must cover more than what is traditionally
understood by “strategy”. The scope of the IT Strategy Management Process (itSMP)
includes implementation instructions to the strategies. Hence, directions, standards,
guidelines, best practices and so forth are in scope.

Other Areas
As the IT Strategy Management Process was being developed, the following question was
raised many times: “Can this solution be used for all sorts of documentation – such as for
knowledge management, intellectual capital and risk management – instead of only the
rather limiting scope of IT?”
In principle, we expect the itSMP can be applied to areas other than IT, as it only
concentrates on the most fundamental structures. There also is the possibly of using it
between corporate and government organizations. These other areas will have slightly
different needs that have not yet been investigated.

1 Strategies and their implementation instructions such as directions, standards and so forth

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Chapter 1 – Today’s Challenges

In the introduction, we briefly touched on the challenges surrounding IT. Gaining high-
level perspectives of the predominant IT challenges is a good starting point.

Major IT Challenges

The Technology Side The Organizational Side

Need for up-to-date technology guidance Execution of IT strategies over the
that fits locally obstacles coming from independent
organizations, countries, languages and
Large choice of technology cultures
Extremely high technology change rate Local versus country versus company
Technical versus business needs wide needs

Ever-increasing complexity Executing the decisions of virtual teams in

a hierarchical organization
Constant year-round need for application
availability – 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, Keeping many organizations and
365 days a year processes connected with each other

The Human Side The Commercial Side

Need to stay current with the latest IT Agility – the ability to change and
developments transform as the market demands; speed,
adaptability and performance
Need for technicians to understand both
processes and business functions Competitive pressures
Translation of the vision and mind power Cost control – inclusive hidden cost
of the top technical leaders into highly
effective Directives and IT solutions Short, medium and long-term needs

Objectivity
Acceptance of ongoing change

Figure 1: Challenges

The real difficulties, however, don’t come from the individual challenges but from their
combination and the resulting complexities. For example, as applications are linked and
their up-time requirements move toward 24x7x365, the opportunities to upgrade hardware
or software are dramatically reduced. Meanwhile, IT vendors eliminate support of older
products, and competition demands urgent upgrades to the business function, requiring
IT to adapt quickly. The whole is further complicated by cost-saving initiatives, viruses,

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 The IT Strategy Management Process

immature software/hardware and so forth. This leads to the following question:

What fundamental structures must be in place for IT to be directed and

managed across the enterprise in a way that delivers optimum value?

The first step to finding the answer is to understand the root causes and underlying issues
that may exist. There are a number of possibilities:

Root Cause 1: Too many repositories

Multitude of different Web places and repositories to use

Different look and feel to each repository
Unclear applicability of content
Unclear importance of content
Lost trust in repositories

Root Cause 2: Documentation quality

Lack of documentation standards

Unsuitable wording and document structures for compliance verification
Insufficient background information to understand why the strategy makes sense
Out of touch with user needs
Outdated material
Insufficient information about the document’s current status
Lack of technological guidance
Lost trust in documentation

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Chapter 1 – Today’s Challenges

Root Cause 3: Lack of process between development and production

Confusion resulting from the lack of integration between development and production
processes and organizations
Organizational changes creating confusion between development and production
Unclear approval process
Bureaucracy for company wide approval needs
Conflicting directions or solutions from different organizations
Inadequate structures to ensure needs and feedback are trusted and properly prioritized
Disregard of important feedback from local to central organizations
Excessive filtering of technical needs as they go through the management chain
Broken communication chains
Unrealistic non-compliance instructions, forcing everyone to ignore them
Disregard of compliance instructions
Lack of compliance verification
Control mechanisms timed too late in an approval process

Root Cause 4: Information overload

Root cause 1+ Root cause 2 + too many internal Web pages + too many external Web
pages + too many e-mails
Web search functions delivering too many hits to find and act on the proper ones
Inability to distinguish the “relevant” from the “irrelevant” information

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 The IT Strategy Management Process

Root Cause 5: Cultural differences

Many different cultures

Time and effort required to effect culture change
Expectation that one’s culture will work in foreign cultures
Insufficient time to properly review and agree on Directives and solutions
“Not invented here” syndrome
“Silo” solutions
Lost “lessons learned”

Root Cause 6: Lack of investment

Central organization projects perceived to be of insufficient value

Central organization cuts due to insufficient value
Lack of investment in IT solutions
Insufficient budget to solve root causes
Insufficient resources to address issues
Lack of investment in people and skills

Figure 2: Root causes and underlying issues

Following is an illustration of the root causes. Development organizations and development

processes try to connect to their counterparts in the production organizations. On the
other hand, the production organizations and production processes try to connect to their
counterparts in development. The bridge connecting development and production is not
suited for easy crossing. The number of direct relationships needed may be too high or
other issues from Figure 2 may be the reason. Plus, there are additional pressures such as
cost savings that lead to productivity improvement projects and external customers whose
needs must be met.

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Chapter 1 – Today’s Challenges

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Figure 3: Development and production trying to connect with each other

At this point, let’s ask several ambitious questions:

• Wouldn’t it make business sense if several of these root causes would be largely
solved?
• Wouldn’t it make business sense if the company’s intellectual capital would be captured
and translated into policies, strategies, directions, guidelines, standard solutions, etc.,
and pushed for execution throughout the enterprise?
• Wouldn’t it make business sense if safety nets were provided so issues with policies,
strategies, directions, guidelines, standard solutions, etc., were visible to the users and
corrective actions triggered?
• Wouldn’t it make business sense if the solution to the previous questions were kept
simple?
Although a “yes” answer to each question seems ambitious, this is what the IT Strategy
Management Process is designed to achieve.

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