Legacy Active Directory Environment

Kill the technical debt of your legacy Active Directory environment.

Analyst Perspective

Understand what Active Directory is and why Azure Active Directory does not replace it.

It’s about Kerberos and New Technology LAN Manager (NTLM).

Many organizations that want to innovate and migrate from on-premises applications to software as a service (SaaS) and cloud services are held hostage by their legacy Active Directory (AD). Microsoft did a good job taking over from Novell back in the late 90s, but its hooks into businesses are so deep that many have become dependent on AD services to manage devices and users, when in fact AD falls far short of needed capabilities, restricting innovation and progress. Despite Microsoft’s Azure becoming prominent in the world of cloud services, Azure AD is not a replacement for on-premises AD. While Azure AD is a secure authentication store that can contain users and groups, that is where the similarities end. In fact, Microsoft itself has an architecture to mitigate the shortcomings of Azure AD by recommending organizations migrate to a hybrid model, especially for businesses that have an in-house footprint of servers and applications. If you are a greenfield business and intend to take advantage of software, infrastructure, and platform as a service (SaaS, IaaS, and PaaS), as well as Microsoft 365 in Azure, then Azure AD is for you and you don’t have to worry about the need for AD. John Donovan Principal Director, I&O Practice Info-Tech Research Group

Insight Summary

Executive Summary

Info-Tech Insight

Don’t allow Active Directory services to dictate your enterprise innovation and modernization strategies. Determine if you can safely remove objects and move them to a cloud service where your Azure AD Domain Services can handle your authentication and manage users and groups.

The history of Active Directory

The evolution of your infrastructure environment

From NT to the cloud

Organizations depend on AD

AD is the backbone of many organizations’ IT infrastructure

73% of organizations say their infrastructure is built on AD.

82% say their applications depend on AD data.

89% say AD enables authenticated access to file servers.

90% say AD is the main source for authentication.

Source: Dimensions research: Active Directory Modernization :

Info-Tech Insight

Organizations fail to move away from AD for many reasons, including:

• Lack of time, resources, budget, and tools.
• Difficulty understanding what has changed.
• Migrating from AD being a low priority.

Active Directory components

Physical and logical structure

Authentication, authorization, and auditing

Active Directory has its hooks in!

AD creates infrastructure technical debt and is difficult to migrate away from.

Info-Tech Insight

Due to the pervasive nature of Active Directory in the IT ecosystem, IT organizations are reluctant to migrate away from AD to modernize and innovate.

Migration to Microsoft 365 in Azure has forced IT departments’ hand, and now that they have dipped their toe in the proverbial cloud “lake,” they see a way out of the mounting technical debt.

AD security

Security is the biggest concern with Active Directory.

Neglecting Active Directory security

98% of data breaches came from external sources.

Source: Verizon, Data Breach Report 2022

85% of data breach took weeks or even longer to discover.

Source: Verizon Data Breach Report, 2012

The biggest challenge for recovery after an Active Directory security breach is identifying the source of the breach, determining the extent of the breach, and creating a safe and secure environment.

Info-Tech Insight

Neglecting legacy Active Directory security will lead to cyberattacks. Malicious users can steal credentials and hijack data or corrupt your systems.

What are the security risks to legacy AD architecture?

• It's been 22 years since AD was released by Microsoft, and it has been a foundational technology for most businesses over the years. However, while there have been many innovations over those two decades, like Amazon, Facebook, iPhones, Androids, and more, Active Directory has remained mostly unchanged. There hasn’t been a security update since 2016.
• This lack of security innovation has led to several cyberattacks over the years, causing businesses to bolt on additional security measures and added complexity. AD is not going away any time soon, but the security dilemma can be addressed with added security features.

AD event logs

84% of organizations that had a breach had evidence of that breach in their event logs.

Source: Verizon Data Breach Report, 2012

What is the business risk

How does AD impact innovation in your business?

It’s widely estimated that Active Directory remains at the backbone of 90% of Global Fortune 1000 companies’ business infrastructure (Lepide, 2021), and with that comes risk. The risks include:

• Constraints of AD and growth of your digital footprint
• Difficulty integrating modern technologies
• Difficulty maintaining consistent security policies
• Inflexible central domains preventing innovation and modernization
• Inability to move to a self-service password portal
• Vulnerability to being hacked
• BYOD not being AD friendly

AD is dependent on Windows Server

1. Even though AD is compliant with LDAP, software vendors often choose optional features of LDAP that are not supported by AD. It is possible to implement Kerberos in a Unix system and establish trust with AD, but this is a difficult process and mistakes are frequent.
2. Restricting your software selection to Windows-based systems reduces innovation and may hamper your ability to purchase best-in-class applications.

Azure AD is not a replacement for AD

AD was designed for an on-premises enterprise

• Despite Microsoft’s Azure becoming prominent in the world of cloud services, Azure AD is not a replacement for on-premises AD.
• In fact, Microsoft itself has an architecture to mitigate the shortcomings of Azure AD by recommending organizations migrate to a hybrid model, especially those businesses that have an in-house footprint of servers and applications.
• If you are a greenfield business and intend to take advantage of SaaS, IaaS, and PaaS, as well as Microsoft 365 in Azure, then Azure AD is for you and you don’t have to worry about the need for AD.

"Azure Active Directory is not designed to be the cloud version of Active Directory. It is not a domain controller or a directory in the cloud that will provide the exact same capabilities with AD. It actually provides many more capabilities in a different way.

That’s why there is no actual ‘migration’ path from Active Directory to Azure Active Directory. You can synchronize your on-premises directories (Active Directory or other) to Azure Active Directory but not migrate your computer accounts, group policies, OU etc."

– Gregory Hall,
Brand Representative for Microsoft
(Source: Spiceworks)

The hybrid model for AD and Azure AD

How the model works

Note: AD Federated Services (ADFS) is not a replacement for AD. It’s a bolt-on that requires maintenance, support, and it is not a liberating service.

Many companies are:

• Moving to SaaS solutions for customer relationship management, HR, collaboration, voice communication, file storage, and more.
• Managing non-Windows devices.
• Moving to a hybrid model of work.
• Enabling BYOD.

Given these trends, Active Directory is becoming obsolete in terms of identity management and permissions.

The difference between AD Domain Services and Azure AD DS

One of the core principles of Azure AD is that the user is the security boundary, not the network.

Kerberos is the default authentication and authorization protocol for AD. Kerberos is involved in nearly everything from the time you log on to accessing Sysvol, which is used to deliver policy and logon scripts to domain members from the Domain Controller.

Info-Tech Insight

If you are struggling to get away from AD, Kerberos and NTML are to blame. Working around them is difficult. Azure AD uses SAML2.0 OpenID Connect and OAuth2.0.

Source: “Compare self-managed Active Directory Domain Services...” Azure documentation, 2022

Impact of work-from-anywhere

How AD poses issues that impact the user experience

IT organizations are under pressure to enable work-from-home/work-from-anywhere.

• IT teams regard legacy infrastructure, namely Active Directory, as inadequate to securely manage remote workloads.
• While organizations previously used VPNs to access resources through Active Directory, they now have complex webs of applications that do not reside on premises, such as AWS, G-Suite, and SaaS customer relationship management and HR management systems, among others. These resources live outside the Windows ecosystem, complicating user provisioning, management, and security.
• The work environment has changed since the start of COVID-19, with businesses scrambling to enable work-from-home. This had a huge impact on on-premises identity management tools such as AD, exposing their limitations and challenges. IT admins are all too aware that AD does not meet the needs of work-from-home.
• As more IT organizations move infrastructure to the cloud, they have the opportunity to move their directory services to the cloud as well.
  • JumpCloud, OneLogin, Okta, Azure AD, G2, and others can be a solution for this new way of working and free up administrators from the overloaded AD environment.
  • Identity and access management (IAM) can be moved to the cloud where the modern infrastructure lives.
  • Alternatives for printers using AD include Google Cloud Print, PrinterOn, and PrinterLogic.

How AD can impact your migration to Microsoft 365

The beginning of your hybrid environment

• Businesses that have a large on-premises footprint have very few choices for setting up a hybrid environment that includes their on-premises AD and Azure AD synchronization.
• Microsoft 365 uses Azure AD in the background to manage identities.
• Azure AD Connect will need to be installed, along with IdFix to identify errors such as duplicates and formatting problems in your AD.
• Password hash should be implemented to synchronize passwords from on-premises AD so users can sign in to Azure without the need for additional single sign-on infrastructure.
• Azure AD Connect synchronizes accounts every 30 minutes and passwords within two minutes.

Alternatives to AD

When considering retiring Active Directory from your environment, look at alternatives that can assist with those legacy application servers, handle Kerberos and NTML, and support LDAP.

• JumpCloud: Cloud-based directory services. JumpCloud provides LDAP-as-a-Service and RADIUS-as-a-Service. It authenticates, authorizes, and manages employees, their devices, and IT applications. However, domain name changes are not supported.
• Apache Directory Studio Pro: Written in Java, it supports LDAP v3–certified directory services. It is certified by Eclipse-based database utilities. It also supports Kerberos, which is critical for legacy Microsoft AD apps authentication.
• Univention Corporate Server (UCS): Open-source Linux-based solution that has a friendly user interface and gets continuous security and feature updates. It supports Kerberos V5 and LDAP, works with AD, and is easy to sync. It also supports DNS server, DHCP, multifactor authentication and single sign-on, and APIs and REST APIs. However, it has a limited English knowledgebase as it is a German tool.

What to look for

If you are embedded in Windows systems but looking for an alternative to AD, you need a similar solution but one that is capable of working in the cloud and on premises.

Aside from protocols and supporting utilities, also consider additional features that can help you retire your Active Directory while maintaining highly secure access control and a strong security posture.

These are just a few examples of the many alternatives available.

Market drivers to modernize your infrastructure

The business is now driving your Active Directory migration

What IT must deal with in the modern world of work:

• Leaner footprint for evolving tech trends
• Disaster recovery readiness
• Dynamic compliance requirements
• Increased security needs
• The need to future-proof
• Mergers and acquisitions
• Security extending the network beyond Windows

Organizations are making decisions that impact Active Directory, from enabling work-from-anywhere to dealing with malicious threats such as ransomware. Mergers and acquisitions also bring complexity with multiple AD domains.
The business is putting pressure on IT to become creative with security strategies, alternative authentication and authorization, and migration to SaaS and cloud services.

Activity

Build a checklist to migrate off Active Directory.

Related Info-Tech Research

Manage the Active Directory in the Service Desk

• Build and maintain your Active Directory with good data.
• Actively maintaining the Active Directory is a difficult task that only gets more difficult with issues like stale accounts and privilege creep.

SoftwareReviews: Microsoft Azure Active Directory

• The Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) enterprise identity service provides SSO and multifactor authentication to help protect your users from 99.9% of cybersecurity attacks

Define Your Cloud Vision

• Don’t think about the cloud as an inevitable next step for all workloads. The cloud is merely another tool in the toolbox, ready to be used when appropriate and put away when it’s not needed. Cloud-first isn’t always the way to go.

Bibliography

“2012 Data Breach Investigations Report.” Verizon, 2012. Web.
“2022 Data Breach Investigations Report.” Verizon, 2012. Web.
“22 Best Alternatives to Microsoft Active Directory.” The Geek Page, 16 Feb 2022. Accessed 12 Sept. 2022.
Altieri, Matt. “Infrastructure Technical Debt.” Device 42, 20 May 2019. Accessed Sept 2022.
“Are You Ready to Make the Move from ADFS to Azure AD?’” Steeves and Associates, 29 April 2021. Accessed 28 Sept. 2022.
Blanton, Sean. “Can I Replace Active Directory with Azure AD? No, Here’s Why.” JumpCloud, 9 Mar 2021. Accessed Sept. 2022.
Chai, Wesley, and Alexander S. Gillis. “What is Active Directory and how does it work?” TechTarget, June 2021. Accessed 10 Sept. 2022.
Cogan, Sam. “Azure Active Directory is not Active Directory!” SamCogan.com, Oct 2020. Accessed Sept. 2022.
“Compare Active Directory to Azure Active Directory.” Azure documentation, Microsoft Learn, 18 Aug. 2022. Accessed 12 Sept. 2022.
"Compare self-managed Active Directory Domain Services, Azure Active Directory, and managed Azure Active Directory Domain Services." Azure documentation, Microsoft Learn, 23 Aug. 2022. Accessed Sept. 2022.
“Dimensional Research, Active Directory Modernization: A Survey of IT Professionals.” Quest, 2017. Accessed Sept 2022.
Grillenmeier, Guido. “Now’s the Time to Rethink Active Directory Security.“ Semperis, 4 Aug 2021. Accessed Oct. 2013.
“How does your Active Directory align to today’s business?” Quest Software, 2017, accessed Sept 2022
Lewis, Jack “On-Premises Active Directory: Can I remove it and go full cloud?” Softcat, Dec.2020. Accessed 15 Sept 2022.
Loshin, Peter. “What is Kerberos?” TechTarget, Sept 2021. Accessed Sept 2022.
Mann, Terry. “Why Cybersecurity Must Include Active Directory.” Lepide, 20 Sept. 2021. Accessed Sept. 2022.
Roberts, Travis. “Azure AD without on-prem Windows Active Directory?” 4sysops, 25 Oct. 2021. Accessed Sept. 2022.
“Understanding Active Directory® & its architecture.” ActiveReach, Jan 2022. Accessed Sept. 2022.
“What is Active Directory Migration?” Quest Software Inc, 2022. Accessed Sept 2022.

Align Projects With the IT Change Lifecycle

Increase the success of your changes by integrating project touchpoints in the change lifecycle.

Analyst Perspective

Executive Summary

Info-Tech Insight

Improvement can be incremental. You do not have to adopt every recommended improvement right away. Ensure every process change you make will create value, and slowly add improvements to ease buy-in.

Info-Tech’s approach

Use the change lifecycle to identify touchpoints.

The Info-Tech difference:

1. Start with your change lifecycle to define how change control can align with project management.
2. Make improvements to project-change alignment to benefit the relationship between the two practices and the practices individually.
3. Scope the alignment to your organization. Take on the improvements to the left one by one instead of overhauling your current process.

Use this research to improve your current process

This deck is intended to align established processes. If you are just starting to build IT change processes, see the related research below.

Successful change management will provide benefits to both the business and IT

Respond to business requests faster while reducing the number of change-related disruptions.

IT satisfaction with change management will drive business satisfaction with IT. Once the process is working efficiently, staff will be more motivated to adhere to the process, reducing the number of unauthorized changes. As fewer changes bypass proper evaluation and testing, service disruptions will decrease and business satisfaction will increase.

Change management improves core benefits to the business: the four Cs

Most organizations have at least some form of change control in place, but formalizing change management leads to the four Cs of business benefits:

1. Alignment at intake

Define what is a change and what is a project.

Both changes and projects will end up in change control in the end. Here, we define the intake.

Changes and projects will both go to change control when ready to go live. However, defining the governance needed at intake is critical.

A change should be governed by change control from beginning to end. It would typically be less than a week’s worth of work for a SME to build and come in at a nominal cost (e.g. <$20k over operating costs).

Projects on the other hand, will be governed by project management in terms of scope, scheduling, resourcing, etc. Projects typically take over a week and/or cost more. However, the project, when ready to go live, should still be scheduled through change control to avoid any conflicts at implementation. At triage and intake, a project can be further scoped based on projected scale.

This initial touchpoint between change control and project management is crucial to ensure tasks and request are executed with the proper governance. To distinguish between changes and projects at intake, list examples of each and determine what resourcing separates changes from projects.

Need help scoping projects? Download the Project Intake Classification Matrix

Info-Tech Insight

While effort and cost are good indicators of changes and projects, consider evaluating risk and complexity too.

1 Define what constitutes a change

1. As a group, brainstorm examples of changes and projects. If you wish, you may choose to also separate out additional request types such as service requests (user), operational tasks (backend), and releases.
2. Have each participant write the examples on sticky notes and populate the following chart on the whiteboard/flip chart.
3. Use the examples to draw lines and determine what defines each category.

• What makes a change distinct from a project?
• What makes a change distinct from a service request?
• What makes a change distinct from an operational task?
• When do the category workflows cross over with other categories? (For example, when does a project interact with change management?

Download the Change Management Standard Operating Procedure (SOP).

2. Alignment at build and test

Keep communications open by pre-defining and communicating project milestones.

CAB touchpoints

Consistently communicate the plan and timeline for hitting these milestones so CAB can prioritize and plan changes around it. This will give change control advanced notice of altered timelines.

RFCs

Projects may have multiple associated RFCs. Keeping CAB appraised of the project RFC or RFCs gives them the ability to further plan changes.

Change Calendar

Query and fill the change calendar with project timelines and milestones to compliment the CAB touchpoints.

Leverage the RFC to record and communicate project details

The request for change (RFC) form does not have to be a burden to fill out. If designed with value in mind, it can be leveraged to set standards on all changes (from projects and otherwise).

When looking at the RFC during the Build and Test phase of a project, prioritize the following fields to ensure the implementation will be successful from a technical and user-adoption point of view.

Filling these fields of the RFC and communicating them to the CAB at go-live approval gives the approvers confidence that the project will be implemented successfully and measures are known for when that implementation is not successful.

Download the Request for Change Form Template

Provide clear definitions of what goes on the change calendar and who’s responsible

Inputs

• Freeze periods for individual business departments/applications (e.g. finance month-end periods, HR payroll cycle, etc. – all to be investigated)
• Maintenance windows and planned outage periods
• Project schedules, and upcoming major/medium changes
• Holidays
• Business hours (some departments work 9-5, others work different hours or in different time zones, and user acceptance testing may require business users to be available)

Guidelines

• Business-defined freeze periods are the top priority.
• No major or medium normal changes should occur during the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day.
• Vendor SLA support hours are the preferred time for implementing changes.
• The vacation calendar for IT will be considered for major changes.
• Change priority: High > Medium > Low.
• Minor changes and preapproved changes have the same priority and will be decided on a case-by-case basis.

Roles

• The Change Manager will be responsible for creating and maintaining a change calendar.
• Only the Change Manager can physically alter the calendar by adding a new change after the CAB has agreed upon a deployment date.
• All other CAB members, IT support staff, and other impacted stakeholders should have access to the calendar on a read-only basis to prevent people from making unauthorized changes to deployment dates.

Info-Tech Insight

Make the calendar visible to as many parties as necessary. However, limit the number of personnel who can make active changes to the calendar to limit calendar conflicts.

3. Alignment at approval

How can project management effectively contribute to CAB?

As optional CAB members

Project SMEs may attend when projects are ready to go live and when invited by the change manager. Optional members provide details on change cross-dependencies, high-level testing, rollback, communication plans, etc. to inform prioritization and scheduling decisions.

As project management representatives

Project management should also attend CAB meetings to report in on changes to ongoing projects, implementation timelines, and project milestones. Projects are typically high-priority changes when going live due to their impact. Advanced notice of timeline and milestone changes allow the rest of the CAB to properly manage other changes going into production.

As core CAB members

The core responsibilities of CAB must still be fulfilled:

1. Protect the live environment from poorly assessed, tested, and implemented changes.

2. Prioritize changes in a way that fairly reflects change impact, urgency, and likelihood.

3. Schedule deployments in a way the minimizes conflict and disruption.

If you need to define the authority and responsibilities of the CAB, see Activity 2.1.3 of the Optimize IT Change Management blueprint.

4. Alignment at implementation

At this stage, the project or project phase is treated as any other change.

If you need to define transitioning changes to production, download Transition Projects to the Service Desk

5. Alignment at post-implementation

Tackle the most neglected portion of change management to avoid making the same mistake twice.

1. Define RFC statuses that need a PIR

Conduct PIRs for failed changes. Successful changes can simply be noted and transitioned to operations.

2. Conduct a PIR for every failed change

It’s best to perform a PIR once a change-related incident is resolved.

3. Avoid making the same mistake twice

Include a root-cause analysis, mitigation actions/timeline, and lessons learned in the documentation.

4. Report to CAB

Socialize the findings of the PIR at the subsequent CAB meeting.

5. Circle back on previous PIRs

If a similar change is conducted, append the related PIR to avoid the same mistakes.

Info-Tech Insight

Include your PIR documentation right in the RFC for easy reference.

Download the RFC template for more details on post-implementation reviews

2 Implement your alignments stepwise

1. As a group, decide on which implementations you need to make to align change management and project management.
2. For each improvement, list a timeline for implementation.
3. Update section 3.5 in the Change Management Standard Operating Procedure (SOP). to outline the responsibilities of project management within IT Change Management.

Download the Change Management Standard Operating Procedure (SOP).

Related Info-Tech Research

Assess Your IT Financial Management Maturity Effectively

Influence your organization’s strategic direction.

Analyst Perspective

Make better informed data-driven business decisions.

Technology has been evolving throughout the years, increasing complexity and investments, while putting more stress on operations and people involved. As an IT leader, you are now entrusted to run your outfit as a business, sit at the executive table as a true partner, and be involved in making decisions that best suit your organization. Therefore, you have an obligation to fulfill the needs of your end customers and live up to their expectations, which is not an easy task.

IT financial management (ITFM) helps you generate value to your organization’s clientele by bringing necessary trade-offs to light, while driving effective dialogues with your business partners and leadership team.

This research will focus on Info-Tech’s approach to ITFM maturity, aiming for a state of continuous improvement, where an organization can learn and grow as it adapts to change. As the ITFM practice matures, IT and business leaders will be able to better understand one another and together make better business decisions, driven by data.

This client advisory presentation and accompanying tool seek to support IT leaders and ITFM practitioners in evaluating and improving their current maturity. It will help document both current and target states as well as prioritize focus areas for improvement.

Bilal Alberto Saab Research Director, IT Financial Management Info-Tech Research Group

Executive Summary

The value of ITFM is undermined

ITFM is often discarded and not given enough importance and relevance due to the operational nature of IT, and the specialized skillset of its people, leading to several problems and challenges, such as:

• Unfamiliarity: Lack of knowledge and understanding related to ITFM maturity.
• Shortsightedness: Randomly reacting to changing circumstances.
• Exchange: Inability to consistently drive dialogues.
• Perception: IT is perceived as a cost center instead of a trustworthy strategic partner.

Constructive dialogues with business partners are not the norm

Business-driven conversations around financials (spending, cost, revenue) are a rarity in IT due to several factors, including:

• Foundation: Weak governance, inadequate skillset, and less than perfect processes and tools.
• Data: Lack of adequate taxonomy/data model, alongside inaccurate data leading to poor reporting and insights.
• Language: Lack of a common vocabulary across the organization.
• Organization culture: No alignment, alongside minimal communication and collaboration between IT and business partners.

Follow Info-Tech’s approach to move up the ITFM maturity ladder

Mature your ITFM practice by activating the means to make informed business decisions.

Info-Tech’s methodology helps you move the dial by focusing on three maturity focus areas:

• Build an ITFM Foundation
• Manage and Monitor IT Spending
• Bridge the Language Barrier

Info-Tech Insight

Influence your organization’s strategic direction by maturing your ITFM practice.

What is ITFM?

ITFM is not just about finance.

• ITFM has evolved from traditional budgeting, accounting, and cost optimization; however, it is much more than those activities alone.
• It starts with understanding the financial implications of technology by adopting different perspectives to become adept in communicating with various stakeholders, including finance, business partners, IT managers, and your CEO.
• Armed with this knowledge, ITFM helps you address a variety of questions, such as:
  • How are technology funds being spent?
  • Which projects is IT prioritizing and why?
  • What are the resources needed to speed IT delivery?
  • What’s the value of IT within the organization?
• ITFM’s main objective is thus to improve decision-making capabilities by facilitating communication between IT leaders and stakeholders, while enabling a customer focus attitude throughout the organization.

“ITFM embeds technology in financial management practices. Through cost, demand, and value, ITFM brings technology and business together, forging the necessary relationships and starting the right conversations to enable the best decisions for the organization.”
– Monica Braun, Research Director, Info-Tech Research Group

Your challenge

IT leaders struggle to articulate and communicate business value.

• IT spending is often questioned by different stakeholders, such as business partners and various IT business units. These questions, usually resulting from shifts in business needs, may revolve around investments, expenditures, services, and speed to market, among others. While IT may have an idea about its spending habits, aligning it to the business strategy may prove difficult.
• IT staff often does not have access to, or knowledge of, the business model and its intricacies. In an operational environment, the focus tends to be on technical issues rather than overall value.
• People tend to fear what they do not know. Some business managers may not be comfortable with technology. They do not recognize the implications and ramifications of certain implementations or understand the related terminology, which puts a strain on any conversation.

“Value is not the numbers you visualize on a chart, it’s the dialogue this data generates with your business partners and leadership team.”
– Dave Kish, Practice Lead, Info-Tech Research Group

Technology is constantly evolving

Increasing IT spending and decision-making complexity.

Common obstacles

IT leaders are not able to have constructive dialogues with their stakeholders.

• The way IT funds are spent has changed significantly, moving from the purchase of discrete hardware and software tools to implementing data lakes, cloud solutions, the metaverse and blockchain. This implies larger investments and more critical decisions. Conversations around interoperability, integration, and service-based solutions that focus more on big-picture architecture than day-to-day operations have become the norm.
• Speed to market is now a survival criterion for most organizations, requiring IT to shift rapidly based on changing priorities and customer expectations. This leads to the need for greater financial oversight, with the CFO as the gatekeeper. Today’s IT leaders need to possess both business and financial management savvy to justify their spending with various stakeholders.
• Any IT budget increase is tied to expectations of greater value. Hence, the compelling demands for IT to prove its worth to the business. Promoting value comes in two ways: 1) objectively, based on data, KPIs, and return on investment; and 2) subjectively, based on stakeholder satisfaction, alongside relationships. Building trust, credibility, and confidence can go a long way.

In a technology-driven world, advances come at a price. With greater spending required, more complex and difficult conversations arise.

Constructive dialogues are key

You don’t know what you don’t know.

• IT, being historically focused on operations, has become a hub for technically savvy personnel. On the downside, technology departments are often alien to business, causing problems such as:
  • IT staff have no knowledge of the business model and lack customer focus.
  • Business is not comfortable with technology and related jargon.
• The lack of two-way communication and business alignment is hence an important ramification. If the business does not understand technology, and IT does not speak in business terms, where does that lead us?
• Poor data quality and governance practices, alongside overly manual processes can only exasperate the situation.

IT Spending Survey

79% of respondents believe that decisions taking too long to make is either a significant or somewhat of a challenge (Flexera 2022 Tech Spend Pulse; N=501).

81% of respondents believe that ensuring spend efficiency (avoiding waste) is either a challenge or somewhat of a challenge (Flexera 2022 Tech Spend Pulse; N=501).

ITFM is trailing behind

IT leaders must learn to speak business.

In today’s world, where organizations are driving customer experience through technology investments, having a seat at the table means IT leaders must be well versed in business language and practice, including solid financial management skills.

However, IT staff across all industries aren’t very confident in how well IT is doing in managing its finances. This becomes evident after looking at three core processes:

• Demonstrating IT’s value to the business.
• Accounting of costs and budgets.
• Optimizing costs to gain the best return on investment.

Recent data from 4,137 respondents to Info-Tech’s IT Management & Governance Diagnostic shows that while most IT staff feel that these three financial management processes are important, notably fewer feel that IT management is effective at executing on them.

IT leadership’s capabilities around fundamental cost data capture appear to be lagging, not to mention the essential value-added capabilities around optimizing costs and demonstrating IT’s contribution to business value.

Source: Info-Tech Research Group, IT Management & Governance Diagnostic, 2023.

Info-Tech’s approach

We take a holistic approach to ITFM and support you throughout your maturity journey.

The Info-Tech difference:

• Info-Tech has a methodology and set of tools that will help assess your ITFM maturity and take the first step in developing an improvement plan. We have identified three maturity focus areas:
  • Build an ITFM Foundation
  • Manage and Monitor IT Spending
  • Bridge the Language Barrier
• No matter where you currently stand in your ITFM practice, there is always room for improvement. Hence, a maturity assessment should be viewed as a self-improvement tool, which is only valuable if you are willing to act on it.

Note: See Appendix A for maturity level definitions and descriptions.

Climb the maturity ladder

By growing along three maturity focus areas.

Info-Tech identified three maturity focus areas, each containing three levers.

Identify where you stand across the nine maturity levers, detect the gaps, and determine your priorities as a first step to develop an improvement plan.

Note: See Appendix B for maturity level definitions and descriptions per lever.

Key project deliverables

Each step of this activity is accompanied by supporting deliverables to help you accomplish your goals.

IT Financial Management Maturity Assessment Report Template

IT Financial Management Maturity Assessment Tool

Measure the value of this activity

Reach your 12-month maturity target.

• Determine your 12-month maturity target, identify your gaps, and set your priorities.
• Use the ITFM maturity assessment to kickstart your improvement plan by developing actionable initiatives.
• Implement your initiatives and monitor your progress to reach your 12-month target.

Build your improvement plan and implement your initiatives to move the dial and climb the maturity ladder.

Info-Tech offers various levels of support to best suit your needs

Step 1

Prepare for the ITFM maturity assessment

Content Overview

1. Identify your stakeholders
2. Set the context
3. Determine the methodology
4. Identify assessment takers

This step involves the following participants:

• CIO/IT director
• CFO/finance director
• IT finance lead
• IT audit lead
• Other IT management

1. Prepare to take the ITFM maturity assessment

3 hours

Input: Understanding your context, objectives, and methodology

Output: ITFM maturity assessment stakeholders and their objectives, ITFM maturity assessment methodology, ITFM maturity assessment takers

Materials: 1a. Prepare for Assessment tab in the ITFM Maturity Assessment Tool

Participants: CIO/IT director, CFO/finance director, IT finance lead, IT audit lead, Other IT management

1. Identify your stakeholders and document it in the ITFM Maturity Assessment Tool (see next slides). We recommend having representatives from different business units across the organization, most notably IT, IT finance, finance, and IT audit.
2. Set the context with your stakeholders and document it in the ITFM Maturity Assessment Tool. Discuss the reason behind taking the ITFM maturity assessment among the various stakeholders. Why do each of your stakeholders want to take the assessment? What are their main objectives? What would they like to achieve?
3. Determine the methodology and document it in the ITFM Maturity Assessment Tool. Discuss how you want to go about taking the assessment with your stakeholders. Do you want to have representatives from each business unit take the assessment individually, then share and discuss their findings? Do you prefer forming a working group with representatives from each business unit and go through the assessment together? Or does any of your stakeholders have a different suggestion? You will have to consider the effort, skillset, and knowledge required.
4. Identify the assessment takers and document it in the ITFM Maturity Assessment Tool. Determine who will be taking the assessment (specific names of stakeholders). Consider their availability, knowledge, and skills.

Download the IT Financial Management Maturity Assessment Tool

TEMPLATE & EXAMPLE

Document your stakeholders, objectives, and methodology

Excel Workbook: ITFM Maturity Assessment Tool – Prepare for Assessment worksheet

Refer to the example and guidelines below on how to document stakeholders, objectives, and methodology (table range: columns B to G and rows 8 to 15).

Review the following in the Excel workbook as per guidelines:

1. Navigate to the 1a. Prepare for Assessment tab.
2. Enter the full names and job titles of the ITFM maturity assessment stakeholders.
3. Document the maturity assessment objective of each of your stakeholders.
4. Document the agreed-upon methodology.

Download the IT Financial Management Maturity Assessment Tool

TEMPLATE & EXAMPLE

Document your assessment takers

Excel Workbook: ITFM Maturity Assessment Tool – Prepare for Assessment worksheet

Refer to the example and guidelines below on how to document assessment takers (table range: columns B to E and rows 18 to 25).

Review the following in the Excel workbook as per guidelines:

1. Navigate to the 1a. Prepare for Assessment tab.
2. Enter the full name of each assessment taker, along with the job title of the stakeholder they are representing.

Download the IT Financial Management Maturity Assessment Tool

Step 2

Take the ITFM maturity assessment

Content Overview

1. Complete the survey
2. Review your assessment results
3. Determine your priorities

This step involves the following participants:

• CIO/IT director
• CFO/finance director
• IT finance lead
• IT audit lead
• Other IT management

2. Take the ITFM maturity assessment

3 hours

Input: Understanding of your ITFM current state and 12-month target state, ITFM maturity assessment results

Output: ITFM current- and target-state maturity levels, average scores, and variance, ITFM current- and target-state average scores, variance, and priority by maturity focus area and maturity lever

Materials: 1b. Glossary, 2a. Assess ITFM Foundation, 2b. Assess Mngt. & Monitoring, 2c. Assess Language, and 3. Assessment Summary tabs in the ITFM Maturity Assessment Tool

Participants: CIO/IT director, CFO/finance director, IT finance lead, IT audit lead, Other IT management

1. Complete the survey: select the current and target state of each statement – refer to the glossary as needed for definitions of key terms – in the ITFM Maturity Assessment Tool (see next slides). There are three tabs (one per maturity focus area) with three tables each (nine maturity levers). Review and discuss statements with all assessment takers: consider variations, differing opinions, and reach an agreement on each statement inputs.
2. Review assessment results: navigate to the Assessment Summary tab in the ITFM maturity assessment tool (see next slides) to view your results. Review and discuss with all assessment takers: consider any shocking output and adjust survey input if necessary.
3. Determine your priorities: decide on the priority (Low/Medium/High) by maturity focus area and/or maturity lever. Rank your maturity focus area priorities from 1 to 3 and your maturity lever priorities from 1 to 9. Consider the feasibility in terms of timeframe, effort, and skillset required, positive and negative impacts on business and technology, likelihood of failure, and necessary approvals. Document your priorities in the ITFM maturity assessment tool (see next slides).
   Review and discuss priorities with all assessment takers: consider variations, differing opinions, and reach an agreement on each priority.

Download the IT Financial Management Maturity Assessment Tool

TEMPLATE & EXAMPLE

Complete the survey

Excel workbook: ITFM Maturity Assessment Tool – Survey worksheets

Refer to the example and guidelines below on how to complete the survey.

Review the following in the Excel workbook as per guidelines:

1. Navigate to the survey tabs: 2a. Assess ITFM Foundation, 2b. Assess Management and Monitoring, and 2c. Assess Language.
2. Select the appropriate current and target maturity levels.
3. Add any notes or comments per ITFM maturity statement where necessary or helpful.

Download the IT Financial Management Maturity Assessment Tool

TEMPLATE & EXAMPLE

Review your overall result

Excel Workbook: ITFM Maturity Assessment Tool – Assessment Summary worksheet

Refer to the example and guidelines below on how to review your results.

Review the following in the Excel workbook as per guidelines:

1. Navigate to tab 3. Assessment Summary.
2. Review your overall current state and target state result along with the corresponding variance.

Download the IT Financial Management Maturity Assessment Tool

TEMPLATE & EXAMPLE

Set your priorities

Excel Workbook: ITFM Maturity Assessment Tool – Assessment Summary worksheet

Refer to the example and guidelines below on how to review your results per maturity focus area and maturity lever, then prioritize accordingly.

Review the following in the Excel workbook as per guidelines:

1. Navigate to tab 3. Assessment Summary.
2. Review your current-state and target-state result along with the corresponding variance per maturity focus area and maturity lever.
3. Select the appropriate priority for each maturity focus area and maturity lever.
4. Enter a unique rank for each maturity focus area (1 to 3).
5. Enter a unique rank for each maturity lever (1 to 9).

Download the IT Financial Management Maturity Assessment Tool

Step 3

Communicate your ITFM maturity results

Content Overview

1. Review your assessment charts
2. Customize the assessment report
3. Communicate your results

This step involves the following participants:

• CIO/IT director
• CFO/finance director
• IT finance lead
• IT audit lead
• Other IT management

3. Communicate your ITFM maturity results

3 hours

Input: ITFM maturity assessment results

Output: Customized ITFM maturity assessment report

Materials: 3. Assessment Summary tab in the ITFM Maturity Assessment Tool, ITFM Maturity Assessment Report Template

Participants: CIO/IT director, CFO/finance director, IT finance lead, IT audit lead, Other IT management

1. Review assessment charts: navigate to the Assessment Summary tab in the ITFM Maturity Assessment Tool (see next slides) to view your results and related charts.
2. Edit the report template: complete the template based on your results and priorities to develop your customized ITFM maturity assessment report (see next slide).
3. Communicate results: communicate and deliberate the assessment results with assessment takers at a first stage, and with your stakeholders at a second stage. The objective is to agree on next steps, including developing an improvement plan.

Download the IT Financial Management Maturity Assessment Tool

TEMPLATE & EXAMPLE

Review assessment charts

Excel Workbook: ITFM Maturity Assessment Tool – Assessment Summary worksheet

Refer to the example below on charts depicting different views of the maturity assessment results across the three focus areas and nine levers.

From the Excel workbook, after completing your potential initiatives and filling all related entries in the Outline Initiatives tab:

1. Navigate to tab 3. Assessment Summary.
2. Review each of the charts.
3. Navigate back to the survey tabs to examine, drill down, and amend individual entries as you deem necessary.

Download the IT Financial Management Maturity Assessment Tool

TEMPLATE & EXAMPLE

Customize your report

PowerPoint presentation: ITFM Maturity Assessment Report Template

Refer to the example below on slides depicting different views of the maturity assessment results across the three maturity focus areas and nine maturity levers.

Slide 6: Edit levels based on your assessment results. Copy and paste the appropriate maturity level definition and description from slide 4.

Slide 7: Copy related charts from the assessment summary tab in the Excel workbook and remove the chart title. You can use the “Outer Offset: Bottom” shadow under shape effects on the chart.

Slide 8: Copy related charts from the assessment summary tab in the Excel workbook and remove the chart title and legend. You can use the “Outer Offset: Center” shadow under shape effects on the chart.

From the ITFM Maturity Assessment Report Template:

1. Edit the report based on your results found in the assessment summary tab of the Excel workbook (see previous slide).
2. Review slides 6 to 8 and bring necessary adjustments.

Download the IT Financial Management Maturity Assessment Report Template

Make informed business decisions

Take a holistic approach to ITFM.

• A thorough understanding of your technology spending in relation to business needs and drivers is essential to make informed decisions. As a trusted partner, you cannot have effective conversations around budgets and cost optimization without a solid foundation.
• It is important to realize that ITFM is not a one-time exercise, but a continuous, sustainable process to educate (teach, mentor, and train), increase transparency, and assign responsibility.
• Move up the ITFM maturity ladder by improving across three maturity focus areas:
  • Build an ITFM Foundation
  • Manage and Monitor IT Spending
  • Bridge the Language Barrier

What’s Next?

Communicate your maturity results with stakeholders and develop an actionable ITFM improvement plan.

And remember, having informed discussions with your business partners and stakeholders, where technology helps propel your organization forward, is priceless!

IT Financial Management Team

	Dave Kish Practice Lead, ITFM Practice Info-Tech Research Group
	Jennifer Perrier Principal Research Director, ITFM Practice Info-Tech Research Group
	Angie Reynolds Principal Research Director, ITFM Practice Info-Tech Research Group
	Monica Braun Research Director, ITFM Practice Info-Tech Research Group
	Rex Ding Research Specialist, ITFM Practice Info-Tech Research Group
	Aman Kumari Research Specialist, ITFM Practice Info-Tech Research Group

Research Contributors and Experts

	Amy Byalick Vice President, IT Finance Info-Tech Research Group	Amy Byalick is an IT Finance practitioner with 15 years of experience supporting CIOs and IT leaders elevating the IT financial storytelling and unlocking insights. Amy is currently working at Johnson Controls as the VP, IT Finance, previously working at PepsiCo, AmerisourceBergen, and Jacobs.
	Carol Carr Technical Counselor, Executive Services Info-Tech Research Group
	Scott Fairholm Executive Counselor, Executive Services Info-Tech Research Group
	Gokul Rajan Executive Counselor, Executive Services Info-Tech Research Group
	Allison Kinnaird Practice Lead, Infrastructure & Operations Info-Tech Research Group
	Isabelle Hertanto Practice Lead, Security & Privacy Info-Tech Research Group

Related Info-Tech Research

	Achieve IT Spending Transparency Mature your ITFM practice by activating the means to make informed business decisions.
	Build Your IT Cost Optimization Roadmap Develop an IT cost optimization strategy based on your specific circumstances and timeline.

Bibliography

Eby, Kate. “The Complete Guide to Organizational Maturity: Models, Levels, and Assessments.” Smartsheet, 8 June 2022. Web.

“Financial Management Maturity Model.” National Audit Office, n.d. Accessed 28 Apr. 2023.

“ITFM/TBM Program Maturity Guide.” Nicus Software, n.d. Accessed 28 Apr. 2023.

Jouravlev, Roman. "Service Financial Management: ITIL 4 Practice Guide." Axelos, 2020.

McCarthy, Seamus. “Financial Management Maturity Model: A Good Practice Guide.” Office of the Comptroller & Auditor General, 26 June 2018. Web.

“Principles for Effective Risk Data Aggregation and Risk Reporting.“ Bank for International Settlements, Jan. 2013. Web.

“Role & Influence of the Technology Decision-Maker 2022.” Foundry, 2022. Web.

Stackpole, Beth. “State of the CIO, 2022: Focus turns to IT fundamentals.” CIO, 21 March 2022. Web.

“Tech Spend Pulse.” Flexera, 2022. Web.

Appendix A

Definition and Description
Per Maturity Level

ITFM maturity levels and definitions

Appendix B

Maturity Level Definitions and Descriptions
Per Lever

Establish your ITFM team

Maturity focus area: Build an ITFM foundation.

Set up your governance structure

Maturity focus area: Build an ITFM foundation

Adopt ITFM processes and tools

Maturity focus area: Build an ITFM foundation.

Standardize your taxonomy and data model

Maturity focus area: Manage and monitor IT spending.

Identify, gather, and prepare your data

Maturity focus area: Manage and monitor IT spending.

Analyze your findings and develop your reports

Maturity focus area: Manage and monitor IT spending.

Communicate your IT spending

Maturity focus area: Bridge the language barrier.

Educate the masses

Maturity focus area: Bridge the language barrier.

Influence your organization’s culture

Maturity focus area: Bridge the language barrier.

Build Your Enterprise Innovation Program

Transform your business by adopting the culture and practices that drive innovation.

Analyst Perspective

Innovation is not about ideas, it's about people.

Many organizations stumble when implementing innovation programs. Innovation is challenging to get right, and even more challenging to sustain over the long term.

One of the common stumbling blocks we see comes from organizations focusing more on the ideas and the process than on the culture and the people needed to make innovation a way of life. However, the most successful innovators are the ones which have adopted a culture of innovation and reinforce innovative behaviors across their organization. Organizational cultures which promote growth mindset, trust, collaboration, learning, and a willingness to fail are much more likely to produce successful innovators.

This research is not just about culture, but culture is the starting point for innovation. My hope is that organizations will go beyond the processes and methodologies laid out here and use this research to dramatically improve their organization's performance.

Kim Osborne Rodriguez
Research Director, CIO Advisory
Info-Tech Research Group

Executive Summary

Your Challenge

As a leader in your organization, you need to:

• Understand your organization's innovation goals.
• Create an innovation program or structure.
• Develop a culture of innovation across your team or organization.
• Demonstrate an ability to innovate and grow the business.

Common Obstacles

In the past, you might have experienced one or more of the following:

• Innovation initiatives lose momentum.
• Cynicism and distrust hamper innovation.
• Innovation efforts are unfocused or don't provide the anticipated value.
• Bureaucracy has created a bottleneck that stifles innovation.

Info-Tech's Approach

This blueprint will help you:

• Understand the different types of innovation.
• Develop a clear vision, scope, and focus.
• Create organizational culture and behaviors aligned with your innovation ambitions.
• Adopt an operational model and methodologies best suited for your culture, goals, and budget.
• Successfully run a pilot program.

Info-Tech Insight

There is no single right way to approach innovation. Begin with an understanding of your innovation ambitions, your existing culture, and the resources available to you, then adopt the innovation operating model that is best suited to your situation.

Note: This research is written for the individual who is leading the development of the innovation. This role is referred to as the Chief Innovation Officer (CINO) throughout this research but could be the CIO, CTO, IT director, or another business leader.

Why is innovation so challenging?

Most organizations want to be innovative, but very few succeed.

• Bureaucracy slows innovation: Innovation requires speed – it is important to fail fast and early so you can iterate to improve the final solution. Small, agile organizations like startups tend to be more risk tolerant and can move more quickly to iterate on new ideas compared to larger organizations.
• Change is uncomfortable: Most people are profoundly uncomfortable with failure, risk, and unknowns – three critical components of innovation. Humans are wired to think efficiently rather than innovatively, which leads to confirmation bias and lack of ingenuity.
• You will likely fail: Innovation initiatives rarely succeed on the first try – Harvard Business Review estimates between 70% and 90% of innovation efforts fail. Organizations which are more tolerant of failure tend to be significantly more innovative than those which are not (Review of Financial Studies, 2014).

Based on a survey of global innovation trends and practices:

The biggest obstacles to innovation are cultural

The biggest obstacles to innovation in large companies

Based on a survey of 270 business leaders.
Source: Harvard Business Review, 2018

The most common challenges business leaders experience relate to people and culture. Success is based on people, not ideas.

Politics, turf wars, and a lack of alignment: territorial departments, competition for resources, and unclear roles are holding back the innovation efforts of 55% of respondents.

FIX IT
Senior leadership needs to be clear on the innovation goals and how business units are expected to contribute to them.

Cultural issues: many large companies have a culture that rewards operational excellence and disincentivizes risk. A history of failed innovation attempts may result in significant resistance to new change efforts.

FIX IT
Cultural change takes time. Ensure you are rewarding collaboration and risk-taking, and hire people with fresh new perspectives.

Inability to act on signals crucial to the future of the business: only 18% of respondents indicated their organization was unaware of disruptions, but 42% said they struggled with acting on leading indicators of change.

FIX IT
Build the ability to quickly run pilots or partner with startups and incubators to test out new ideas without lengthy review and approval processes.
Source: Harvard Business Review, 2018

Build Your Enterprise Innovation Program

Define your purpose, assess your culture, and build a practice that delivers true innovation.

1 Source: Boston Consulting Group, 2021
2 Source: Boston Consulting Group, 2019
3 Source: Harvard Business Review, 2018

Use this research to outperform your peers

A seven-year review showed that the most innovative companies outperformed the market by upwards of 30%.

Innovators are defined as companies that were listed on Fast Company World's 50 Most Innovative Companies for 2+ years.

Innovation is critical to business success.

A 25-year study by Business Development Canada and Statistics Canada showed that innovation was more important to business success than management, human resources, marketing, or finance.

Executive brief case study

INDUSTRY: Healthcare
SOURCE: Interview

Culture is critical

This Info-Tech member is a nonprofit, community-based mental health organization located in the US. It serves about 25,000 patients per year in community, school, and clinic settings.

This organization takes its innovation culture very seriously and has developed methodologies to assess individual and team innovation readiness as well as innovation types, which it uses to determine everyone's role in the innovation process. These assessments look at knowledge of and trust in the organization, its innovation profile, and its openness to change. Innovation enthusiasts are involved early in the process when it's important to dream big, while more pragmatic perspectives are incorporated later to improve the final solution.

Results

The organization has developed many innovative approaches to delivering healthcare. Notably, they have reimagined patient scheduling and reduced wait times to the extent that some patients can be seen the same day. They are also working to improve access to mental health care despite a shortage of professionals.

Developing an Innovative Culture

• Innovation Readiness Assessment
• Coaching Specific to Innovation Profile
• Innovation Enthusiasts Involved Early
• Innovation Pragmatists Involved Later
• High Success Rate of Innovation

Define innovation roles and responsibilities

Info-Tech's methodology for building your enterprise innovation program

Innovation program taxonomy

This research uses the following common terms:

Innovation Operating Model
The operating model describes how the innovation program delivers value to the organization, including how the program is structured, the steps from idea generation to enterprise launch, and the methodologies used.
Examples: Innovation Hub, Grassroots Innovation.

Innovation Methodology
Methodologies describe the ways the operating model is carried out, and the approaches used in the innovation practice.
Examples: Design Thinking, Weighted Criteria Scoring

Chief Innovation Officer
This research is written for the person or team leading the innovation program – this might be a CINO, CIO, or other leader in the organization.

Innovation Team
The innovation team may vary depending on the operating model, but generally consists of the individuals involved in facilitating innovation across the organization. This may be, but does not have to be, a dedicated innovation department.

Innovation Program
The program for generating ideas, running pilot projects, and building a business case to implement across the enterprise.

Pilot Project
A way of testing and validating a specific concept in the real world through a minimum viable product or small-scale implementation. The pilot projects are part of the overall pilot program.

Insight summary

Innovation is about people, not ideas or processes
Innovation does not require a formal process, a dedicated innovation team, or a large budget; the most important success factor for innovation is culture. Companies that facilitate innovative behaviors like growth mindset, collaboration, and the ability to take smart risk are most likely to see the benefits of innovation.

Very few are doing innovation well
Only 30% of companies consider themselves innovative, and there's a good reason: innovation involves unknowns, risk, and failure – three situations that people and organizations typically do their best to avoid. Counter this by removing the barriers to innovation.

Culture is the greatest barrier to innovation
In a survey of 270 business leaders, the top three most common obstacles were politics, turf wars, and alignment; culture issues; and inability to act on signals crucial to the business (Harvard Business Review, 2018). If you don't have a supportive culture, your ability to innovate will be significantly reduced.

Innovation is a means to an end
It is not the end itself. Don't get caught up in innovation for the sake of innovation – make sure you are getting the benefits from your investments. Measurable success factors are critical for maintaining the long-term success of your innovation engine.

Tackle wicked problems
Innovative approaches are better at solving complex problems than traditional practices. Organizations that prioritize innovation during a crisis tend to outperform their peers by over 30% and improve their market position (McKinsey, 2020).

Innovate or die
Innovation is critical to business growth. A 25-year study showed that innovation was more important to business success than management, human resources, marketing, or finance (Statistics Canada, 2006).

Blueprint deliverables

Each step of this blueprint is accompanied by supporting deliverables to help you accomplish your goals:

Sample Job Descriptions and Organization Charts

Determine the skills, knowledge, and structure you need to make innovation happen.

Ideation Session Template

Facilitate an ideation session with your staff to identify areas for innovation.

Initiative Prioritization Workbook

Evaluate ideas to identify those which are most likely to provide value.

Key deliverable:

Enterprise Innovation Program Summary

Communicate how you plan to innovate with a report summarizing the outputs from this research.

Measure the value of this research

US businesses spend over half a trillion dollars on innovation annually. What are they getting for it?

• The top innovators(1) typically spend 5-15% of their budgets on innovation (including R&D).
• This research helps organizations develop a successful innovation program, which delivers value to the organization in the form of new products, services, and methods.
• Leverage this research to:
  • Get your innovation program off the ground quickly.
  • Increase internal knowledge and expertise.
  • Generate buy-in and excitement about innovation.
  • Develop the skills and capabilities you need to drive innovation over the long term.
  • Validate your innovation concept.
  • Streamline and integrate innovation across the organization.

(1) based on BCG's 50 Most Innovative Companies 2022

Info-Tech offers various levels of support to best suit your needs

DIY Toolkit

“Our team has already made this critical project a priority, and we have the time and capability, but some guidance along the way would be helpful.”

Guided Implementation

“Our team knows that we need to fix a process, but we need assistance to determine where to focus. Some check-ins along the way would help keep us on track.”

Workshop

“We need to hit the ground running and get this project kicked off immediately. Our team has the ability to take this over once we get a framework and strategy in place.”

Consulting

“Our team does not have the time or the knowledge to take this project on. We need assistance through the entirety of this project.”

Diagnostics and consistent frameworks used throughout all four options

Guided implementation

What does a typical guided implementation (GI) on this topic look like?

A GI is a series of calls with an Info-Tech analyst to help implement our best practices in your organization.

A typical GI is 8 to 12 calls over the course of three to six months.

Workshop overview

Contact your account representative for more information.
workshops@infotech.com 1-888-670-8889

Phase 1: Define Your Purpose

Develop a better understanding of the drivers for innovation and what success looks like.

This phase will walk you through the following activities:

• Understand your innovation mandate, including its drivers, scope, and focus.
• Define what innovation means to your organization.
• Develop an innovation vision and guiding principles.
• Articulate the value proposition and proposed metrics for evaluating program success.

This phase involves the following participants:

• CINO
• Business executives

Case study

INDUSTRY: Transportation
SOURCE: Interview

ArcBest
ArcBest is a multibillion-dollar shipping and logistics company which leverages innovative technologies to provide reliable and integrated services to its customers.

An Innovative Culture Starts at the Top
ArcBest's innovative culture has buy-in and support from the highest level of the company. Michael Newcity, ArcBest's CEO, is dedicated to finding better ways of serving their customers and supports innovation across the company by dedicating funding and resources toward piloting and scaling new initiatives.
Having a clear purpose and mandate for innovation at all levels of the organization has resulted in extensive grassroots innovation and the development of a formalized innovation program.

Results
ArcBest has a legacy of innovation, going back to its early days when it developed a business intelligence solution before anything else existed on the market. It continues to innovate today and is now partnering with start-ups to further expand its innovation capabilities.

"We don't micromanage or process-manage incremental innovation. We hire really smart people who are inspired to create new things and we let them run – let them create – and we celebrate it.
Our dedication to innovation comes from the top – I am both the President and the Chief Innovation Officer, and innovation is one of my top priorities."

Michael Newcity
President and Chief Innovation Officer ArcBest

1.1 Understand your innovation mandate

Before you can act, you need to understand the following:

• Where is the drive for innovation coming from?
  The source of your mandate dictates the scope of your innovation practice – in general, innovating outside the scope of your mandate (i.e. trying to innovate on products when you don't have buy-in from the product team) will not be successful.
• What is meant by "innovation"?
  There are many different definitions for innovation. Before pursuing innovation at your organization, you need to understand how it is defined. Use the definition in this section as a starting point, and craft your own definition of innovation.
• What kind of innovation are you targeting?
  Innovation can be internal or external, emergent or deliberate, and incremental or radically transformative. Understanding what kind of innovation you want is the starting point for your innovation practice.

The source of your mandate dictates the scope of your influence

You can only influence what you can control.

Unless your mandate comes from the CEO or Board of Directors, driving enterprise-wide innovation is very difficult. If you do not have buy-in from senior business leaders, use lighthouse projects and a smaller innovation practice to prove the value of innovation before taking on enterprise innovation.

In order to execute on a mandate to build innovation, you don't just need buy-in. You need support in the form of resources and funding, as well as strong leadership who can influence culture and the authority to change policies and practices that inhibit innovation.

For more resources on building relationships in your organization, refer to Info-Tech's Become a Transformational CIO blueprint.

What is "innovation"?

Innovation is often easier to recognize than define.

Align on a useful definition of innovation for your organization before you embark on a journey of becoming more innovative.

Innovation is the practice of developing new methods, products or services which provide value to an organization.

Practice
This does not have to be a formal process – innovation is a means to an end, not the end itself.

New
What does "new" mean to you?

• New application of an existing method
• Developing a completely original product
• Adopting a service from another industry

Value
What does value mean to you? Look to your business strategy to understand what goals the organization is trying to achieve, then determine how "value" will be measured.

Info-Tech Insight

Some innovations are incremental, while some are radically transformative. Decide what kind of innovation you want to cultivate before developing your strategy.

We can categorize innovation in three ways

Evaluate your goals with respect to innovation: focus, strategy, and potential to transform.

Focus: Where will you innovate?

Strategy: To what extent will you guide innovation efforts?

Potential: How radical will your innovations be?

What are your ambitions?

1. Develop a better understanding of what type of innovation you are trying to achieve by plotting out your goals on the categories on the left.
2. All categories are independent of one another, so your goals may fall anywhere on the scales for each category.
3. Understanding your innovation ambitions helps establish the operating model best suited for your innovation practice.
4. In general, innovation which is more external, deliberate, and radical tends to be more centralized.

Activity 1.1 Understand your innovation mandate

1 hour

1. Schedule a 30-minute discussion with the person (i.e. CEO) or group (i.e. Board of Directors) ultimately requesting the shift toward innovation. If there is no external party, then conduct this assessment yourself.
2. Facilitate a discussion that addresses the following questions:

• What is meant by "innovation"?
• What are they hoping to achieve through innovation?
• What is the innovation scope? Are any areas off-limits (i.e. org structure, new products, certain markets)?
• What is the budget (i.e. people, money) they are willing to commit to innovation?
• What type of innovation are they pursuing?

3. Record this information and complete the "Our Purpose" section of the Innovation Program Template.

Download the Innovation Program Template.

Input

• Knowledge of the key decision maker/sponsor for innovation

Output

• Understanding of the mandate for innovation, including definition, value, scope, budget, and type of innovation

Materials

• Innovation Program Template

Participants

• CINO
• CEO, CTO, or Board of Directors (whoever is requesting/sponsoring the pursuit of innovation)

1.2 Define your innovation ambitions

Articulate your future state through a vision and guiding principles.

• Vision and purpose make up the foundation on which all other design aspects will be based. These aspects should not be taken lightly, but rather they should be the force that aligns everyone to work toward a common outcome. It is incumbent on leaders to make them part of the DNA of the organization – to drive organization, structure, culture, and talent strategy.
• Your vision statement is a future-focused statement that summarizes what you hope to achieve. It should be inspirational, ambitious, and concise.
• Your guiding principles outline the guardrails for your innovation practice. What will your focus be? How will you approach innovation? What is off-limits?
• Define the scope and focus for your innovation efforts. This includes what you can innovate on and what is off limits.

Your vision statement is your North Star

Articulate an ambitious, inspirational, and concise vision statement for your innovation efforts.

A strong vision statement:

• Is future-focused and outlines what you want to become and what you want to achieve.
• Provides focus and direction.
• Is ambitious, focused, and concise.
• Answers: What problems are we solving? Who and what are we changing?

Examples:

• "We create radical new technologies to solve some of the world's hardest problems." – Google X, the Moonshot Factory
• "To be the most innovative enterprise in the world." – 3M
• "To use our imagination to bring happiness to millions of people." – Disney

"Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion." – Jack Welch, Former Chairman and CEO of GE

Your guiding principles are the guardrails for creativity

Strong guiding principles give your team the freedom and direction to innovate.

Strong guiding principles:

• Focus on the approach, i.e. how things are done, as opposed to what needs to be done.
• Are specific to the organization.
• Inform and direct decision making with actionable statements. Avoid truisms, general statements, and observations.
• Are long-lasting and based on values, not solutions.
• Are succinct and easily digestible.
• Can be measured and verified.
• Answers: How do we approach innovation? What are our core values

Craft your guiding principles using these examples

Encourage experimentation and risk-taking
Innovation often requires trying new things, even if they might fail. We encourage experimentation and learn from failure, so that new ideas can be tested and refined.

Foster collaboration and cross-functional teams
Innovation often comes from the intersection of different perspectives and skill sets.

Customer-centric
Focus on creating value for the end user. This means understanding their needs and pain points, and using that knowledge to develop new methods, products, or services.

Embrace diversity and inclusivity
Innovation comes from a variety of perspectives, backgrounds, and experiences. We actively seek out and encourage diversity and inclusivity among our team members.

Foster a culture of learning and continuous improvement
Innovation requires continuous learning, development, and growth. We facilitate a culture that encourages learning and development, and that seeks feedback and uses it to improve.

Flexible and adaptable
We adapt to changes in the market, customer needs, and new technologies, so that it can continue to innovate and create value over time.

Data-driven
We use performance metrics and data to guide our innovation efforts.

Transparency
We are open and transparent in our processes and let the business needs guide our innovation efforts. We do not lead innovation, we facilitate it.

Activity 1.2 Craft your vision statement and guiding principles

1-2 hours

1. Gather your innovation team and key program sponsors. Review the guidelines for creating vision statements and guiding principles, as well as your mandate and focus for innovation.
2. As a group, discuss what you hope to achieve through your innovation efforts.
3. Separately, have each person write down their ideas for a vision statement. Bring the group back together and share ideas. Group the concepts together and construct a single statement which outlines your aspirational vision.
4. As a group, review the example guiding principles.
5. Separately, have each person write down three to five guiding principles. Bring the group back together and share ideas. Group similar concepts together and consolidate duplicate ideas. From this list, construct six to eight guiding principles.
6. Document your vision and guiding principles in the appropriate sections of the Innovation Program Template.

Input

• Understanding of your innovation mandate
• Business vision, mission, and values
• Sample vision statements and guiding principles

Output

• Vision statement
• Guiding principles

Materials

• In person: Whiteboard/flip charts, sticky notes, pens, and notepads
• Virtual: Consider using a shared document, virtual whiteboard, or online facilitation tool like MURAL
• Innovation Program Template

Participants

• CINO
• Innovation sponsors
• Business leaders
• Innovation team

1.3 Determine your value proposition and metrics

Justify the existence of the innovation program with a strong value proposition.

• The value proposition for developing an innovation program will be different for each organization, depending on what the organization hopes to achieve. Consider your mandate for innovation as well as the type of innovation you are pursuing when crafting the value proposition.
• Some of the reasons organizations may pursue innovation:
  • Business growth: Respond to market disruption; create new customers; take advantage of opportunities.
  • Branding: Create market differentiation; increase customer satisfaction and retention; adapt to customer needs.
  • Profitability: Improve products, services, or operations to increase competitiveness and profitability; develop more efficient processes.
  • Culture: Foster a culture of creativity and experimentation within the organization, encouraging employees to think outside the box.
  • Positive impact: Address social challenges such as poverty and climate change.

Develop a strong value proposition for your innovation program

Demonstrate the value to the business.

A strong value proposition not only articulates the value that the business will derive from the innovation program but also provides a clear focus, helps to communicate the innovation goals, and ultimately drives the success of the program.

Focus
Prioritize and focus innovation efforts to create solutions that provide real value to the organization

Communicate
Communicate the mandate and benefits of innovation in a clear and compelling way and inspire people to think differently

Measure Success
Measure the success of your program by evaluating outcomes based on the value proposition

Track appropriate success metrics for your innovation program

Your success metrics should link back to your organizational goals and your innovation program's value proposition.

Revenue Growth: Increase in revenue generated by new products or services.

Market Share: Percentage of total market that the business captures as a result of innovation.

Customer Satisfaction: Reviews, customer surveys, or willingness to recommend the company.

Employee Engagement: Engagement surveys, performance, employee retention, or turnover.

Innovation Output: The number of new products, services, or processes that have been developed.

Return on Investment: Financial return on the resources invested in the innovation process.

Social Impact: Number of people positively impacted, net reduction in emissions, etc.

Time to Launch: The time it takes for a new product or service to go from idea to launch.

Info-Tech Insight

The total impact of innovation is often intangible and extremely difficult to capture in performance metrics. Focus on developing a few key metrics rather than trying to capture the full value of innovation.

How much does innovation cost?

The top innovators(1) in the world spend 5% to 15% of their revenue on innovation.

Innovation requires a dedicated investment of time, money, and resources in order to be successful. The most innovative companies, based on Boston Consulting Group's ranking of the 50 most innovative companies in the world, spend significant portions of their revenue on research and development.

Note: This data uses research and development as a proxy for innovation spending, which may overestimate the total spend on what this research considers true innovation.

(1) Based on Boston Consulting Group's ranking of the 50 most innovative companies in the world, 2022
(2) Macrotrends, based on the 12 months ending Sept 30, 2022
(3) Statista
(4) CNBC, 2022

Activity 1.3 Develop your value proposition and performance metrics

1 hour

1. Review your mandate and vision statement. Write down your innovation goals and desired outcomes from pursuing innovation, prioritize the desired outcomes, and select the top five.
2. For each desired outcome, develop one to two metrics which could be used to track its success. Some outcomes are difficult to track, so get creative when it comes to developing metrics. If you get stuck, think about what would differentiate a great outcome from an unsuccessful one.
3. Once you have developed a list of three to five key metrics, read over the list and ensure that the metrics you have developed don't negatively influence your innovation. For example, a metric of the number of successful launches may drive people toward launching before a product is ready.
4. For each metric, develop a goal. For example, you may target 1% revenue growth over the next fiscal year or 20% energy use reduction.
5. Document your value proposition and key performance metrics in the appropriate sections of the Innovation Program Template.

Input

• Understanding of your innovation mandate
• Vision statement

Output

• Value proposition
• Performance metrics

Materials

• Innovation Program Template

Participants

• CINO

Phase 2: Align Your People

Create a culture that fosters innovative behaviors and puts processes in place to support them.

This phase will walk you through the following activities:

• Understand the key aspects of innovative cultures, and the behaviors associated with innovation.
• Assess your culture and identify gaps.
• Define your innovation operating model based on your organizational culture and the focus for innovation.
• Build your core innovation capabilities, including an innovation core team (if required based on your operating model).

This phase involves the following participants:

• CINO
• Innovation team

2.1 Foster a culture of innovation

Culture is the most important driver of innovation – and the most challenging to get right.

• Fostering a culture of innovation requires a broad approach which considers the perspectives of individuals, teams, leadership, and the overall organization.
• If you do not have support from leadership, it is very difficult to change organizational culture. It may be more effective to start with an innovation pilot or lighthouse project in order to gain support before addressing your culture.
• Rather than looking to change outcomes, focus on the behaviors which lead to innovation – such as growth mindset and willingness to fail. If these aren't in place, your ability to innovate will be limited.
• This section focuses on the specific behaviors associated with increased innovation. For additional resources on implementing these changes, refer to Info-Tech's other research:

Info-Tech's Fix Your IT Culture can help you promote innovative behaviors

Refer to Improve IT Team Effectiveness to address team challenges

Build a culture of innovation

Focus on behaviors, not outcomes.

The following behaviors and key indicators either stifle or foster innovation.

Ensure you are not inadvertently stifling innovation.
Review the following to ensure that the desired behaviors are promoted:

• Hiring practices
• Performance evaluation metrics
• Rewards and incentives
• Corporate policies
• Governance structures
• Leadership behavior

Case study

INDUSTRY: Commercial Real Estate and Retail
SOURCE: Interview

How not to approach innovation.

This anonymous national organization owned commercial properties across the country and had the goal of becoming the most innovative real estate and retail company in the market.

The organization pursued innovation in the digital solutions space across its commercial and retail properties. Within this space, there were significant differences in risk tolerance across teams, which resulted in the more risk-tolerant teams excluding the risk-averse members from discussions in order to circumvent corporate policies on risk tolerance. This resulted in an adversarial and siloed culture where each group believed they knew better than the other, and the more risk-averse teams felt like they were policing the actions of the risk-tolerant group.

Results

Morale plummeted, and many of the organization's top people left. Unfortunately, one of the solutions did not meet regulatory requirements, and the company faced negative media coverage and legal action. There was significant reputational damage as a result.

Lessons Learned

Considering differences in risk tolerance and risk appetite is critical when pursuing innovation. While everyone doesn't have to agree, leadership needs to understand the different perspectives and ensure that no one party is dominating the conversation over the others. An understanding of corporate risk tolerance and risk appetite is necessary to drive innovation.

All perspectives have a place in innovation. More risk tolerant perspectives should be involved early in the ideas-generation phase, and risk-averse perspectives should be considered later when ideas are being refined.

Speed should not override safety or circumvent corporate policies.

Understand your risk tolerance and risk appetite

Evaluate and align the appetite for risk.

• It is important to understand the organization's risk tolerance as well as the desire for risk. Consider the following risk categories when investigating the organization's views on risk:
  • Financial risk: the potential for financial or property loss.
  • Operational risk: the potential for disruptions to operations.
  • Reputational risk: the potential for negative impact to brand or reputation.
  • Compliance risk: the potential for loss due to non-compliance with laws and regulations.
• Greater risk tolerance typically enables greater innovation. Understand the varying levels of risk tolerance across your organization, and how these differences might impact innovation efforts.

It is more important to match the level of risk tolerance to the degree of innovation required. Not all innovation needs to be (or can feasibly be) disruptive.
Many factors impact risk tolerance including:

• Regulation
• Organization size
• Country
• Industry
• Personal experience
• Type of risk

Use Info-Tech's Security Risk Management research to better understand risk tolerance

Activity 2.1 Assess your innovation culture

1-3 hours

1. Review the behaviors which support and stifle innovation and give each behavior a score from 1 (stifling innovation) to 5 (fostering innovation). Any behaviors which fall below a 4 on this scale should be prioritized in your efforts to create an innovative culture.
2. Review the following policies and practices to determine how they may be contributing to the behaviors you see in your organization:
   1. Hiring practices
   2. Performance evaluation metrics
   3. Rewards, recognition, and incentives
   4. Corporate policies
   5. Governance structures
   6. Leadership behavior
3. Identify three concrete actions you can take to correct any behaviors which are stifling innovation. Examples might be revising a policy which punishes failure or changing performance incentives to reward appropriate risk taking.
4. Summarize your findings in the appropriate section of the Innovation Program Template.

Input

• Innovation behaviors

Output

• Understanding of your organization's culture
• Concrete actions you can take to promote innovation

Materials

• List of innovative behaviors
• Relevant policies and documents to review
• Innovation Program Template

Participants

• CINO

2.2 Define your innovation model

Set up your innovation practice for success using proven models and methodologies.

• There are many ways to approach innovation, from highly distributed forms where it's just part of everyone's job to very centralized and arm's-length innovation hubs or even outsourced innovation via startups. You can combine different approaches to create your own approach.
• You may or may not have a formal innovation team, but if you do, their role is to facilitate innovation – not lead it. Innovation is most effective when it is led by the business.
• There are many tools and methodologies you can use to facilitate innovation. Choose the one (or combination) that best suits your needs.

Select the right model

There is no one right way to pursue innovation, but some methods are better than others for specific situations and goals. Consider your existing culture, your innovation goals, and your budget when selecting the right methodology for your innovation.

Use the right methodologies to support different stages of your innovation process

Adapted from Niklaus Gerber via Medium, 2022

Methodologies are most useful when they are aligned with the goals of the innovation organization.

For example, design thinking tends to be excellent for earlier innovation planning, while Agile can allow for faster implementation and launch of initiatives later in the process.

Consider combining two or more methodologies to create a custom approach that best suits your organization's capabilities and goals.

Sample methodologies

A robust innovation methodology ensures that the process for developing, prioritizing, selecting, implementing, and measuring initiatives is aligned with the results you are hoping to achieve.

Different types of problems (drivers for innovation) may necessitate different methodologies, or a combination of methodologies.

Hackathon: An event which brings people together to solve a well-defined problem.

Design Thinking: Creative approach that focuses on understanding the needs of users.

Lean Startup: Emphasizes rapid experimentation in order to validate business hypotheses.

Design Sprint: Five-day process for answering business questions via design, prototyping, and testing.

Agile: Iterative design process that emphasizes project management and retrospectives.

Three Horizons: Framework that looks at opportunities on three different time horizons.

Innovation Ambition Matrix: Helps organizations categorize projects as part of the core offering, an adjacent offering, or completely new.

Global Innovation Management: A process of identifying, developing and implementing new ideas, products, services, or processes using alternative thinking.

Blue Ocean Strategy: A methodology that helps organizations identify untapped market space and create new markets via unique value propositions.

Activity 2.2 Design your innovation model

1-2 hours

1. Think about the following factors which influence the design of your innovation practice:
   1. Existing organizational culture
   2. Available funding to support innovation
   3. Type of innovation you are targeting
2. Review the innovation approaches, and identify which approach is most suitable for your situation. Note why this approach was selected.
3. Review the innovation methodologies and research those of interest. Select two to five methodologies to use for your innovation practice.
4. Document your decisions in the Innovation Program Template.

Input

• Understanding of your mandate and existing culture

Output

• Innovation approach
• Selected methodologies

Materials

• Innovation Program Template

Participants

• CINO
• Innovation team

2.3 Build your core innovation capabilities

Develop the skills, knowledge, and experience to facilitate successful innovation.

• Depending on the approach you selected in step 2.2, you may or may not require a dedicated innovation team. If you do, use the job descriptions and sample organization charts to build it. If not, focus on developing key capabilities which are needed to facilitate innovation.
• Diversity is key for successful innovation – ensure your team (formal or otherwise) includes diverse perspectives and backgrounds.
• Use your guiding principles when hiring and training your team.
• Focus on three core roles: evangelists, enablers, and experts.

Focus on three key roles when building your innovation team

Types of roles will depend on the purpose and size of the innovation team.

You don't need to grow them all internally. Consider partnering with vendors and other organizations to build capabilities.

Evangelists

Visionaries who inspire, support, and facilitate innovation across the business. Their responsibilities are to drive the culture of innovation.

Key skills and knowledge:

• Strong communication skills
• Relationship-building
• Consensus-building
• Collaboration
• Growth mindset

Sample titles:

• CINO
• Chief Transformation Officer
• Chief Digital Officer
• Innovation Lead
• Business Relationship Manager

Enablers

Translate ideas into tangible business initiatives, including assisting with business cases and developing performance metrics.

Key skills and knowledge:

• Critical thinking skills
• Business knowledge
• Facilitation skills
• Consensus-building
• Relationship-building

Sample titles:

• Product Owner
• Design Thinking Lead
• Data Scientist
• Business Analyst
• Human Factors Engineer
• Digital Marketing Specialist

Experts

Provide expertise in product design, delivery and management, and responsible for supporting and executing on pilot projects.

Key skills and knowledge:

• Project management skills
• Technical expertise
• Familiarity with emerging technologies
• Analytical skills
• Problem-solving skills

Sample titles:

• Product Manager
• Scrum Master/Agile Coach
• Product Engineer/DevOps
• Product Designer
• Emerging tech experts

Sample innovation team structure (large enterprise)

Visualize the whole value delivery process end-to-end to help identify the types of roles, resources, and capabilities required. These capabilities can be sourced internally (i.e. grow and hire internally) or through collaboration with centers of excellence, commercial partners, etc.

Streamline your process by downloading Info-Tech's job description templates:

• Chief Innovation Officer
• Chief Digital Officer
• Innovation Lead
• Business Relationship Manager
• Product Owner
• Business Analyst
• Scrum Master
• Project Manager

Activity 2.3 Build your innovation team

2-3 hours

1. Review your work from the previous activities as well as the organizational structure and the job description templates.
2. Start a list with two columns: currently have and needed. Start listing some of the key roles and capabilities from earlier in this step, categorizing them appropriately.
3. If you are using an organizational structure for your innovation process, start to frame out the structure and roles for your team.
4. Develop a list of roles you need to hire, and the key capabilities you need from candidates. Using the job descriptions, write job postings for each role.
5. Record your work in the appropriate section of the Innovation Program Template.

Input

• Previous work
• Info-Tech job description templates

Output

• List of capabilities required
• Org chart
• Job postings for required roles

Materials

• Note-taking capability
• Innovation Program Template

Participants

• CINO

Related Info-Tech Research

Fix Your IT Culture

• Promote psychological safety and growth mindset within your organization.
• Develop the organizational behaviors that lead to innovation.

Improve IT Team Effectiveness

• Address behaviors, processes, and cultural factors which impact team effectiveness.
• Grow the team's ability to address challenges and navigate volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous environments.

Master Organizational Change Management Practices

• Transformation and change are increasingly becoming the new normal. While this normality may help make people more open to change in general, specific changes still need to be planned, communicated, and managed. Agility and continuous improvement are good but can degenerate into volatility if change isn't managed properly.

Phase 3: Build Your Practice

Define your innovation process, streamline pilot projects, and scale for success.

This phase will walk you through the following activities:

• Build the methodologies needed to elicit ideas from the business.
• Develop criteria to evaluate and prioritize ideas for piloting.
• Define your pilot program methodologies and processes, including criteria to assess and compare the success of pilot projects.
• Conduct an end-of-year program retrospective to evaluate the success of your innovation program.

This phase involves the following participants:

• CINO
• Innovation team

Case study

INDUSTRY: Government
SOURCE: Interview

Confidential US government agency

The business applications group at this government agency strongly believes that innovation is key to progress and has instituted a formal innovation program as part of their agile operations. The group uses a Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) with 2-week sprints and a 12-week program cycle.

To support innovation across the business unit, the last sprint of each cycle is dedicated toward innovation and teams do not commit to any other during these two weeks. At the end of each innovation sprint, ideas are presented to leadership and the valuable ones were either implemented initially or were given time in the next cycle of sprints for further development. This has resulted in a more innovative culture across the practice.

Results

There have been several successful innovations since this process began. Notably, the agency had previously purchased a robotic process automation platform which was only being used for a few specific applications. One team used their innovation sprint to expand the use cases for this solution and save nearly 10,000 hours of effort.

Standard 12-week Program Cycle

Design your innovation operating model to maximize value and learning opportunities

Pilots are an iterative process which brings together innovators and business teams to test and evaluate ideas.

Your operating model should include several steps including ideation, validation, evaluation and prioritization, piloting, and a retrospective which follows the pilot. Use the example on this slide when designing your own innovation operating model.

3.1 Build your ideation and prioritization methodologies

Engage the business to generate ideas, then prioritize based on value to the business.

• There are many ways of generating ideas, from informal discussion to formal ideation sessions or submission forms. Whatever you decide to use, make sure that you're getting the right information to evaluate ideas for prioritization.
• Use quantitative and qualitative metrics to evaluate ideas generated during the ideation process.
  • Quantitative metrics might include potential return on investment (ROI) or effort and resources required to implement.
  • Qualitative metrics might include alignment with the organizational strategy or the level of risk associated with the idea.

Engage the business to generate ideas

There are many ways of generating innovative ideas. Pick the methods that best suit your organization and goals.

Design Thinking
A structured approach that encourages participants to think creatively about the needs of the end user.

Ideation Workshop
A formal session that is used to understand a problem then generate potential solutions. Workshops can incorporate the other methodologies (such as brainstorming, design thinking, or mind mapping) to generate ideas.

• Define the problem
• Generate ideas
• Capture ideas
• Evaluate and prioritize
• Assign next steps

Crowdsourcing
An informal method of gathering ideas from a large group of people. This can be a great way to generate many ideas but may lack focus.

Value Proposition Canvas
A visual tool which helps to identify customer (or user) needs and design products and services that meet those needs.

Evaluate ideas and focus on those with the greatest value

Evaluation should be transparent and use both quantitative and qualitative metrics. The exact metrics used will depend on your organization and goals.

It is important to include qualitative metrics as these dimensions are better suited to evaluating highly innovative ideas and can capture important criteria like alignment with overall strategy and feasibility.

Develop 5 to 10 criteria that you can use to evaluate and prioritize ideas. Some criteria may be a pass/fail (for example, minimum ROI) and some may be comparative.

Evaluate
The first step is to evaluate ideas to determine if they meet the minimum criteria. This might include quantitative criteria like ROI as well as qualitative criteria like strategic alignment and feasibility.

Prioritize
Ideas that pass the initial evaluation should be prioritized based on additional criteria which might include quantitative criteria such as potential market size and cost to implement, and qualitative criteria such as risk, impact, and creativity.

Quantitative Metrics

Quantitative metrics are objective and easily comparable between initiatives, providing a transparent and data-driven process for evaluation and prioritization.
Examples:

• Potential market size
• ROI
• Net present value
• Payback period
• Number of users impacted
• Customer acquisition cost
• Customer lifetime value
• Breakeven analysis
• Effort required to implement
• Cost to implement

Qualitative Metrics

Qualitative metrics are less easily comparable but are equally important when it comes to evaluating ideas. These should be developed based on your organization strategy and innovation goals.
Examples:

• Strategy alignment
• Impact on users
• Uncertainty and risk
• Innovation potential
• Culture impact
• Feasibility
• Creativity and originality
• Type of innovation

Activity 3.1 Develop prioritization metrics

1-3 hours

1. Review your mandate, purpose, innovation goals and the sample prioritization and evaluation metrics.
2. Write down a list of your goals and their associated metrics, then prioritize which are the most important.
3. Determine which metrics will be used to evaluate ideas before they move on to the prioritization stage, and which metrics will be used to compare initiatives in order to determine which will receive further investment.
4. For each evaluation metric, determine the minimum threshold required for an idea to move forward. For each prioritization metric identify the definition and how it will be evaluated. Qualitative metrics may require more precise definitions than quantitative metrics.
5. Enter your metrics into the Initiative Prioritization Template.

Input

• Innovation mandate
• Innovation goals
• Sample metrics

Output

• Evaluation and prioritization metrics for ideas

Materials

• Whiteboard/Flip charts
• Innovation Program Template

Participants

• Innovation leader

Download the Initiative Prioritization Template

3.2 Build your program to pilot initiatives

Test and refine ideas through real-world pilot projects.

• The purpose of your pilot is to test and refine ideas in the real world. In order to compare pilot projects, it's important to track key performance indicators throughout the pilot. Measurements should be useful and comparable.
• Innovation facilitators are responsible for supporting pilot projects, including designing the pilot, setting up metrics, tracking outcomes, and facilitating retrospectives.
• Pilots generally follow an Agile methodology where ideas may be refined as the pilot proceeds, and the process iterates until either the idea is discarded or it has been refined into an initiative which can be scaled.
• Expect that most pilots will fail the first time, and many will fail completely. This is not a loss; lessons learned from the retrospective can be used to improve the process and later pilots.

Use pilot projects to test and refine initiatives before scaling to the rest of the organization

"Learning is as powerful as the outcome." – Brett Trelfa, CIO, Arkansas Blue Cross

1. Clearly define the goals and objectives of the pilot project. Goals and objectives ensure that the pilot stays on track and can be measured.
2. Your pilot group should include a variety of participants with diverse perspectives and skill sets, in order to gather unique insights.
3. Continuously track the progress of the pilot project. Regularly identify areas of improvement and implement changes as necessary to refine ideas.
4. Regularly elicit feedback from participants and iterate in order to improve the final innovation. Not all pilots will be successful, but every failure can help refine future solutions.
5. Consider scalability. If the pilot project is successful, it should be scalable and the lessons learned should be implemented in the larger organization.

Sample pilot metrics

Metrics are used to validate and test pilot projects to ensure they deliver value. This is an important step before scaling to the rest of the organization.

Adoption: How many end users have adopted the pilot solution?

Utilization: Is the solution getting utilized?

Support Requests: How many support requests have there been since the pilot was initiated?

Value: Is the pilot delivering on the value that it proposed? For example, time savings.

Feasibility: Has the feasibility of the solution changed since it was first proposed?

Satisfaction: Focus groups or surveys can provide feedback on user/customer satisfaction.

A/B Testing: Compare different methods, products or services.

Info-Tech Insight

Ensure standard core metrics are used across all pilot projects so that outcomes can be compared. Additional metrics may be used to refine and test hypotheses through the pilot process.

Activity 3.2 Build your program to pilot initiatives

1-2 hours

1. Gather the innovation team and review your mandate, purpose, goals, and the sample innovation operating model and metrics.
2. As a group, brainstorm the steps needed from idea generation to business case. Use sticky notes if in person, or a collaboration tool if remote.
3. Determine the metrics that will be used to evaluate ideas at each decision step (for example, prior to piloting). Outline what the different decisions might be (for example, proceed, refine or discard) and what happens as a result of each decision.
4. Document your final steps and metrics in the Innovation Program Template.

Input

• Innovation mandate
• Innovation goals
• Sample metrics

Output

• Pilot project methodology
• Pilot project metrics

Materials

• Innovation Program Template
• Sticky notes (in person) or digital collaboration tool (if remote)

Participants

• Innovation leader
• Innovation team

3.3 Conduct a program retrospective

Generate value from your successful pilots by scaling ideas across the organization.

• The final step in the innovation process is to scale ideas to the enterprise in order to realize the full potential.
• Keeping track of notable wins is important for showing the value of the innovation program. Track performance of initiatives that come out of the innovation program, including their financial, cultural, market, and brand impacts.
• Track the success of the innovation program itself by evaluating the number of ideas generated, the number of pilots run and the success of the pilots. Keep in mind that many failed pilots is not a failure of the program if the lessons learned were valuable.
• Complete an innovation program retrospective every 6 to 12 months in order to adjust and make any changes if necessary to improve your process.

Retrospectives should be objective, constructive, and action-oriented

A retrospective is a review of your innovation program with the aim of identifying lessons learned, areas for improvement, and opportunities for growth.

During a retrospective, the team will reflect on past experiences and use that information to inform future decision making and improve outcomes.

The goal of a retrospective is to learn from the past and use that knowledge to improve in the future.

Objective

Ensure that the retrospective is based on facts and objective data, rather than personal opinions or biases.

Constructive

Ensure that the retrospective is a positive and constructive experience, with a focus on finding solutions rather than dwelling on problems.

Action-Oriented

The retrospective should result in a clear action plan with specific steps to improve future initiatives.

Activity 3.3 Conduct a program retrospective

1-2 hours

1. Post a large piece of paper on the wall with a timeline from the last year. Include dates and a few key events, but not much more. Have participants place sticky notes in the spots to describe notable wins or milestones that they were proud of. This can be done as part of a formal meeting or asynchronously outside of meetings.
2. Bring the innovation team together and review the poster with notable wins. Do any themes emerge? How does the team feel the program is doing? Are there any changes needed?
3. Consider the metrics you use to track your innovation program success. Did the scaled projects meet their targets? Is there anything that could be refined about the innovation process?
4. Evaluate the outcomes of your innovation program. Did it meet the targets set for it? Did the goals and innovation ambitions come to fruition?
5. Complete this step every 6 to 12 months to assess the success of your program.
6. Complete the "Notable Wins" section of the Innovation Program Template.

Input

• Innovation mandate
• Innovation goals
• Sample metrics

Output

• Notable wins
• Action items for refining the innovation process

Materials

• Innovation Program Template
• Sticky notes (in person) or digital collaboration tool (if remote)

Participants

• CIO
• Innovation team
• Others who have participated in the innovation process

Related Info-Tech Research

Adopt Design Thinking in Your Organization

• A user's perspective while interacting with the products and services is very different from the organization's internal perspective while implementing and provisioning those. A design-based organization balances the two perspectives to drive user-satisfaction over end-to-end journeys.

Prototype With an Innovation Design Sprint

• Build and test a prototype in four days using Info-Tech's Innovation Design Sprint Methodology.
• Create an environment for co-creation between IT and the business.

Fund Innovation With a Minimum Viable Business Case

• Our approach guides you through effectively designing a solution, de-risking a project through impact reduction techniques, building and pitching the case for your project, and applying the business case as a mechanism to ensure that benefits are realized.

Summary of Accomplishment

Congratulations on launching your innovation program!

You have now completed your innovation strategy, covering the following topics:

• Executive Summary
• Our Purpose
• Scope and Value Proposition
• Guiding Principles
• Building an Innovative Culture
• Program Structure
• Success Metrics
• Notable Wins

If you would like additional support, have our analysts guide you through an Info-Tech workshop or Guided Implementation.

Contact your account representative for more information.
workshops@infotech.com 1-888-670-8889

Related Info-Tech Research

Accelerate Digital Transformation With a Digital Factory

• Understand the foundations of good design: purpose, organizational support, and leadership.
• Understand the design of the operating model: structure and organization, management practices, culture, environment, teams, technology platforms, and meaningful metrics and KPIs.

Sustain and Grow the Maturity of Innovation in Your Enterprise

• Unlock your innovation potential by looking at your innovation projects on both a macro and micro level.
• Innovation capacity is directly linked with creativity; allow your employees' creativity to flourish using Info-Tech's positive innovation techniques.

Define Your Digital Business Strategy

• Design a strategy that applies innovation to your business model, streamline and transform processes, and make use of technologies to enhance interactions with customers and employees.
• Create a balanced roadmap that improves digital maturity and prepares you for long-term success in a digital economy.

Research Contributors and Experts

Kim Osborne Rodriguez
Research Director, CIO Advisory
Info-Tech Research Group

Kim is a professional engineer and Registered Communications Distribution Designer with over a decade of experience in management and engineering consulting spanning healthcare, higher education, and commercial sectors. She has worked on some of the largest hospital construction projects in Canada, from early visioning and IT strategy through to design, specifications, and construction administration. She brings a practical and evidence-based approach, with a track record of supporting successful projects.
Kim holds a Bachelor's degree in Mechatronics Engineering from University of Waterloo.

Joanne Lee
Principal Research Director, CIO Advisory
Info-Tech Research Group

Joanne is an executive with over 25 years of experience in digital technology and management consulting across both public and private entities from solution delivery to organizational redesign across Canada and globally.
Prior to joining Info-Tech Research Group, Joanne was a management consultant within KPMG's CIO management consulting services and the Western Canadas Digital Health Practice lead. She has held several executive roles in the industry with the most recent position as Chief Program Officer for a large $450M EHR implementation. Her expertise spans cloud strategy, organizational design, data and analytics, governance, process redesign, transformation, and PPM. She is passionate about connecting people, concepts, and capital.
Joanne holds a Master's in Business and Health Policy from the University of Toronto and a Bachelor of Science (Nursing) from the University of British Columbia.

Jack Hakimian
Senior Vice President
Info-Tech Research Group

Jack has more than 25 years of technology and management consulting experience. He has served multi-billion-dollar organizations in multiple industries including Financial Services and Telecommunications. Jack also served a number of large public sector institutions.
He is a frequent speaker and panelist at technology and innovation conferences and events and holds a Master's degree in Computer Engineering as well as an MBA from the ESCP-EAP European School of Management.

Michael Tweedie
Practice Lead, CIO Strategy
Info-Tech Research Group

Mike Tweedie brings over 25 years as a technology executive. He's led several large transformation projects across core infrastructure, application, and IT services as the head of Technology at ADP Canada. He was also the Head of Engineering and Service Offerings for a large French IT services firm, focused on cloud adoption and complex ERP deployment and management.
Mike holds a Bachelor's degree in Architecture from Ryerson University.

Mike Schembri
Senior Executive Advisor
Info-Tech Research Group

Mike is the former CIO of Fuji Xerox Australia and has 20+ years' experience serving IT and wider business leadership roles. Mike has led technical and broader business service operations teams to value and growth successfully in organizations ranging from small tech startups through global IT vendors, professional service firms, and manufacturers.
Mike has passion for strategy and leadership and loves working with individuals/teams and seeing them grow.

John Leidl
Senior Director, Member Services
Info-Tech Research Group

With over 35 years of IT experience, including senior-level VP Technology and CTO leadership positions, John has a breadth of knowledge in technology innovation, business alignment, IT operations, and business transformation. John's experience extends from start-ups to corporate enterprise and spans higher education, financial services, digital marketing, and arts/entertainment.

Joe Riley
Senior Workshop Director
Info-Tech Research Group

Joe ensures our members get the most value out of their Info-Tech memberships by scoping client needs, current state and desired business outcomes, and then drawing upon his extensive experience, certifications, and degrees (MBA, MS Ops/Org Mgt, BS Eng/Sci, ITIL, PMP, Security+, etc.) to facilitate our client's achievement of desired and aspirational business outcomes. A true advocate of ITSM, Joe approaches technology and technology practices as a tool and enabler of people, core business, and competitive advantage activities.

Denis Goulet
Senior Workshop Director
Info-Tech Research Group

Denis is a transformational leader and experienced strategist who has worked with 100+ organizations to develop their digital, technology, and governance strategies.
He has held positions as CIO, Chief Administrative Office (City Manager), General Manager, Vice President of Engineering, and Management Consultant, specializing in enterprise and technology strategy.

Cole Cioran
Managing Partner
Info-Tech Research Group

I knew I wanted to build great applications that would delight their users. I did that over and over. Along the way I also discovered that it takes great teams to deliver great applications. Technology only solves problems when people, processes, and organizations change as well. This helped me go from writing software to advising some of the largest organizations in the world on how to how to build a digital delivery umbrella of Product, Agile, and DevOps and create exceptional products and services powered by technology.

Carlene McCubbin
Research Lead, CIO Practice
Info-Tech Research Group

During her tenure at Info-Tech, Carlene has led the development of Info-Tech's Organization and Leadership practice and worked with multiple clients to leverage the methodologies by creating custom programs to fit each organization's needs.
Before joining Info-Tech, Carlene received her Master of Communications Management from McGill University, where she studied development of internal and external communications, government relations, and change management.

Isabelle Hertanto
Principal Research Director
Info-Tech Research Group

Isabelle Hertanto has over 15 years of experience delivering specialized IT services to the security and intelligence community. As a former federal officer for Public Safety Canada, Isabelle trained and led teams on data exploitation and digital surveillance operations in support of Canadian national security investigations. Since transitioning into the private sector, Isabelle has held senior management and consulting roles across a variety of industry sectors, including retail, construction, energy, healthcare, and the broader Canadian public sector.

Hans Eckman
Principal Research Director
Info-Tech Research Group

Hans Eckman is a business transformation leader helping organizations connect business strategy and innovation to operational excellence. He supports Info-Tech members in SDLC optimization, Agile and DevOps implementation, CoE/CoP creation, innovation program development, application delivery, and leadership development. Hans is based out of Atlanta, Georgia.

Valence Howden
Principal Research Director
Info-Tech Research Group

With 30 years of IT experience in the public and private sector, Valence has developed experience in many Information Management and Technology domains, with a particular focus in the areas of Service Management, Enterprise and IT Governance, Development and Execution of Strategy, Risk Management, Metrics Design and Process Design, and Implementation and Improvement. Prior to joining Info-Tech, he served in technical and client-facing roles at Bell Canada and CGI Group Inc., as well as managing the design, integration, and implementation of services and processes in the Ontario Public Sector.

Clayton Gillett
Managing Partner
Info-Tech Research Group

Clayton Gillett is a Managing Partner for Info-Tech, providing technology management advisory services to healthcare clients. Clayton joined Info-Tech with more than 28 years of experience in health care information technology. He has held senior IT leadership roles at Group Health Cooperative of Puget Sound and OCHIN, as well as advisory or consulting roles at ECG Management Consultants and Gartner.

Donna Bales
Principal Research Director
Info-Tech Research Group

Donna Bales is a Principal Research Director in the CIO Practice at Info-Tech Research Group specializing in research and advisory services in IT risk, governance, and compliance. She brings over 25 years of experience in strategic consulting and product development and has a history of success in leading complex, multi-stakeholder industry initiatives.

Igor Ikonnikov
Research Director
Info-Tech Research Group

Igor Ikonnikov is a Research and Advisory Director in the Data and Analytics practice. Igor has extensive experience in strategy formation and execution in the information management domain, including master data management, data governance, knowledge management, enterprise content management, big data, and analytics.
Igor has an MBA from the Ted Rogers School of Management (Toronto, Canada) with a specialization in Management of Technology and Innovation.

Research Contributors and Experts

Michael Newcity
Chief Innovation Officer
ArcBest

Kevin Yoder
Vice President, Innovation
ArcBest

Gary Boyd
Vice President, Information Systems & Digital Transformation
Arkansas Blue Cross and Blue Shield

Brett Trelfa
Chief Information Officer
Arkansas Blue Cross and Blue Shield

Kristen Wilson-Jones
Chief Technology & Product Officer
Medcurio

Note: additional contributors did not wish to be identified

Bibliography

Altringer, Beth. "A New Model for Innovation in Big Companies" Harvard Business Review. 19 Nov. 2013. Accessed 30 Jan. 2023. https://hbr.org/2013/11/a-new-model-for-innovation-in-big-companies
Arpajian, Scott. "Five Reasons Why Innovation Fails" Forbes Magazine. 4 June 2019. Accessed 31 Jan. 2023. https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2019/06/04/five-reasons-why-innovation-fails/?sh=234e618914c6
Baldwin, John & Gellatly, Guy. "Innovation Capabilities: The Knowledge Capital Behind the Survival and Growth of Firms" Statistics Canada. Sept. 2006. Accessed 30 Jan. 2023. https://www.bdc.ca/fr/documents/other/innovation_capabilities_en.pdf
Bar Am, Jordan et al. "Innovation in a Crisis: Why it is More Critical Than Ever" McKinsey & Company, 17 June 2020. Accessed 12 Jan. 2023. <https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/innovation-in-a-crisis-why-it-is-more-critical-than-ever >
Boston Consulting Group, "Most Innovative Companies 2021" BCG, April 2021. Accessed 30 Jan. 2023. https://web-assets.bcg.com/d5/ef/ea7099b64b89860fd1aa3ec4ff34/bcg-most-innovative-companies-2021-apr-2021-r.pdf
Boston Consulting Group, "Most Innovative Companies 2022" BGC, 15 Sept. 2022. Accessed 6 Feb. 2023. https://www.bcg.com/en-ca/publications/2022/innovation-in-climate-and-sustainability-will-lead-to-green-growth
Christensen, Clayton M. The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail. Harvard Business Review Press, 2016.
Gerber, Niklaus. "What is innovation? A beginner's guide into different models, terminologies and methodologies" Medium. 20 Sept 2022. Accessed 7 Feb. 2023. https://world.hey.com/niklaus/what-is-innovation-a-beginner-s-guide-into-different-models-terminologies-and-methodologies-dd4a3147
Google X, Homepage. Accessed 6 Feb. 2023. https://x.company/
Harnoss, Johann D. & Baeza, Ramón. "Overcoming the Four Big Barriers to Innovation Success" Boston Consulting Group, 24 Sept. 2019. Accessed 30 Jan 2023. https://www.bcg.com/en-ca/publications/2019/overcoming-four-big-barriers-to-innovation-success
Jaruzelski, Barry et al. "Global Innovation 1000 Study" Pricewaterhouse Cooper, 30 Oct. 2018. Accessed 13 Jan. 2023. <https://www.strategyand.pwc.com/gx/en/insights/innovation1000.html>
Kharpal, Arjun. "Huawei posts first-ever yearly revenue decline as U.S. sanctions continue to bite, but profit surges" CNBC. 28 March 2022. Accessed 7 Feb. 2023. https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/28/huawei-annual-results-2021-revenue-declines-but-profit-surges.html
Kirsner, Scott. "The Biggest Obstacles to Innovation in Large Companies" Harvard Business Review, 30 July 2018. Accessed 12 Jan. 2023. <https://hbr.org/2018/07/the-biggest-obstacles-to-innovation-in-large-companies>
Macrotrends. "Apple Revenue 2010-2022" Macrotrends. Accessed 23 Jan. 2023. https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/AAPL/apple/revenue
Macrotrends. "Microsoft Revenue 2010-2022" Macrotrends. Accessed 23 Jan. 2023. https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/MSFT/microsoft/revenue
Macrotrends. "Amazon Revenue 2010-2022" Macrotrends. Accessed 23 Jan. 2023. https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/AMZN/amazon/revenue
Macrotrends. "Alphabet Revenue 2010-2022" Macrotrends. Accessed 23 Jan. 2023. https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/GOOG/alphabet/revenue
Macrotrends. "Tesla Revenue 2010-2022" Macrotrends. Accessed 23 Jan. 2023. https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/TSLA/tesla/revenue
Macrotrends. "Moderna Revenue 2010-2022" Macrotrends. Accessed 23 Jan. 2023. https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/MRNA/moderna/revenue
Macrotrends. "Sony Revenue 2010-2022" Macrotrends. Accessed 23 Jan. 2023. https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/SONY/sony/revenue
Macrotrends. "IBM Revenue 2010-2022" Macrotrends. Accessed 23 Jan. 2023. https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/IBM/ibm/revenue
Macrotrends. "Meta Platforms Revenue 2010-2022" Macrotrends. Accessed 23 Jan. 2023. https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/META/meta-platforms/revenue
Macrotrends. "NIKE Revenue 2010-2022" Macrotrends. Accessed 23 Jan. 2023. https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/NKE/nike/revenue
Macrotrends. "Walmart Revenue 2010-2022" Macrotrends. Accessed 23 Jan. 2023. https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/WMT/walmart/revenue
Macrotrends. "Dell Revenue 2010-2022" Macrotrends. Accessed 23 Jan. 2023. https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/DELL/dell/revenue
Macrotrends. "NVIDIA Revenue 2010-2022" Macrotrends. Accessed 23 Jan. 2023. https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/NVDA/nvidia/revenue
Sloan, Paul. "How to Develop a Vision for Innovation" Innovation Management, 10 Aug. 2009. Accessed 7 Feb. 2023. https://innovationmanagement.se/2009/08/10/how-to-develop-a-vision-for-innovation/
Statista. "Samsung Electronics' global revenue from 2005 to 2021" Statista. Accessed 7 Feb. 2023. https://www.statista.com/statistics/236607/global-revenue-of-samsung-electronics-since-2005/
Tichy, Noel & Ram Charan. "Speed, Simplicity, Self-Confidence: An Interview with Jack Welch" Harvard Business Review, 2 March 2020. Accessed 7 Feb. 2023. https://hbr.org/1989/09/speed-simplicity-self-confidence-an-interview-with-jack-welch
Weick, Karl and Kathleen Sutcliffe. Managing the Unexpected: Sustained Performance in a Complex World, Third Edition. John Wiley & Sons, 2015.
Xuan Tian, Tracy Yue Wang, Tolerance for Failure and Corporate Innovation, The Review of Financial Studies, Volume 27, Issue 1, 2014, Pages 211–255, Accessed https://doi.org/10.1093/rfs/hhr130

Establish an Effective IT Steering Committee

Have the right people making the right decisions to drive IT success.

Our understanding of the problem

This Research Is Designed For:

• CIOs
• IT Leaders

This Research Will Also Assist:

• Business Partners

This Research Will Help You:

• Structure an IT steering committee with the appropriate membership and responsibilities
• Define appropriate cadence around business involvement in IT decision making
• Define your IT steering committee processes, metrics, and timelines
• Obtain buy-in for IT steering committee participations
• Define the project prioritization criteria

This Research Will Help Them:

• Understand the importance of IT governance and their role
• Identify and build the investment prioritization criteria

Executive Summary

Situation

• An effective IT steering committee (ITSC) is one of the top predictors of value generated by IT, yet only 11% of CIOs believe their committees are effective.
• An effective steering committee ensures that the right people are involved in critical decision making to drive organizational value.

Complication

• Unfortunately, when CIOs do implement IT steering committees, they often lack the appropriate structure and processes to be effective.
• Due to the high profile of the IT steering committee membership, CIOs need to get this right – or their reputation is at risk.

Resolution

Leverage Info-Tech’s process and deliverables to see dramatic improvements in your business satisfaction through an effective IT steering committee. This blueprint will provide three core customizable deliverables that you can use to launch or optimize your IT steering committee. These include:

1. IT Steering Committee Charter: Customizable charter complete with example purpose, goals, responsibilities, procedures, RACI, and processes. Use this template in combination with this blueprint to get a highly tailored committee.
2. IT Stakeholder Presentation: Use our customizable presentation guide to build understanding around the goals and purpose of the IT steering committee and generate support from your leadership team.
3. IT Steering Committee Project Prioritization Tool: Engage your IT steering committee participants in defining the project prioritization criteria. Use our template to track project prioritization and assess your portfolio.

Info-Tech Insight

1. 88% of IT steering committees fail. The organizations that succeed have clearly defined responsibilities that are based on business needs.
2. Without a documented process your committee can’t execute on its responsibilities. Clearly define the flow of information to make your committee actionable.
3. Limit your headaches by holding your IT steering committee accountable for defining project prioritization criteria.

IT Steering Committee

Effective IT governance critical in driving business satisfaction with IT. Yet 88% of CIOs believe that their governance structure and processes are not effective. The IT steering committee (ITSC) is the heart of the governance body and brings together critical organizational stakeholders to enable effective decision making (Info-Tech Research Group Webinar Survey).

IT STEERING COMMITTEES HAVE 3 PRIMARY OBJECTIVES – TO IMPROVE:

1. Alignment: IT steering committees drive IT and business strategy alignment by having business partners jointly accountable for the prioritization and selection of projects and investments within the context of IT capacity.
2. Accountability: The ITSC facilitates the involvement and commitment of executive management through clearly defined roles and accountabilities for IT decisions in five critical areas: investments, projects, risk, services, and data.
3. Value Generation: The ITSC is responsible for the ongoing evaluation of IT value and performance of IT services. The committee should define these standards and approve remediation plans when there is non-achievement.

"Everyone needs good IT, but no one wants to talk about it. Most CFOs would rather spend time with their in-laws than in an IT steering-committee meeting. But companies with good governance consistently outperform companies with bad. Which group do you want to be in?"

– Martha Heller, President, Heller Search Associates

An effective IT steering committee improves IT and business alignment and increases support for IT across the organization

CEOs’ PERCEPTION OF IT AND BUSINESS ALIGNMENT

67% of CIOs/CEOs are misaligned on the target role for IT.

47% of CEOs believe that business goals are going unsupported by IT.

64% of CEOs believe that improvement is required around IT’s understanding of business goals.

28% of business leaders are supporters of their IT departments.

A well devised IT steering committee ensures that core business partners are involved in critical decision making and that decisions are based on business goals – not who shouts the loudest. Leading to faster decision-making time, and better-quality decisions and outcomes.

Source: Info-Tech CIO/CEO Alignment data

Despite the benefits, 9 out of 10 steering committees are unsuccessful

WHY DO IT STEERING COMMITTEES FAIL?

1. A lack of appetite for an IT steering committee from business partners
An effective ITSC requires participation from core members of the organization’s leadership team. The challenge is that most business partners don’t understand the benefits of an ITSC and the responsibilities aren’t tailored to participants’ needs or interests. It’s the CIOs responsibility to make this case to stakeholders and right-size the committee responsibilities and membership.
2. IT steering committees are given inappropriate responsibilities
The IT steering committee is fundamentally about decision making; it’s not a working committee. CIOs struggle with clarifying these responsibilities on two fronts: either the responsibilities are too vague and there is no clear way to execute on them within a meeting, or responsibilities are too tactical and require knowledge that participants do not have. Responsibilities should determine who is on the ITSC, not the other way around.
3. Lack of process around execution
An ITSC is only valuable if members are able to successfully execute on the responsibilities. Without well defined processes it becomes nearly impossible for the ITSC to be actionable. As a result, participants lack the information they need to make critical decisions, agendas are unmet, and meetings are seen as a waste of time.

GOVERNANCE and ITSC and IT Management

Organizations often blur the line between governance and management, resulting in the business having say over the wrong things. Understand the differences and make sure both groups understand their role.

The ITSC is the most senior body within the IT governance structure, involving key business executives and focusing on critical strategic decisions impacting the whole organization.

Within a holistic governance structure, organizations may have additional committees that evaluate, direct, and monitor key decisions at a more tactical level and report into the ITSC.

These committees require specialized knowledge and are implemented to meet specific organizational needs. Those operational committees may spark a tactical task force to act on specific needs.

IT management is responsible for executing on, running, and monitoring strategic activities as determined by IT governance.

RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN STRATEGIC, TACTICAL, AND OPERATIONAL GROUPS

This blueprint focuses exclusively on building the IT steering committee. For more information on IT governance see Info-Tech’s blueprint Tailor an IT Governance Plan to Fit Organizational Needs.

1. Governance of the IT Portfolio & Investments: ensures that funding and resources are systematically allocated to the priority projects that deliver value
2. Governance of Projects: ensures that IT projects deliver the expected value, and that the PM methodology is measured and effective.
3. Governance of Risks: ensures the organization’s ability to assess and deliver IT projects and services with acceptable risk.
4. Governance of Services: ensures that IT delivers the required services at the acceptable performance levels.
5. Governance of Information and Data: ensures the appropriate classification and retention of data based on business need.

If these symptoms resonate with you, it might be time to invest in building an IT steering committee

SIGNS YOU MAY NEED TO BUILD AN IT STEERING COMMITTEE

Info-Tech’s approach to implementing an IT steering committee

Info-Tech’s IT steering committee development blueprint will provide you with the required tools, templates, and deliverables to implement a right-sized committee that’s effective the first time.

• Measure your business partner level of awareness and interest in the five IT governance areas, and target specific responsibilities for your steering committee based on need.
• Customize Info-Tech’s IT Steering Committee Charter Template to define and document the steering committee purpose, responsibilities, participation, and cadence.
• Build critical steering committee processes to enable information to flow into and out of the committee to ensure that the committee is able to execute on responsibilities.
• Customize Info-Tech’s IT Steering Committee Stakeholder Presentation template to make your first meeting a breeze, providing stakeholders with the information they need, with less than two hours of preparation time.
• Leverage our workshop guide and prioritization tools to facilitate a meeting with IT steering committee members to define the prioritization criteria for projects and investments and roll out a streamlined process.

Info-Tech’s Four-Phase Process

Leverage both COBIT and Info-Tech-defined metrics to evaluate the success of your program or project

CASE STUDY

Industry: Consumer Goods

Source: Interview

Situation

A newly hired CIO at a large consumer goods company inherited an IT department with low maturity from her predecessor. Satisfaction with IT was very low across all business units, and IT faced a lot of capacity constraints. The business saw IT as a bottleneck or red tape in terms of getting their projects approved and completed.

The previous CIO had established a steering committee for a short time, but it had a poorly established charter that did not involve all of the business units. Also the role and responsibilities of the steering committee were not clearly defined. This led the committee to be bogged down in politics.

Due to the previous issues, the business was wary of being involved in a new steering committee. In order to establish a new steering committee, the new CIO needed to navigate the bad reputation of the previous CIO.

Solution

The CIO established a new steering committee engaging senior members of each business unit. The roles of the committee members were clearly established in the new steering committee charter and business stakeholders were informed of the changes through presentations.

The importance of the committee was demonstrated through the new intake and prioritization process for projects. Business stakeholders were impressed with the new process and its transparency and IT was no longer seen as a bottleneck.

Results

• Satisfaction with IT increased by 12% after establishing the committee and IT was no longer seen as red tape for completing projects
• IT received approval to hire two more staff members to increase capacity
• IT was able to augment service levels, allowing them to reinvest in innovative projects
• Project prioritization process was streamlined

Info-Tech offers various levels of support to best suit your needs

DIY Toolkit

“Our team has already made this critical project a priority, and we have the time and capability, but some guidance along the way would be helpful.”

Guided Implementation

“Our team knows that we need to fix a process, but we need assistance to determine where to focus. Some check-ins along the way would help keep us on track.”

Workshop

“We need to hit the ground running and get this project kicked off immediately. Our team has the ability to take this over once we get a framework and strategy in place.”

Consulting

“Our team does not have the time or the knowledge to take this project on. We need assistance through the entirety of this project.”

Diagnostics and consistent frameworks used throughout all four options

Establish an Effective IT Steering Committee

Workshop overview

Contact your account representative or email Workshops@InfoTech.com for more information.

Phase 1

Build the IT Steering Committee Charter

Phase 1 outline

Call 1-888-670-8889 or email GuidedImplementations@InfoTech.com for more information.

Complete these steps on your own, or call us to complete a guided implementation. A guided implementation is a series of 2-3 advisory calls that help you execute each phase of a project. They are included in most advisory memberships.

Build the IT Steering Committee Charter

This step will walk you through the following activities:

• Launch and analyze the stakeholder survey
• Define your ITSC goals and purpose statement
• Determine ITSC responsibilities and participants
• Determine ITSC procedures

This step involves the following participants:

• CIO
• IT Steering Committee
• IT Leadership Team
• PMO

Key Insight:

Be exclusive with your IT steering committee membership. Determine committee participation based on committee responsibilities. Select only those who are key decision makers for the activities the committee is responsible for and, wherever possible, keep membership to 5-8 people.

Tailor Info-Tech’s IT Steering Committee Charter Template to define terms of reference for the ITSC

1.1

A charter is the organizational mandate that outlines the purpose, scope, and authority of the ITSC. Without a charter, the steering committee’s value, scope, and success criteria are unclear to participants, resulting in unrealistic stakeholder expectations and poor organizational acceptance.

Start by reviewing Info-Tech’s template. Throughout this section we will help you to tailor its contents.

Committee Purpose: The rationale, benefits of, and overall function of the committee.

Responsibilities: What tasks/decisions the accountable committee is making.

Participation: Who is on the committee

RACI: Who is accountable, responsible, consulted, and informed regarding each responsibility.

Committee Procedures and Agendas: Includes how the committee will be organized and how the committee will interact and communicate with business units.

IT Steering Committee Charter

Take a data-driven approach to build your IT steering committee based on business priorities

1.2

Leverage Info-Tech’s IT Steering Committee Stakeholder Surveyand reports to quickly identify business priorities and level of understanding of how decisions are made around the five governance areas.

Use these insights to drive the IT steering committee responsibilities, participation, and communication strategy.

The Stakeholder Survey consists of 17 questions on:

• Priority governance areas
• Desired level of involvement in decision making in the five governance areas
• Knowledge of how decisions are made
• Five open-ended questions on improvement opportunities

To simplify your data collection and reporting, Info-Tech can launch a web-based survey, compile the report data and assist in the data interpretation through one of our guided implementations.

Also included is a Word document with recommended questions, if you prefer to manage the survey logistics internally.

Leverage governance reports to define responsibilities and participants, and in your presentation to stakeholders

1.3

OVERALL PRIORITIES

You get:

• A clear breakdown of stakeholders’ level of understanding on how IT decisions are made in the five governance areas
• Stakeholder perceptions on the level of IT and business involvement in decision making
• Identification of priority areas

So you can:

• Get an overall pulse check for understanding
• Make the case for changes in decision-making accountability
• Identify which areas the IT steering committee should focus on

GOVERNANCE AREA REPORTS

You get:

• Satisfaction score for decision quality in each governance area
• Breakdown of decision-making accountability effectiveness
• Identified level of understanding around decision making
• Open-ended comments

So you can:

• Identify the highest priority areas to change.
• To validate changes in decision-making accountability
• To understand business perspectives on decision making.

Conduct a SWOT analysis of the five governance areas

1.4

1. Hold a meeting with your IT leadership team to conduct a SWOT analysis on each of the five governance areas. Start by printing off the following five slides to provide participants with examples of the role of governance and the symptoms of poor governance in each area.
2. In groups of 1-2 people, have each group complete a SWOT analysis for one of the governance areas. For each consider:

• Strengths: What is currently working well in this area?
• Weaknesses: What could you improve? What are some of the challenges you’re experiencing?
• Opportunities: What are some organizational trends that you can leverage? Consider whether your strengths or weaknesses that could create opportunities?
• Threats: What are some key obstacles across people, process, and technology?

INPUT

• Survey outcomes
• Governance overview handouts

OUTPUT

• SWOT analysis
• Ranked 5 areas
• Top 10 challenges and opportunities identified.

Materials

• Governance handouts
• Flip chart paper, pens

Participants

• IT leadership team

Governance of RISK

Governance of risk establishes the risk framework, establishes policies and standards, and monitors risks.

Governance of risk ensures that IT is mitigating all relevant risks associated with IT investments, projects, and services.

GOVERNANCE ROLES:

1. Defines responsibility and accountability for IT risk identification and mitigation.
2. Ensures the consideration of all elements of IT risk, including value, change, availability, security, project, and recovery
3. Enables senior management to make better IT decisions based on the evaluation of the risks involved
4. Facilitates the identification and analysis of IT risk and ensures the organization’s informed response to that risk.

Symptoms of poor governance of risk

• Opportunities for value creation are missed by not considering or assessing IT risk, or by completely avoiding all risk.
• No formal risk management process or accountabilities exist.
• There is no business continuity strategy.
• Frequent security breaches occur.
• System downtime occurs due to failed IT changes.

Governance of PPM

Governance of the IT portfolio achieves optimum ROI through prioritization, funding, and resourcing.

PPM practices create value if they maximize the throughput of high-value IT projects at the lowest possible cost. They destroy value when they foster needlessly sophisticated and costly processes.

GOVERNANCE ROLES:

1. Ensures that the projects that deliver greater business value get a higher priority.
2. Provides adequate funding for the priority projects and ensures adequate resourcing and funding balanced across the entire portfolio of projects.
3. Makes the business and IT jointly accountable for setting project priorities.
4. Evaluate, direct, and monitor IT value metrics and endorse the IT strategy and monitor progress.

Symptoms of poor governance of PPM/investments

• The IT investment mix is determined solely by Finance and IT.
• It is difficult to get important projects approved.
• Projects are started then halted, and resources are moved to other projects.
• Senior management has no idea what projects are in the backlog.
• Projects are approved without a valid business case.

Governance of PROJECTS

Governance of projects improves the quality and speed of decision making for project issues.

Don’t confuse project governance and management. Governance makes the decisions regarding allocation of funding and resources and reviews the overall project portfolio metrics and process methodology.

Management ensures the project deliverables are completed within the constraints of time, budget, scope, and quality.

GOVERNANCE ROLES:

1. Monitors and evaluates the project management process and critical project methodology metrics.
2. Ensures review and mitigation of project issue and that management is aware of projects in crisis.
3. Ensures that projects beginning to show characteristics of failure cannot proceed until issues are resolved.
4. Endorses the project risk criteria, and monitors major risks to project completion.
5. Approves the launch and execution of projects.

Symptoms of poor governance of projects

• Projects frequently fail or get cancelled.
• Project risks and issues are not identified or addressed.
• There is no formal project management process.
• There is no senior stakeholder responsible for making project decisions.
• There is no formal project reporting.

Governance of SERVICES

Governance of services ensures delivery of a highly reliable set of IT services.

Effective governance of services enables the business to achieve the organization’s goals and strategies through the provision of reliable and cost-effective services.

GOVERNANCE ROLES:

1. Ensures the satisfactory performance of those services critical to achieving business objectives.
2. Monitors and directs changes in service levels.
3. Ensures operational and performance objectives for IT services are met.
4. Approves policy and standards on the service portfolio.

Symptoms of poor governance of service

• There is a misalignment of business needs and expectations with IT capability.
• No metrics are reported for IT services.
• The business is unaware of the IT services available to them.
• There is no accountability for service level performance.
• There is no continuous improvement plan for IT services.
• IT services or systems are frequently unavailable.
• Business satisfaction with IT scores are low.

Governance of INFORMATION

Governance of information ensures the proper handling of data and information.

Effective governance of information ensures the appropriate classification, retention, confidentiality, integrity, and availability of data in line with the needs of the business.

GOVERNANCE ROLES:

1. Ensures the information lifecycle owner and process are defined and endorse by business leadership.
2. Ensures the controlled access to a comprehensive information management system.
3. Ensures knowledge, information, and data are gathered, analyzed, stored, shared, used, and maintained.
4. Ensures that external regulations are identified and met.

Symptoms of poor governance of information

• There is a lack of clarity around data ownership, and data quality standards.
• There is insufficient understanding of what knowledge, information, and data are needed by the organization.
• There is too much effort spent on knowledge capture as opposed to knowledge transfer and re-use.
• There is too much focus on storing and sharing knowledge and information that is not up to date or relevant.
• Personnel see information management as interfering with their work.

Identify the responsibilities of the IT steering committee

1.5

1. With your IT leadership team, review the typical responsibilities of the IT steering committee on the following slide.
2. Print off the following slide, and in your teams of 1-2 have each group identify which responsibilities they believe the IT steering committee should have, brainstorm any additional responsibilities, and document their reasoning.

Note: The bolded responsibilities are the ones that are most common to IT steering committees, and greyed out responsibilities are typical of a larger governance structure. Depending on their level of importance to your organization, you may choose to include the responsibility.

3. Have each team present to the larger group, track the similarities and differences between each of the groups, and come to consensus on the list of responsibilities.
4. Complete a sanity check – review your swot analysis and survey results. Do the responsibilities you’ve identified resolve the critical challenges or weaknesses?
5. As a group, consider the responsibilities and consider whether you can reasonably implement those in one year, or if there are any that will need to wait until year two of the IT steering committee.
6. Modify the list of responsibilities in Info-Tech’s IT Steering Committee Charter by deleting the responsibilities you do not need and adding any that you identified in the process.

INPUT

• SWOT analysis
• Survey reports

OUTPUT

• Defined ITSC responsibilities documented in the ITSC Charter

Materials

• Responsibilities handout
• Voting dots

Participants

• IT leadership team

Typical IT steering committee and governance responsibilities

The bolded responsibilities are those that are most common to IT steering committees, and responsibilities listed in grey are typical of a larger governance structure.

INVESTMENTS / PPM

• Establish the target investment mix
• Evaluate and select programs/projects to fund
• Monitor IT value metrics
• Endorse the IT budget
• Monitor and report on program/project outcomes
• Direct the governance optimization
• Endorse the IT strategy

PROJECTS

• Monitor project management metrics
• Approve launch of projects
• Review major obstacles to project completion
• Monitor a standard approach to project management
• Monitor and direct project risk
• Monitor requirements gathering process effectiveness
• Review feasibility studies and formulate alternative solutions for high risk/high investment projects

SERVICE

• Monitor stakeholder satisfaction with services
• Monitor service metrics
• Approve plans for new or changed service requirements
• Monitor and direct changes in service levels
• Endorse the enterprise architecture
• Approve policy and standards on the service portfolio
• Monitor performance and capacity

RISK

• Monitor risk management metrics
• Review the prioritized list of risks
• Monitor changes in external regulations
• Maintain risk profiles
• Approve the risk management emergency action process
• Maintain a mitigation plan to minimize risk impact and likelihood
• Evaluate risk management
• Direct risk management

INFORMATION / DATA

• Define information lifecycle process ownership
• Monitor information lifecycle metrics
• Define and monitor information risk
• Approve classification categories of information
• Approve information lifecycle process
• Set policies on retirement of information

Determine committee membership based on the committee’s responsibilities

• One of the biggest benefits to an IT steering committee is it involves key leadership from the various lines of business across the organization.
• However, in most cases, more people get involved than is required, and all the committee ends up accomplishing is a lot of theorizing. Participants should be selected based on the identified responsibilities of the IT steering committee.
• If the responsibilities don’t match the participants, this will negatively impact committee effectiveness as leaders become disengaged in the process and don’t feel like it applies to them or accomplishes the desired goals. Once participants begin dissenting, it’s significantly more difficult to get results.
• Be careful! When you have more than one individual in a specific role, select only the people whose attendance is absolutely critical. Don’t let your governance collapse under committee overload!

LIKELY PARTICIPANT EXAMPLES:

MUNICIPALITY

• City Manager
• CIO/IT Leader
• CCO
• CFO
• Division Heads

EDUCATION

• Provost
• Vice Provost
• VP Academic
• VP Research
• VP Public Affairs
• VP Operations
• VP Development
• Etc.

HEALTHCARE

• President/CEO
• CAO
• EVP/ EDOs
• VPs
• CIO
• CMO

PRIVATE ORGANIZATIONS

• CEO
• CFO
• COO
• VP Marketing
• VP Sales
• VP HR
• VP Product Development
• VP Engineering
• Etc.

Identify committee participants and responsibility cadence

1.6

1. In a meeting with your IT leadership team, review the list of committee responsibilities and document them on a whiteboard.
2. For each responsibility, identify the individuals whom you would want to be either responsible or accountable for that decision.
3. Repeat this until you’ve completed the exercise for each responsibility.
4. Group the responsibilities with the same participants and highlight groupings with less than four participants. Consider the responsibility and determine whether you need to change the wording to make it more applicable or if you should remove the responsibility.
5. Review the grouping, the responsibilities within them, and their participants, and assess how frequently you would like to meet about them – annually, quarterly, or monthly. (Note: suggested frequency can be found in the IT Steering Committee Charter.)
6. Subdivide the responsibilities for the groupings to determine your annual, quarterly, and monthly meeting schedule.
7. Validate that one steering committee is all that is needed, or divide the responsibilities into multiple committees.
8. Document the committee participants in the IT Steering Committee Charter and remove any unneeded responsibilities identified in the previous exercise.

INPUT

• List of responsibilities

OUTPUT

• ITSC participants list
• Meeting schedule

Materials

• Whiteboard
• Markers

Participants

• IT leadership team

Committees can only be effective if they have clear and documented authority

It is not enough to participate in committee meetings; there needs to be a clear understanding of who is accountable, responsible, consulted, and informed about matters brought to the attention of the committee.

Each committee responsibility should have one person who is accountable, and at least one person who is responsible. This is the best way to ensure that committee work gets done.

An authority matrix is often used within organizations to indicate roles and responsibilities in relation to processes and activities. Using the RACI model as an example, there is only one person accountable for an activity, although several people may be responsible for executing parts of the activity. In this model, accountable means end-to-end accountability for the process.

RESPONSIBLE: The one responsible for getting the job done.

ACCOUNTABLE: Only one person can be accountable for each task.

CONSULTED: Involvement through input of knowledge and information.

INFORMED: Receiving information about process execution and quality.

Define IT steering committee participant RACI for each of the responsibilities

1.7

1. Use the table provided in the IT Steering Committee Charter and edit he list of responsibilities to reflect the chosen responsibilities of your ITSC.
2. Along the top of the chart list the participant names, and in the right hand column of the table document the agreed upon timing from the previous exercise.
3. For each of the responsibilities identify whether participants are Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, or Informed by denoting an R, A, C, I, or N/A in the table. Use N/A if this is a responsibility that the participant has no involvement in.
4. Review your finalized RACI chart. If there are participants who are only consulted or informed about the majority of responsibilities, consider removing them from the IT steering committee. You only want the decision makers on the committee.

INPUT

• Responsibilities
• Participants

OUTPUT

• RACI documented in the ITSC Charter

Materials

• ITSC RACI template
• Projector

Participants

• IT leadership

Building the agenda may seem trivial, but it is key for running effective meetings

49% of people consider unfocused meetings as the biggest workplace time waster.*

63% of the time meetings do not have prepared agendas.*

80% Reduction of time spent in meetings by following a detailed agenda and starting on time.*

*(Source: http://visual.ly/fail-plan-plan-fail).

EFFECTIVE MEETING AGENDAS:

1. Have clearly defined meeting objectives.
2. Effectively time-boxed based on priority items.
3. Defined at least two weeks prior to the meetings.
4. Evaluated regularly – are not static.
5. Leave time at the end for new business, thus minimizing interruptions.

BUILDING A CONSENT AGENDA

A consent agenda is a tool to free up time at meetings by combining previously discussed or simple items into a single item. Items that can be added to the consent agenda are those that are routine, noncontroversial, or provided for information’s sake only. It is expected that participants read this information and, if it is not pulled out, that they are in agreement with the details.

Members have the option to pull items out of the consent agenda for discussion if they have questions. Otherwise these are given no time on the agenda.

Define the IT steering committee meeting agendas and procedures

1.8

Agendas

1. Review the listed responsibilities, participants, and timing as identified in a previous exercise.
2. Annual meeting: Identify if all of the responsibilities will be included in the annual meeting agenda (likely all governance responsibilities).
3. Quarterly Meeting Agenda: Remove the meeting responsibilities from the annual meeting agenda that are not required and create a list of responsibilities for the quarterly meetings.
4. Monthly Meeting Agenda: Remove all responsibilities from the list that are only annual or quarterly and compile a list of monthly meeting responsibilities.
5. Review each responsibility, and estimate the amount of time each task will take within the meeting. We recommend giving yourself at least an extra 10-20% more time for each agenda item for your first meeting. It’s better to have more time than to run out.
6. Complete the Agenda Template in the IT Steering Committee Charter.

Procedures:

1. Review the list of IT steering committee procedures, and replace the grey text with the information appropriate for your organization.

INPUT

• Responsibility cadence

OUTPUT

• ITSC annual, quarterly, monthly meeting agendas & procedures

Materials

• ITSC Charter

Participants

• IT leadership team

Draft your IT steering committee purpose statement and goals

1.9

1. In a meeting with your IT leadership team – and considering the defined responsibilities, participants, and opportunities and threats identified – review the example goal statement in the IT Steering Committee Charter, and first identify whether any of these statements apply to your organization. Select the statements that apply and collaboratively make any changes needed.
2. Define unique goal statements by considering the following questions:
1. What three things would you realistically list for the ITSC to achieve.
2. If you were to accomplish three things in the next year, what would those be?
3. Document those goals in the IT Steering Committee Charter.
4. With those goal statements in mind, consider the overall purpose of the committee. The purpose statement should be a reflection of what the committee does, why it does it, and the goals.
5. Have each individual review the example purpose statement, and draft what they think a good purpose statement would be.
6. Present each statement, and work together to determine a best of breed statement.
7. Document this in the IT Steering Committee Charter.

INPUT

• Responsibilities, participants, top 10 lists of challenges and opportunities.

OUTPUT

• ITSC goals and purpose statement

Materials

• ITSC Charter

Participants

• IT leadership team

CASE STUDY

"Clearly defined Committee Charter allows CIO to escape the bad reputation of previous committee."

Industry: Consumer Goods

Source: Interview

CHALLENGE

The new CIO at a large consumer goods company had difficulty generating interest in creating a new IT steering committee. The previous CIO had created a steering committee that was poorly organized and did not involve all of the pertinent members. This led to a committee focused on politics that would often devolve into gossip. Also, many members were dissatisfied with the irregular meetings that would often go over their allotted time.

In order to create a new committee, the new CIO needed to dispel the misgivings of the business leadership.

SOLUTION

The new CIO decided to build the new steering committee from the ground up in a systematic way.

She collected information from relevant stakeholders about what they know/how they feel about IT and used this information to build a detailed charter.

Using this info she outlined the new steering committee charter and included in it the:

1. Purpose
2. Responsibilities
3. RACI Chart
4. Procedures

OUTCOME

The new steering committee included all the key members of business units, and each member was clear on their roles in the meetings. Meetings were streamlined and effective. The adjustments in the charter and the improvement in meeting quality played a role in improving the satisfaction scores of business leaders with IT by 21%.

If you want additional support, have our analysts guide you through this phase as part of an Info-Tech workshop

Book a workshop with our Info-Tech analysts:

• To accelerate this project, engage your IT team in an Info-Tech workshop with an Info-Tech analyst team.
• Info-Tech analysts will join you and your team onsite at your location or welcome you to Info-Tech’s historic Toronto office to participate in an innovative onsite workshop.
• Contact your account manager (www.infotech.com/account), or email Workshops@InfoTech.com for more information.

The following are sample activities that will be conducted by Info-Tech analysts with your team:

1.1

Survey your ITSC stakeholders

Prior to the workshop, Info-Tech’s advisors will work with you to launch the IT Steering Committee Stakeholder Survey to understand business priorities and level of understanding of how decisions are made. Using this data, we will create the IT steering committee responsibilities, participation, and communication strategy.

1.7

Define a participant RACI for each of the responsibilities

The analyst will facilitate several exercises to help you and your stakeholders create an authority matrix. The output will be defined responsibilities and authorities for members.

Phase 2

Build the IT Steering Committee Process

Phase 2 outline

Call 1-888-670-8889 or email GuidedImplementations@InfoTech.com for more information.

Complete these steps on your own, or call us to complete a guided implementation. A guided implementation is a series of 2-3 advisory calls that help you execute each phase of a project. They are included in most advisory memberships.

Build the IT Steering Committee Process

This step will walk you through the following activities:

• Define high-level steering committee processes using SIPOC
• Select steering committee metrics

This step involves the following participants:

• CIO
• IT Steering Committee
• IT Leadership Team
• PMO

Key Insight:

Building high-level IT steering committee processes brings your committee to life. Having a clear process will ensure that you have the right information from the right sources so that committees can operate and deliver the appropriate output to the customers who need it.

Build your high-level IT steering committee processes to enable committee functionality

The IT steering committee is only valuable if members are able to successfully execute on responsibilities.

One of the most common mistakes organizations make is that they build their committee charters and launch into their first meeting. Without defined inputs and outputs, a committee does not have the needed information to be able to effectively execute on responsibilities and is unable to meet its stated goals.

The arrows in this picture represent the flow of information between the IT steering committee, other committees, and IT management.

Building high-level processes will define how that information flows within and between committees and will enable more rapid decision making. Participants will have the information they need to be confident in their decisions.

Define the high-level process for each of the IT steering committee responsibilities

Info-Tech recommends using SIPOC as a way of defining how the IT steering committee will operate.

Derived from the core methodologies of Six Sigma process management, SIPOC – a model of Suppliers, Inputs, Processes, Outputs, Customers – is one of several tools that organizations can use to build high level processes. SIPOC is especially effective when determining process scope and boundaries and to gain consensus on a process.

By doing so you’ll ensure that:

1. Information and documentation required to complete each responsibility is identified.
2. That the results of committee meetings are distributed to those customers who need the information.
3. Inputs and outputs are identified and that there is defined accountability for providing these.

Remember: Your IT steering committee is not a working committee. Enable effective decision making by ensuring participants have the necessary information and appropriate recommendations from key stakeholders to make decisions.

Define your SIPOC model for each of the IT steering committee responsibilities

2.1

1. In a meeting with your IT leadership, draw the SIPOC model on a whiteboard or flip-chart paper. Either review the examples on the following slides or start from scratch.
2. If you are adjusting the following slides, consider the templates you already have which would be appropriate inputs and make adjustments as needed.

For atypical responsibilities:

1. Start with the governance responsibility and identify what specifically it is that the IT steering committee is doing with regards to that responsibility. Write that in the center of the model.
2. As a group, consider what information or documentation would be required by the participants to effectively execute on the responsibility.
3. Identify which individual will supply each piece of documentation. This person will be accountable for this moving forward.
4. Outputs: Once the committee has met about the responsibility, what information or documentation will be produced. List all of those documents.
5. Identify the individuals who need to receive the outputs of the information.
6. Repeat this for all of the responsibilities.
7. Once complete, document the SIPOC models in the IT Steering Committee Charter.

INPUT

• List of responsibilities
• Example SIPOCs

OUTPUT

• SIPOC model for all responsibilities.

Materials

• Whiteboard
• Markers
• ITSC Charter

Participants

• IT leadership team

SIPOC examples for typical ITSC responsibilities

SIPOC examples for typical ITSC responsibilities

SIPOC examples for typical ITSC responsibilities

SIPOC examples for typical ITSC responsibilities

SIPOC examples for typical ITSC responsibilities

SIPOC examples for typical ITSC responsibilities

SIPOC examples for typical ITSC responsibilities

Define which metrics you will report to the IT steering committee

2.2

1. Consider your IT steering committee goals and the five IT governance areas.
2. For each governance area, identify which metrics you are currently tracking and determine whether these metrics are valuable to IT, to the business, or both. For metrics that are valuable to business stakeholders determine whether you have an identified target metric.

New Metrics:

1. For each of the five IT governance areas review your SWOT analysis and document your key opportunities and weaknesses.
2. For each, brainstorm hypotheses around why the opportunity was weak or was a success. For each hypothesis identify if there are any clear ways to measure and test the hypothesis.
3. Review the list of metrics and select 5-7 metrics to track for each prioritized governance area.

INPUT

• List of responsibilities
• Example SIPOCs

OUTPUT

• SIPOC model for all responsibilities

Materials

• Whiteboard
• Markers

Participants

• IT leadership team

IT steering committee metric triggers to consider

RISK

• Risk profile % increase
• # of actionable risks outstanding
• # of issues arising not identified prior
• # of security breaches

SERVICE

• Number of business disruptions due to IT service incidents
• Number of service requests by department
• Number of service requests that are actually projects
• Causes of tickets overall and by department
• Percentage of duration attributed to waiting for client response

PROJECTS

• Projects completed within budget
• Percentage of projects delivered on time
• Project completion rate
• IT completed assigned portion to scope
• Project status and trend dashboard

INFORMATION / DATA

• % of data properly classified
• # of incidents locating data
• # of report requests by complexity
• # of open data sets

PPM /INVESTMENTS

• CIO Business Vision (an Info-Tech diagnostic survey that helps align IT strategy with business goals)
• Level of stakeholder satisfaction and perceived value
• Percentage of ON vs. OFF cycle projects by area/silo
• Realized benefit to business units based on investment mix
• Percent of enterprise strategic goals and requirements supported by strategic goals
• Target vs. actual budget
• Reasons for off-cycle projects causing delays to planned projects

CASE STUDY

Industry: Consumer Goods

Source: Interview

"IT steering committee’s reputation greatly improved by clearly defining its process."

CHALLENGE

One of the major failings of the previous steering committee was its poorly drafted procedures. Members of the committee were unclear on the overall process and the meeting schedule was not well established.

This led to low attendance at the meetings and ineffective meetings overall. Since the meeting procedures weren’t well understood, some members of the leadership team took advantage of this to get their projects pushed through.

SOLUTION

The first step the new CIO took was to clearly outline the meeting procedures in her new steering committee charter. The meeting agenda, meeting goals, length of time, and outcomes were outlined, and the stakeholders signed off on their participation.

She also gave the participants a SIPOC, which helped members who were unfamiliar with the process a high-level overview. It also reacquainted previous members with the process and outlined changes to the previous, out-of-date processes.

OUTCOME

The participation rate in the committee meetings improved from the previous rate of approximately 40% to 90%. The committee members were much more satisfied with the new process and felt like their contributions were appreciated more than before.

If you want additional support, have our analysts guide you through this phase as part of an Info-Tech workshop

Book a workshop with our Info-Tech analysts:

• To accelerate this project, engage your IT team in an Info-Tech workshop with an Info-Tech analyst team.
• Info-Tech analysts will join you and your team onsite at your location or welcome you to Info-Tech’s historic Toronto office to participate in an innovative onsite workshop.
• Contact your account manager (www.infotech.com/account), or email Workshops@InfoTech.com for more information.

The following are sample activities that will be conducted by Info-Tech analysts with your team:

2.1

Define a SIPOC for each of the ITSC responsibilities

Create SIPOCs for each of the governance responsibilities with the help of an Info-Tech advisor.

2.2

Establish the reporting metrics for the ITSC

The analyst will facilitate several exercises to help you and your stakeholders define the reporting metrics for the ITSC.

Phase 3

Build the Stakeholder Presentation

Phase 3 outline

Call 1-888-670-8889 or email GuidedImplementations@InfoTech.com for more information.

Complete these steps on your own, or call us to complete a guided implementation. A guided implementation is a series of 2-3 advisory calls that help you execute each phase of a project. They are included in most advisory memberships.

Build the Stakeholder Presentation

This step will walk you through the following activities:

• Organizing the first ITSC meeting
• Customizing an ITSC stakeholder presentation
• Determine ITSC responsibilities and participants
• Determine ITSC procedures

This step involves the following participants:

• CIO
• IT Steering Committee
• IT Leadership Team
• PMO

Key Insight:

Stakeholder engagement will be critical to your ITSC success, don't just focus on what is changing. Ensure stakeholders know why you are engaging them and how it will help them in their role.

Hold a kick-off meeting with your IT steering committee members to explain the process, responsibilities, and goals

3.1

Don’t take on too much in your first IT steering committee meeting. Many participants may not have participated in an IT steering committee before, or some may have had poor experiences in the past.

Use this meeting to explain the role of the IT steering committee and why you are implementing one, and help participants to understand their role in the process.

Quickly customize Info-Tech’s IT Steering Committee Stakeholder Presentation template to explain the goals and benefits of the IT steering committee, and use your own data to make the case for governance.

At the end of the meeting, ask committee members to sign the committee charter to signify their agreement to participate in the IT steering committee.

Tailor the IT Steering Committee Stakeholder Presentation template: slides 1-5

3.2 Estimated Time: 10 minutes

Review the IT Steering Committee Stakeholder Presentation template. This document should be presented at the first IT steering committee meeting by the assigned Committee Chair.

Customization Options

Overall: Decide if you would like to change the presentation template. You can change the color scheme easily by copying the slides in the presentation deck and pasting them into your company’s standard template. Once you’ve pasted them in, scan through the slides and make any additional changes needed to formatting.

Slide 2-3: Review the text on each of the slides and see if any wording should be changed to better suite your organization.

Slide 4: Review your list of the top 10 challenges and opportunities as defined in section 2 of this blueprint. Document those in the appropriate sections. (Note: be careful that the language is business-facing; challenges and opportunities should be professionally worded.)

Slide 5: Review the language on slide 5 to make any necessary changes to suite your organization. Changes here should be minimal.

INPUT

• Top 10 list
• Survey report
• ITSC Charter

OUTPUT

• Ready-to-present presentation for defined stakeholders

Materials

• IT Steering Committee Stakeholder Presentation

Participants

• IT Steering Committee Chair/CIO

Tailor the IT Steering Committee Stakeholder Presentation template: slides 6-10

3.2 Estimated Time: 10 minutes

Customization Options

Slide 6: The goal of this slide is to document and share the names of the participants on the IT steering committee. Document the names in the right-hand side based on your IT Steering Committee Charter.

Slides 7-9:

• Review the agenda items as listed in your IT Steering Committee Charter. Document the annual, quarterly, and monthly meeting responsibilities on the left-hand side of slides 7-9.
• Meeting Participants: For each slide, list the members who are required for that meeting.
• Document the key required reading materials as identified in the SIPOC charts under “inputs.”
• Document the key meeting outcomes as identified in the SIPOC chart under “outputs.”

Slide 10: Review and understand the rollout timeline. Make any changes needed to the timeline.

INPUT

• Top 10 list
• Survey report
• ITSC Charter

OUTPUT

• Ready-to-present presentation for defined stakeholders

Materials

• IT Steering Committee Stakeholder Presentation

Participants

• IT Steering Committee Chair/CIO

Present the information to the IT leadership team to increase your comfort with the material

3.3 Estimated Time: 1-2 hours

1. Once you have finished customizing the IT Steering Committee Stakeholder Presentation, practice presenting the material by meeting with your IT leadership team. This will help you become more comfortable with the dialog and anticipate any questions that might arise.
2. The ITSC chair will present the meeting deck, and all parties should discuss what they think went well and opportunities for improvement.
3. Each business relationship manager should document the needed changes in preparation for their first meeting.

INPUT

• IT Steering Committee Stakeholder Presentation - Meeting 1

Participants

• IT leadership team

Schedule your first meeting of the IT steering committee

3.4

By this point, you should have customized the meeting presentation deck and be ready to meet with your IT steering committee participants.

The meeting should be one hour in duration and completed in person.

Before holding the meeting, identify who you think is going to be most supportive and who will be least. Consider meeting with those individuals independently prior to the group meeting to elicit support or minimize negative impacts on the meeting.

Customize this calendar invite script to invite business partners to participate in the meeting.

Hello [Name],

As you may have heard, we recently went through an exercise to develop an IT steering committee. I’d like to take some time to discuss the results of this work with you, and discuss ways in which we can work together in the future to better enable corporate goals.

The goals of the meeting are:

1. Discuss the benefits of an IT steering committee
2. Review the results of the organizational survey
3. Introduce you to our new IT steering committee

I look forward to starting this discussion with you and working with you more closely in the future.

Warm regards,

CASE STUDY

Industry:Consumer Goods

Source: Interview

"CIO gains buy-in from the company by presenting the new committee to its stakeholders."

CHALLENGE

Communication was one of the biggest steering committee challenges that the new CIO inherited.

Members were resistant to joining/rejoining the committee because of its previous failures. When the new CIO was building the steering committee, she surveyed the members on their knowledge of IT as well as what they felt their role in the committee entailed.

She found that member understanding was lacking and that their knowledge surrounding their roles was very inconsistent.

SOLUTION

The CIO dedicated their first steering committee meeting to presenting the results of that survey to align member knowledge.

She outlined the new charter and discussed the roles of each member, the goals of the committee, and the overarching process.

OUTCOME

Members of the new committee were now aligned in terms of the steering committee’s goals. Taking time to thoroughly outline the procedures during the first meeting led to much higher member engagement. It also built accountability within the committee since all members were present and all members had the same level of knowledge surrounding the roles of the ITSC.

If you want additional support, have our analysts guide you through this phase as part of an Info-Tech workshop

Book a workshop with our Info-Tech analysts:

• To accelerate this project, engage your IT team in an Info-Tech workshop with an Info-Tech analyst team.
• Info-Tech analysts will join you and your team onsite at your location or welcome you to Info-Tech’s historic Toronto office to participate in an innovative onsite workshop.
• Contact your account manager (www.infotech.com/account), or email Workshops@InfoTech.com for more information.

The following are sample activities that will be conducted by Info-Tech analysts with your team:

3.1

Create a presentation for ITSC stakeholders to be presented at the first ITSC meeting

Work with an Info-Tech advisor to customize our IT Steering Committee Stakeholder Presentation template. Use this presentation to gain stakeholder buy-in by making the case for an ITSC.

Phase 4

Define the Prioritization Criteria

Phase 4 outline

Call 1-888-670-8889 or email GuidedImplementations@InfoTech.com for more information.

Complete these steps on your own, or call us to complete a guided implementation. A guided implementation is a series of 2-3 advisory calls that help you execute each phase of a project. They are included in most advisory memberships.

Define the Project Prioritization Criteria

This step will walk you through the following activities:

• Selecting the appropriate project prioritization criteria for your organization
• Developing weightings for the prioritization criteria
• Filling in Info-Tech’s IT Steering Committee Project Prioritization Tool

This step involves the following participants:

• CIO
• IT Steering Committee
• IT Leadership Team
• PMO

Key Insight:

The steering committee sets and agrees to principles that guide prioritization decisions. The agreed upon principles will affect business unit expectations and justify the deferral of requests that are low priority. In some cases, we have seen the number of requests drop substantially because business units are reluctant to propose initiatives that do not fit high prioritization criteria.

Understand the role of the IT steering committee in project prioritization

One of the key roles of the IT steering committee is to review and prioritize the portfolio of IT projects.

What is the prioritization based on? Info-Tech recommends selecting four broad criteria with two dimensions under each to evaluate the value of the projects. The criteria are aligned with how the project generates value for the organization and the execution of the project.

What is the role of the steering committee in prioritizing projects? The steering committee is responsible for reviewing project criteria scores and making decisions about where projects rank on the priority list. Planning, resourcing, and project management are the responsibility of the PMO or the project owner.

Use Info-Tech’s IT Steering Committee Project Prioritization Tool to catalog and prioritize your project portfolio

4.1

• Use Info-Tech’s IT Steering Committee Project Prioritization Tool in conjunction with the following activities to catalog and prioritize all of the current IT projects in your portfolio.
• Assign weightings to your selected criteria to prioritize projects based on objective scores assigned during the intake process and adjust these weightings on an annual basis to align with changing organizational priorities and goals.
• Use this tool at steering committee meetings to streamline the prioritization process and create alignment with the PMO and project managers.
• Monitor ongoing project status and build a communication channel between the PMO and project managers and the IT steering committee.
• Adjusting the titles in the Settings tab will automatically adjust the titles in the Project Data tab.
• Note: To customize titles in the document you must unprotect the content under the View tab. Be sure to change the content back to protected after making the changes.

Establish project prioritization criteria and build the matrix

4.2 Estimated Time: 1 hour

1. During the second steering committee meeting, discuss the criteria you will be basing your project prioritization scoring on.
2. Review Info-Tech’s prioritization criteria matrix, located in the Prioritization Criteria List tab of the IT Steering Committee Project Prioritization Tool, to gain ideas for what criteria would best suit your organization.
3. Write these main criteria on the whiteboard and brainstorm criteria that are more specific for your organization; include these on the list as well.
4. Discuss the criteria. Eliminate criteria that won’t contribute strongly to the prioritization process and vote on the remaining. Select four main criteria from the list.
5. After selecting the four main criteria, write these on the whiteboard and brainstorm the dimensions that fall under the criteria. These should be more specific/measurable aspects of the criteria. These will be the statements that values are assigned to for prioritizing projects so they should be clear. Use the Prioritization Criteria List in the tool to help generate ideas.
6. After creating the dimensions, determine what the scoring statements will be. These are the statements that will be used to determine the score out of 10 that the different dimensions will receive.
7. Adjust the Settings and Project Data tabs in the IT Steering Committee Project Prioritization Tool to reflect your selections.
8. Edit Info-Tech’s IT Project Intake Form or the intake form that you currently use to contain these criteria and scoring parameters.

INPUT

• Group input
• IT Steering Committee Project Prioritization Tool

OUTPUT

• Project prioritization criteria to be used for current and future projects

Materials

• Whiteboard and markers

Participants

• IT steering committee
• CIO
• IT leadership

Adjust prioritization criteria weightings to reflect organizational needs

4.3 Estimated Time: 1 hour

1. In the second steering committee meeting, after deciding what the project prioritization criteria will be, you need to determine how much weight (the importance) each criteria will receive.
2. Use the four agreed upon criteria with two dimensions each, determined in the previous activity.
3. Perform a $100 test to assign proportions to each of the criteria dimensions.
1. Divide the committee into pairs.
2. Tell each pair that they have $100 divide among the 4 major criteria based on how important they feel the criteria is.
3. After dividing the initial $100, ask them to divide the amount they allocated to each criteria into the two sub-dimensions.
4. Next, ask them to present their reasoning for the allocations to the rest of the committee.
5. Discuss the weighting allotments and vote on the best one (or combination).
6. Input the weightings in the Settings tab of the IT Steering Committee Project Prioritization Tool and document the discussion.
4. After customizing the chart establish the owner of the document. This person should be a member of the PMO or the most suitable IT leader if a PMO doesn’t exist.
5. Only perform this adjustment annually or if a major strategic change happens within the organization.