2022 Tech Trends

Enabling the digital economy

Supporting the CEO for growth

The post-pandemic pace of change

The disruptions to the way we work caused by the pandemic haven’t bounced back to normal.

As part of its research process for the 2022 Tech Trends Report, Info-Tech Research Group conducted an open online survey among its membership and wider community of professionals. The survey was fielded from August 2021 through to September 2021, collecting 475 responses. We asked some of the same questions as last year’s survey so we can compare results as well as new questions to explore new trends.

How much do you expect your organization to change permanently compared to how it was operating before the pandemic?

• 7% – No change. We'll keep doing business as we always have.
• 33% – A bit of change. Some ways of working will shift long term
• 47% – A lot of change. The way we work will be differ in many ways long term. But our business remains...
• 13% – Transformative change. Our fundamental business will be different and we'll be working in new ways.

This year, about half of IT professionals expect a lot of change to the way we work and 13% expect a transformative change with a fundamental shift in their business. Last year, the same percentage expected a lot of change and only 10% expected transformative change.

30% more professionals expect transformative permanent change compared to one year ago.

47% of professionals expect a lot of permanent change; this remains the same as last year. (Info-Tech Tech Trends 2022 Survey)

The pandemic accelerated the speed of digital transformation

With the massive disruption preventing people from gathering, businesses shifted to digital interactions with customers.

Companies also accelerated the pace of creating digital or digitally enhanced products and services.

“The Digital Economy incorporates all economic activity reliant on or significantly enhanced by the use of digital inputs, including digital technologies, digital infrastructure, digital services and data.” (OECD Definition)

IT must enable participation in the digital economy

Consumer spending is tilting more digital.

Consumers have cut back spending on sectors where purchases are mostly made offline. That spending has shifted to digital services and online purchases. New habits formed during the pandemic are likely to stick for many consumers, with a continued shift to online consumption for many sectors.

Purchases on online platforms are projected to rise from 10% today to 33% by 2030.

Estimated online share of consumption

Changing customer expectations pose a risk.

IT practitioners agree that customer expectations are changing. They expect this to be more likely to disrupt their business in the next 12 months than new competition, cybersecurity incidents, or government-enacted policy changes.

Factors likely to disrupt business in next 12 months

This poses a challenge to IT departments below the “expand” level of maturity

CIOs must climb the maturity ladder to help CEOs drive growth.

Most IT departments rated their maturity in the “optimize” or “support” level on Info-Tech’s maturity ladder.

CIOs at the “optimize” level can play a role in digital transformation by improving back-office processes but should aim for a higher mandate.

CIOs achieving at the “expand” level can help directly improve revenues by improving customer-facing products and services, and those at the “transform” level can help fundamentally change the business to create revenue in new ways. CIOs can climb the maturity ladder by enabling new digital capabilities.

Maturity is heading in the wrong direction.

Only half of IT practitioners described their department’s maturity as “transform” compared to last year’s survey, and more than twice the number rated themselves as “struggle.”

48% rate their IT departments as low maturity.

Improve maturity by focusing on key capabilities to compete in the digital economy

Capabilities to unlock digital

Innovation: Identify innovation opportunities and plan how to use technology innovation to create a competitive advantage or achieve improved operational effectiveness and efficiency.

Human Resources Management: Provide a structured approach to ensure optimal planning, evaluation, and development of human resources.

Data Architecture: Manage the business’ data stores, including technology, governance, and people that manage them. Establish guidelines for the effective use of data.

Security Strategy: Define, operate, and monitor a system for information security management. Keep the impact and occurrence of information security incidents within risk appetite levels.

Business Process Controls and Internal Audit: Manage business process controls such as self-assessments and independent assurance reviews to ensure information related to and used by business processes meets security and integrity requirements. (ISACA, 2020)

5 Tech Trends for 2022

In this report, we explore five use cases for emerging technology that can improve on capabilities needed to compete in the digital economy. Use cases combine emerging technologies with new processes and strategic planning.

DIGITAL ECONOMY

TREND 01 | Human Resources Management

HYBRID COLLABORATION
Provide a digital employee experience that is flexible, contextual, and free from the friction of hybrid operating models.

TREND 02 | Security Strategy

BATTLE AGAINST RANSOMWARE
Prevent ransomware infections and create a response plan for a worst-case scenario. Collaborate with relevant external partners to access resources and mitigate risks.

TREND 03 | Business Process Controls and Internal Audit

CARBON METRICS IN ENERGY 4.0
Use internet of things (IoT) and auditable tracking to provide insight into business process implications for greenhouse gas emissions.

TREND 04 | Data Architecture

INTANGIBLE VALUE CREATION
Provide governance around digital marketplace and manage implications of digital currency. Use blockchain technology to turn unique intellectual property into saleable digital products

TREND 05 | Innovation

AUTOMATION AS A SERVICE
Automate business processes and access new sophisticated technology services through platform integration.

Hybrid Collaboration

TREND 01 | HUMAN RESOURCES MANAGEMENT

Provide a digital employee experience that is flexible, contextual, and free from the friction of hybrid operating models.

Emerging technologies:
Intelligent conference rooms; intelligent workflows, platforms

Introduction

Hybrid work models enable productive, diverse, and inclusive talent ecosystems necessary for the digital economy.

Hybrid work models have become the default post-pandemic work approach as most knowledge workers prefer the flexibility to choose whether to work remotely or come into the office. CIOs have an opportunity lead hybrid work by facilitating collaboration between employees mixed between meeting at the office and virtually.

IT departments rose to the challenge to quickly facilitate an all-remote work scenario for their organizations at the outset of the pandemic. Now they must adapt again to facilitate the hybrid work model, which brings new friction to collaboration but also new opportunities to hire a talented, engaged, and diverse workforce.

79% of organizations will have a mix of workers in the office and at home. (Info-Tech Tech Trends 2022 Survey)

35% view role type as a determining factor in the feasibility of the hybrid work model.

Return-to-the-office tensions

Only 18% of employees want to return to the office full-time.

But 70% of employers want people back in the office. (CNBC, April 2021)

Signals

IT delivers the systems needed to make the hybrid operating model a success.

IT has an opportunity to lead by defining the hybrid operating model through technology that enables collaboration. To foster collaboration, companies plan to invest in the same sort of tools that helped them cope during the pandemic.

As 79% of organizations envision a hybrid model going forward, investments into hybrid work tech stacks – including web conferencing tools, document collaboration tools, and team workspaces – are expected to continue into 2022.

Plans for future investment in collaboration technologies

Drivers

COVID-19

Vaccination rates around the world are rising and allowing more offices to welcome back workers because the risk of COVID-19 transmission is reduced and jurisdictions are lifting restrictions limiting gatherings.

Worker satisfaction

Most workers don't want to go to the office full-time. In a Bloomberg poll (2021), almost half of millennial and Gen Z workers say they would quit their job if not given an option to work remotely.

IT spending

Companies are investing more into IT budgets to find ways to support a mix of remote work and in-office resources to cope with work disruption. This extra spending is offset in some cases by companies saving money from having employees work from home some portion of the time. (CIO Dive, 2021)

Risks and Benefits

Benefits

Risks

“We have to be careful what we automate. Do we want to automate waste? If a company is accustomed to having a ton of meetings and their mode in the new world is to move that online, what are you going to do? You're going to end up with a lot of fatigue and disenchantment…. You have to rethink your methods before you think about the automation part of it." (Vijay Sundaram, Chief Strategy Officer, Zoho)

Listen to the Tech Insights podcast: Unique approach to hybrid collaboration

Case Study: Zoho

Situation

Zoho Corp. is a cloud software firm based in Chennai, India. It develops a wide range of cloud software, including enterprise collaboration software and productivity tools. Over the past decade, Zoho has used flexible work models to grant remote work options to some employees.

When the coronavirus pandemic hit, not only did the office have to shut down but also many employees had to relocate back with families in rural areas. The human costs of the pandemic experienced by staff required Zoho to respond by offering counseling services and material support to employees.

Complication

Zoho prides itself as an employee-centric company and views its culture as a community that's purpose goes beyond work. That sense of community was lost because of the disruption caused by the pandemic. Employees lost their social context and their work role models. Zoho had to find a way to recreate that without the central hub of the office or find a way to work with the limitations of it not being possible.

Resolution

To support employees in rural settings, Zoho sent out phones to provide redundant bandwidth. As lockdowns in India end, Zoho is taking a flexible approach and giving employees the option to come to the office. It's seeing more people come back each week, drawn by the strong community.

Zoho supports the hybrid mix of workers by balancing synchronous and asynchronous collaboration. It holds meetings when absolutely necessary through tools like Zoho Meet but tries to keep more work context to asynchronous collaboration that allows people to complete tasks quickly and move on. Its applications are connected to a common platform that is designed to facilitate workflows between employees with context and intelligence. (Interview with Vijay Sundaram, Chief Strategy Officer, Zoho)

“We tend to think of it on a continuum of synchronous to asynchronous work collaboration. It’s become the paramount norm for so many different reasons…the point is people are going to work at different times in different locations. So how do we enable experiences where everyone can participate?" (Jason Brommet, Head of Modern Work and Security Business Group at Microsoft)

Listen to the Tech Insights podcast: Microsoft on the ‘paradox of hybrid work’

Case Study: Microsoft

Situation

Before the pandemic, only 18% of Microsoft employees were working remotely. As of April 1, 2020, they were joined by the other 82% of non-essential workers at the company in working remotely.

As with its own customers, Microsoft used its own software to enable this new work experience, including Microsoft Teams for web conferencing and instant messaging and Office 365 for document collaboration. Employees proved just as productive getting their work done from home as they were working in the office.

Complication

At Microsoft, the effects of firm-wide remote work changed the collaboration patterns of the company. Even though a portion of the company was working remotely before the pandemic, the effects of everyone working remotely were different. Employees collaborated in a more static and siloed way, focusing on scheduled meetings with existing relationships. Fewer connections were made with more disparate parts of the organization. There was also a decrease in synchronous communication and an increase in asynchronous communication.

Resolution

Microsoft is creating new tools to break down the silos in organizations that are grappling with hybrid work challenges. For example, Viva Insights is designed to inform workers about their collaboration habits with analytics. Microsoft wants to provide workers with insights on their collaborative networks and whether they are creating new connections or deepening existing connections. (Interview with Jason Brommet, Head of Modern Work and Security Business Group, Microsoft; Nature Human Behaviour, 2021)

What's Next?

Distributed collaboration space:

International Workplace Group says that more companies are taking advantage of its full network deals on coworking spaces. Companies such as Standard Charter are looking to provide their workers with a happy compromise between working from home and making the commute all the way to the central office. The hub-and-spoke model gives employees the opportunity to work near home and looks to be part of the hybrid operating model mix for many companies. (Interview with Wayne Berger, CEO of IWG Canada & Latin America)

Optimized hybrid meetings:

Facilitating hybrid meetings between employees grouped in the office and remote workers will be a major pain point. New hybrid meeting solutions will provide cameras embedded with intelligence to put boardroom participants into independent video streams. They will also focus on making connecting to the same meeting from various locations as convenient as possible and capture clear and crisp audio from each speaker.

Uncertainties

Mix between office and remote work:

It's clear we're not going to work the way we used to previously with central work hubs, but full-on remote work isn't the right path forward either. A new hybrid work model is emerging, and organizations are experimenting to find the right approach.

Attrition:

Between April and September 2021, 15 million US workers quit their jobs, setting a record pace. Employees seek a renewed sense of purpose in their work, and many won’t accept mandates to go back to the office. (McKinsey, 2021)

Equal footing in meetings:

What are the new best practices for conducting an effective meeting between employees in the office and those who are remote? Some companies ask each employee to connect via a laptop. Others are using conference rooms with tech to group in-office workers together and connect them with remote workers.

Hybrid Collaboration Scenarios

Organizations can plan their response to the hybrid work context by plotting their circumstances across two continuums: synchronous to asynchronous collaboration approach and remote work to central hub work model.

Recommendations

Rethink technology solutions. Don't expect your pre-pandemic videoconference rooms to suffice. And consider how to optimize your facilities and infrastructure for hot-desking scenarios.

Optimize remote work. Shift from the collaboration approach you put together just to get by to the program you'll use to maximize flexibility.

Enable effective collaboration. Enable knowledge sharing no matter where and when your employees work and choose the best collaboration software solutions for your scenario.

Run better meetings. Successful hybrid workplace plans must include planning around hybrid meetings. Seamless hybrid meetings are the result of thoughtful planning and documented best practices.

89% of organizations invested in web conferencing technology to facilitate better collaboration, but only 43% invested in office meeting room solutions. (Info-Tech Tech Trends 2022 Survey)

Info-Tech Resources

• Rethink Technology Solutions
• Optimize Remote Work
• Enable Effective Collaboration
• Run Better Meetings

Battle Against Ransomware

TREND 02 | SECURITY STRATEGY

Prevent ransomware infections and create a response plan for a worst-case scenario. Collaborate with relevant external partners to access resources and mitigate risks.

Emerging technologies:
Open source intelligence; AI-powered threat detection

“It has been a national crisis for some time…. For every [breach] that hits the news there are hundreds that never make it.” (Steve Orrin, Federal Chief Technology Officer, Intel)

Listen to the Tech Insights podcast: Ransomware crisis and AI in military

Introduction

Between 2019 and 2020, ransomware attacks rose by 62% worldwide and by 158% in North America. (PBS NewsHour, 2021)

Security strategies are crucial for companies to control access to their digital assets and confidential data, providing it only to the right people at the right time. Now security strategies must adapt to a new caliber of threat in ransomware to avoid operational disruption and reputational damage.

In 2021, ransomware attacks exploiting flaws in widely used software from vendors Kaseya, SolarWinds, and Microsoft affected many companies and saw record-breaking ransomware payments made to state-sponsored cybercriminal groups.

After a ransomware attack caused Colonial Pipeline to shut down its pipeline operations across the US, the ransomware issue became a topic of federal attention with executives brought before Senate committees. A presidential task force to combat ransomware was formed.

62% of IT professionals say they are more concerned about being a victim of ransomware than they were one year ago. (Info-Tech Tech Trends 2022 Survey)

$70 million demanded by REvil gang in ransom to unlock firms affected by the Kaseya breach. (TechRadar, 2021)

Signals

Organizations are taking a multi-faceted approach to preparing for the event of a ransomware breach.

The most popular methods to prepare for ransomware are to buy an insurance policy or create offline backups and redundant systems. Few are making an effort to be aware of free decryption tools, and only 2% admit to budgeting to pay ransoms.

44% of IT professionals say they spent time and money specifically to prevent ransomware over the past year. (Info-Tech Tech Trends 2022 Survey)

Approaches to prepare for ransomware

(Info-Tech Tech Trends 2022 Survey)

Drivers

National security concerns

Attacks on US infrastructure and government agencies have prompted the White House to treat ransomware as a matter of national security. The government stance is that Russia supports the attacks. The US is establishing new mechanisms to address the threat. Plans include new funding to support ransomware response, a mandate for organizations to report incidents, and requirements for organizations to consider the alternatives before paying a ransom. (Institute for Security and Technology, 2021)

Advice from cybersecurity insurance providers

Increases in ransom payouts have caused cybersecurity insurance providers to raise premiums and put in place more security requirements for policyholders to try and prevent ransomware infection. However, when clients are hit with ransomware, insurance providers advise to pay the ransom as it's usually the cheapest option. (ProPublica, 2019)

Reputational damage

Ransomware attacks also often include a data breach event with hackers exfiltrating the data before encrypting it. Admitting a breach to customers can seriously damage an organization's reputation as trustworthy. Organizations may also be obligated to pay for credit protection of their customers. (Interview with Frank Trovato, Research Director – Infrastructure, Info-Tech Research Group)

Risks and Benefits

Benefits

Risks

Case Study: Victim to ransomware

Situation

In February 2020, a large organization found a ransomware note on an admin’s workstation. They had downloaded a local copy of the organization’s identity management database for testing and left a port open on their workstation. Hackers exfiltrated it and encrypted the data on the workstation. They demanded a ransom payment to decrypt the data.

Complication

Because private information of employees and customers was breached, the organization decided to voluntarily inform the state-level regulator. With 250,000 accounts affected, plans were made to require password changes en masse. A public announcement was made two days after the breach to ensure that everyone affected could be reached.

The organization decided not to pay the ransom because it didn’t need the data back, since it had a copy on an unaffected server.

Resolution

After a one-day news cycle for the breach, the story about the ransom was over. The organization also received praise for handling the situation well and quickly informing stakeholders.

The breach motivated the organization to put more protections in place. It implemented a deny-by-default network and turned off remote desktop protocol and secure shell. It mandated multi-factor authentication and put in a new endpoint-detection and response system. (Interview with CIO of large enterprise)

What's Next

AI for cybersecurity:

New endpoint protections using AI are being deployed to help defend against ransomware and other cybersecurity intrusions. The solutions focus on the prevention and detection of ransomware by learning about the expected behavior of an environment and then detecting anomalies that could be attack attempts. This type of approach can be applied to everything from reading the contents of an email to helping employees detect phishing attempts to lightweight endpoint protection deployed to an Internet of Things device to detect an unusual connection attempt.

Unfortunately, AI is a tool available to both the cybersecurity industry and hackers. Examples of hackers tampering with cybersecurity AI to bypass it have already surfaced. (Forbes, 23 Sept. 2021)

Uncertainties

Government response:

In the US, the Ransomware Task Force has made recommendations to the government but it's not clear whether all of them will be followed. Other countries such as Russia are reported to be at least tolerating ransomware operations if not supporting them directly with resources.

Supply chain security:

Sophisticated attacks using zero-day exploits in widely used software show that organizations simply can't account for every potential vulnerability.

Arms escalation:

The ransomware-as-a-service industry is doing good business and finding new ways to evade detection by cybersecurity vendors. New detection techniques involving AI are being introduced by vendors, but will it just be another step in the back-and-forth game of one-upmanship? (Interview with Frank Trovato)

Battle Against Ransomware Scenarios

Determine your organization’s threat profile for ransomware by plotting two variables: the investment made in cybersecurity and the sophistication level of attacks that you should be prepared to guard against.

Recommendations

Create a ransomware incident response plan. Assess your current security practices and identify gaps. Quantify your ransomware risk to prioritize investments and run tabletop planning exercises for ransomware attacks.

Reduce your exposure to ransomware. Focus on securing the frontlines by improving phishing awareness among staff and deploying AI tools to help flag attacks. Use multi-factor authentication. Take a zero-trust approach and review your use of RDP, SSH, and VPN.

Require security in contracts. Security must be built into vendor contracts. Government contracts are now doing this, elevating security to the same level as functionality and support features. This puts money incentives behind improving security. (Interview with Intel Federal CTO Steve Orrin)

42% of IT practitioners feel employees must do much more to help defend against ransomware. (Info-Tech Tech Trends 2022 Survey)

Info-Tech Resources

• Create a Ransomware Incident Response Plan
• Defend Against the Evolving Threat of Ransomware

Carbon Metrics in Energy 4.0

TREND 03 | BUSINESS PROCESS CONTROLS AND INTERNAL AUDIT

Use Internet of Things (IoT) and auditable tracking to provide insight into business process implications for greenhouse gas emissions.

Emerging technologies:
IoT

Introduction

Making progress towards a carbon-neutral future.

A landmark report published in 2021 by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change underlines that human actions can still determine the future course of climate change. The report calls on governments, individuals, and organizations to stop putting new greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere no later than 2050, and to be at the halfway point to achieving that by 2030.

With calls to action becoming more urgent, organizations are making plans to reduce the use of fossil fuels, move to renewable energy sources, and reduce consumption that causes more emissions downstream. As both voluntary and mandatory regulatory requirements task organizations with reducing emissions, they will first be challenged to accurately measure the size of their footprint.

CIOs in organizations are well positioned to make conscious decisions to both influence how technology choices impact carbon emissions and implement effective tracking of emissions across the entire enterprise.

Canada’s CIO strategy council is calling on organizations to sign a “sustainable IT pledge” to cut emissions from IT operations and supply chain and to measure and disclose emissions annually. (CIO Strategy Council, Sustainable IT Pledge)

SCOPE 3 – Indirect Consumption

• Goods and services
• Fuel, travel, distribution
• Waste, investments, leased assets, employee activity

SCOPE 2 – Indirect Energy

• Electricity
• Heat and cooling

SCOPE 1 – Direct

• Facilities
• Vehicles

Signals

Emissions tracking requires a larger scope.

About two-thirds of organizations have a commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. When asked about what tactics they use to reduce emissions, the most popular options affect either scope 1 emissions (retiring older IT equipment) or scope 2 emissions (using renewable energy sources). Fewer are using tactics that would measure scope 3 emissions such as using IoT to track or using software or AI.

68% of organizations say they have a commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. (Info-Tech Tech Trends 2022 Survey)

Approaches to reducing carbon emissions

(Info-Tech Tech Trends 2022 Survey)

Drivers

Investor pressure

The world’s largest asset manager, at $7 trillion in investments, says it will move away from investing in firms that are not aligned to the Paris Agreement. (The New York Times, 2020)

Compliance tipping point

International charity CDP has been collecting environmental disclosure from organizations since 2002. In 2020, more than 9,600 of the world’s largest companies – representing over 50% of global market value – took part. (CDP, 2021)

International law

In 2021, six countries have net-zero emissions policies in law, six have proposed legislations, and 20 have policy documents. (Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit, 2021)

Employee satisfaction

In 2019, thousands of workers walked out of offices of Amazon, Google, Twitter, and Microsoft to demand their employers do more to reduce carbon emissions. (NBC News, 2021)

High influence factors for carbon reduction

• 25% – New government laws or policies
• 9% – External social pressures
• 9% – Pressure from investors
• 8% – International climate compliance efforts
• 7% – Employee satisfaction

(Info-Tech Tech Trends 2022 Survey)

Risks and Benefits

Benefits

Risks

“When you can take technology and embed that into management change decisions that impact the environment, you can essentially guarantee that [greenhouse gas] offset. Companies that are looking to reduce their emissions can buy those offsets and it creates value for everybody.” (Wade Barnes, CEO and founder of Farmers Edge)

Listen to the Tech Insights podcast: The future of farming is digital

Case Study

Situation

The Alberta Technology Innovation and Emissions Reduction Regulation is Alberta’s approach to reduce emissions from large industrial emitters. It prices GHG and provides a trading system.

No-till farming and nitrogen management techniques sequester up to 0.3 metric tons of GHG per year.

Complication

Farmers Edge offers farmers a digital platform that includes IoT and a unified data warehouse. It can turn farm records into digital environmental assets, which are aggregated and sold to emitters.

Real-time data from connected vehicles, connected sensors, and other various inputs can be verified by third-party auditors.

Resolution

Farmers Edge sold aggregated carbon offsets to Alberta power producer Capital Power to help it meet regulatory compliance.

Farmers Edge is expanding its platform to include farmers in other provinces and in the US, providing them opportunity to earn revenue via its Smart Carbon program.

The firm is working to meet standards outlined by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service. (Interview with Wade Barnes, CEO, Farmers Edge)

What's Next

Global standards:

The International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) has been formed by the International Financial Reporting Standards Foundation and will have its headquarters location announced in November at a United Nations conference. The body is already governing a set of global standards that have a roadmap for development through 2023 through open consultation. The standards are expected to bring together the multiple frameworks for sustainability standards and offer one global set of standards. (Business Council of Canada, 2021)

CIOs take charge:

The CIO is well positioned to take the lead role on corporate sustainability initiatives, including measuring and reducing an organization’s carbon footprint (or perhaps even monetizing carbon credits for an organization that is a negative emitter). CIOs can use their position as facilities managers and cross-functional process owners and mandate to reduce waste and inefficiency to take accountability for this important role. CIOs will expand their roles to deliver transparent and auditable reporting on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals for the enterprise.

Uncertainties

International resolve:

Fighting the climate crisis will require governments and private sector collaboration from around the world to commit to creating new economic structures to discourage greenhouse gas emissions and incentivize long-term sustainable thinking. If some countries or private sector forces continue to prioritize short-term gains over sustainability, the U.N.’s goals won’t be achieved and the human costs as a result of climate change will become more profound.

Cap-and-trade markets:

Markets where carbon credits are sold to emitters are organized by various jurisdictions around the world and have different incentive structures. Some are created by governments and others are voluntary markets created by industry. This type of organization for these markets limits their size and makes it hard to scale the impact. Organizations looking to sell carbon credits at volume face the friction of having to navigate different compliance rules for each market they want to participate in.

Carbon Metrics in Energy 4.0 Scenarios

Determine your organization’s approach to measuring carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions by considering whether your organization is likely to be a high emitter or a carbon sink. Also consider your capability to measure and report on your carbon footprint.

Recommendations

Measure the whole footprint. Devise a plan to measure scope 1, 2, and 3 greenhouse gas emissions at a level that is auditable by a third party.

Gauge the impact of Industry 4.0. New technologies in Industry 4.0 include IoT, additive manufacturing, and advanced analytics. Make sustainability a core part of your focus as you plan out how these technologies will integrate with your business.

Commit to net zero. Make a clear commitment to achieve net-zero emissions by a specific date as part of your organization’s core strategy. Take a continuous improvement approach to make progress towards the goal with measurable results.

New laws from governments will have the highest degree of influence on an organization’s decision to reduce emissions. (Info-Tech Tech Trends 2022 Survey)

Info-Tech Resources

• Durable Goods Manufacturing Industry 4.0 Report
• Getting to Zero
• Green IT Is Now a Key Component of Sustainability and Competitiveness

Intangible Value Creation

TREND 04 | DATA ARCHITECTURE

Use blockchain technology to turn unique intellectual property into saleable digital products. Provide governance around marketplaces where sales are made.

Emerging technologies:
Blockchain, Distributed Ledger Technology, Virtual Environments

Introduction

Decentralized technologies are propelling the digital economy.

As the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated our shift into virtual social and economic systems, blockchain technology poses a new technological frontier – further disrupting digital interactions and value creation by providing a modification of data without relying on third parties. New blockchain software developments are being used to redefine how central banks distribute currency and to track provenance for scarce digital assets.

Tokenizing the blockchain

Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are distinct cryptographic tokens created from blockchain technology. The rarity systems in NFTs are redefining digital ownership and being used to drive creator-centric communities.

Not crypto-currency, central currency

Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC) combine the same architecture of cryptocurrencies built on blockchain with the financial authority of a central bank. These currencies are not decentralized because they are controlled by a central authority, rather they are distributed systems. (Decrypt, 2021)

80% of banks are working on a digital currency. (Atlantic Council, 2021)

Brands that launched NFTs

NBA, NFL, Formula 1, Nike, Stella Artois, Coca-Cola, Mattel, Dolce & Gabbana, Ubisoft, Charmin

Banks that launched digital currencies

The Bahamas, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Antigua and Barbuda, Saint Lucia, Grenada

Signals

ID on the blockchain

Blockchains can contain smart contracts that automatically execute given specific conditions, protecting stakeholders involved in a transaction. These have been used by central banks to automate when and how currency can be spent and by NFT platforms to attribute a unique identity to a digital asset. Automation and identity verification are the most highly valued digital capabilities of IT practitioners.

$69.3 million – The world’s most expensive NFT artwork sale, for Beeple’s “Everydays: The First 5,000 Days” (The New York Times, Mar. 2021)

Digital capabilities that provide high value to the organization

(Info-Tech Tech Trends 2022 Survey)

Drivers

Financial autonomy

Central banks view cryptocurrencies as "working against the public good" and want to maintain control over their financial system to maintain the integrity of payments and provide financial crime oversight and protections against money laundering. (Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, 2021)

Bitcoin energy requirements and greenhouse gas emissions

Annual energy consumption of the Bitcoin blockchain in China is estimated to peak in 2024 at 297 TwH and generate 130.5 million metric tons of carbon emissions. That would exceed the annual GHG of the Czech Republic and Qatar and rank in the top 10 among 182 cities and 42 industrial sectors in China. This is motiving cryptocurrency developers and central banks to move away from the energy-intensive "Proof of Work" mining approach and towards the "Proof of Stake" approach. (Nature Communications, 2021)

Digital communities

During the pandemic, people spent more time exploring digital spaces and interacting in digital communities. Asset ownership within those communities is a way for individuals to show their own personal investment in the community and achieve a status that often comes with additional privileges. The digital assets can also be viewed as an investment vehicle or to gain access to exclusive experiences.

“The pillars of the music economy have always been based on three things that the artist has never had full control of. The idea of distribution is freed up. The way we are going to connect to fans in this direct to fan value prop is very interesting. The fact we can monetize it, and that money exchange, that transaction is immediate. And on a platform like S!NG we legitimately have a platform to community build…. Artists are getting a superpower.” (Raine Maida, Chief Product Officer, S!NG Singer, Our Lady Peace)

Listen to the Tech Insights podcast: Raine Maida's startup is an NFT app for music

Case Study

Situation

Artists can create works and distribute them to a wide audience more easily than ever with the internet. Publishing a drawing or a song to a website allows it to be infinitely copied. Creators can use social media accounts and digital advertisements to build up a fan base for their work and monetize it through sales or premium-access subscriber schemes.

Complication

The internet's capacity for frictionless distribution is a boon and a burden for artists at the same time. Protecting copyright in a digital environment is difficult because there is no way to track a song or a picture back to its creator. This devalues the work because it can be freely exchanged by users.

Resolution

S!NG allows creators to mint their works with a digital token that stamps its origin to the file and tracks provenance as it is reused and adapted into other works. It uses the ERC 721 standard on the Ethereum blockchain to create its NFT tokens. They are portable files that the user can create for free on the S!NG platform and are interoperable with other digital token platforms. This enables a collaboration utility by reducing friction in using other people's works while giving proper attribution. Musicians can create mix tracks using the samples of others’ work easily and benefit from a smart-contract-based revenue structure that returns money to creators when sales are made. (Interview with Geoff Osler and Raine Maida, S!NG Executives)

Risks and Benefits

Benefits

Risks

What's Next

Into the Metaverse:

Digital tokens are finding new utility in virtual environments known as the Metaverse. Decentraland is an example of a virtual reality environment that can be accessed via a web browser. Based on the Ethereum blockchain, it's seen sales of virtual land plots for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Sotheby's is one buyer, building a digital replica of its New Bond Street gallery in London, complete with commissionaire Hans Lomuldur in avatar form to greet visitors. The gallery will showcase and sell Sotheby's digital artworks. (Artnet News, 2021)

Bitcoin as legal tender:

El Salvador became the first country in the world to make Bitcoin legal tender in September 2021. The government intended for this to help citizens avoid remittance fees when receiving money sent from abroad and to provide a way for citizens without bank accounts to receive payments. Digital wallet Chivo launched with technical glitches and in October a loophole that allowed “price scalping” had to be removed to stop speculators from using the app to trade for profit. El Salvador’s experiment will influence whether other countries consider using Bitcoin as legal tender. (New Scientist, 2021)

Uncertainties

Stolen goods at the mint:

William Shatner complained that Twitter account @tokenizedtweets had taken his content without permission and minted tokens for sale. In doing so, he pointed out there’s no guarantee a minted digital asset is linked to the creator of the attached intellectual property.

Decentralized vs. distributed finance:

Will blockchain-based markets be controlled by a single platform operator or become truly open? For example, Dapper Labs centralizes the minting of NFTs on its Flow blockchain and controls sales through its markets. OpenSea allows NFTs minted elsewhere to be brought to the platform and sold.

Supply and demand:

Platforms need to improve the reliability of minting technology to create tokens in the future. Ethereum's network is facing more demand than it can keep up with and requires future upgrades to improve its efficiency. Other platforms that support minting tokens are also awaiting upgrades to be fully functional or have seen limited NFT projects launched on their platform.

Intangible Value Creation Scenarios

Determine your organization’s strategy by considering the different scenarios based on two main factors. The design decisions are made around whether digital assets are decentralized or distributed and whether the assets facilitate transactions or collections.

Recommendations

Determine your role in the digital asset ecosystem.

• Becoming a platform provider for digital tokens will require a minting capability to create blockchain-based assets and a marketplace for users to exchange them.
• Issuing digital tokens to a platform through a sale will require making partnerships and marketing.
• Investing in digital assets will require management of digital wallets and subject-matter expert analysis of the emerging markets.

Track the implications of digital currencies.

Track what your country’s central bank is planning for digital currency and determine if you’ll need to prepare to support it. Be informed about payment partner support for cryptocurrency and consider any complications that may introduce.

$1 billion+ – The amount of cryptocurrency spent by consumers globally through crypto-linked Visa cards in first half of 2021. (CNBC, July 2021)

Info-Tech Resources

• Demystify Blockchain: How Can It Bring Value to Your Organization?
• The Obvious Case: Blockchain in Financial Services
• Build a Platform-Based Organization

Automation as a Service

TREND 05 | INNOVATION

Automate business processes and access new sophisticated technology services through platform integration.

Emerging technologies:
Cloud platforms, APIs, Generative AI

Introduction

The glue for innovation

Rapidly constructing a business model that is ready to compete in a digital economy requires continuous innovation. Application programming interfaces (APIs) can accelerate innovation by unlocking marketplaces of ready-to-use solutions to business problems and automating manual tasks to make more time for creativity. APIs facilitate a microarchitecture approach and make it possible to call upon a new capability with a few lines of code. This is not a new tool, as the first API was specified in 1951, but there were significant advances of both scale and capability in this area in 2021.

In the past 18 months, API adoption has exploded and even industries previously considered as digital laggards are now integrating them to reinvent back-office processes. Technology platforms specializing in API management are attracting record-breaking investment. And sophisticated technology services such as artificial intelligence are being delivered by APIs.

APIs can play a role in every company’s digital strategy, from transforming back-office processes to creating revenue as part of a platform.

$500,000 was invested in API companies in 2016. (Forbes, May 2021)

$2,000,000,000+ was invested in API companies in 2020. (Forbes, May 2021)

69% of IT practitioners say digital transformation has been a high priority for their organization during the pandemic. (Info-Tech Tech Trends 2022 Survey)

51% of developers used more APIs in 2020 than in 2019. (InsideHPC, 2021)

71% of developers planned to use even more APIs in 2021. (InsideHPC, 2021)

Signals

IT practitioners indicate that digital transformation was a strong focus for their organization during the pandemic and will remain so during the period afterwards, and one-third say their organizations were “extremely focused” on digital transformation.

When it came to shifting processes from being done manually to being completed digitally, more than half of IT practitioners say they shifted at least 21% of their processes during the past year. More than one in five say that at least 60% of their processes were shifted from manual to digital in the past year.

3.5 trillion calls were performed on API management platform Apigee, representing a 50% increase year over year. (SiliconANGLE, 2021)

Processes shifted from manual to digital in the past year

Drivers

Covid-19

The pandemic lockdowns pushed everyone into a remote-work scenario. With in-person interaction not an option, even more traditional businesses had to adapt to digital processes.

Customer Expectations

The success of digital services in the consumer space is causing expectations to rise in other areas, such as professional services. Consumers now want their health records to be portable and they want to pay their lawyer through e-transfer, not by writing a cheque. (Interview with Mik Lernout)

Standardization

Technology laggard industries such as legal and healthcare are recognizing the pain of working with siloed systems. New standardization efforts are driving the adoption of open APIs at a rapid rate. (Interview with Jennifer Jones, Research Director – Industry, Info-Tech Research Group)

Risks and Benefits

Benefits

Risks

“When we think about what the pandemic did, we had this internal project called 'back to the future.' It kind of put the legal industry in a time machine and it kind of accelerated the legal industry 5, maybe even 10 years. A lot of the things we saw with the innovators became table stakes.” (Mik Lernout, Vice President of Product, Clio)

Listen to the Tech Insights podcast: Clio drives digital transformation to redefine the legal industry

Case Study

Situation

The COVID-19 pandemic required the legal industry to shift to remote work. A typically change-resistant industry was now holding court hearings over videoconference, taking online payments, and collecting e-signatures on contracts. For Clio, a software-as-a-service software vendor that serves the legal industry, its client base grew and its usage increased. It previously focused on the innovators in the legal industry, but now it noticed laggards were going digital too.

Complication

Law firms have very different needs depending on their legal practice area (e.g. family law, corporate law, or personal injury) and what jurisdiction they operate in.

Clients are also demanding more from their lawyers in terms of service experience. They don't want to travel to the law office to drop off a check but expect digital interactions on par with service they receive in other areas.

Resolution

Since its inception, Clio built its software product so that all of its functions could be called upon by an API as well. It describes its platform as the "operating system for the legal industry." Its API functions include capabilities like managing activities, billing, and contracts. External developers can submit applications to the Clio Marketplace to add new functionality. Its platform approach enables it to find solutions for its 150,000+ users. During the pandemic, Clio saw its customers rely on its APIs more than ever before. It expects this accelerated adoption to be the way of working in the future. (ProgrammableWeb, 2021; Interview with Mik Lernout)

What's Next

GOOGLE’S API-FIRST APPROACH:

Google is expanding its Apigee API management platform so enterprises will be able to connect existing data and applications and access them via APIs. It's part of Google's API-first approach to digital transformation, helping enterprises with their integration challenges. The new release includes tools and a framework that's needed to integrate services in this way and includes pre-built connectors for common business apps and services such as Salesforce, Cloud SQL, MySQL, and BigQuery. (SiliconANGLE, 2021)

Uncertainties

API SECURITY:

APIs represent another potential vulnerability for hackers to exploit and the rise in popularity has come with more security incidents. Companies using APIs have leaked data through APIs, with one research report on the state of API security finding that 91% of organizations have suffered an API security incident. Yet more than a quarter of firms running production APIs don’t have an API security strategy. (VentureBeat, 2021)

For low IT maturity organizations moving onto platforms that introduce API capabilities, education is required about the consequences of creating more integrations. Platforms must bear some responsibility for monitoring for irregular activity. (Interview with Mik Lernout)

Automation as a Service Scenarios

Determine your organization’s platform strategy from the basis of your digital maturity – from that of a laggard to a native – and whether it involves monetized APIs vs. freely available public APIs. A strategy can include both the consumption of APIs and the creation of them.

Recommendations

Leverage APIs to connect your systems. Create a repeatable process to improve the quality, reusability, and governance of your web APIs.

Transform your business model with digital platforms. Use the best practices of digital native enterprises and leverage your core assets to compete in a digital economy.

Deliver sophisticated new capabilities with APIs. Develop an awareness of new services made available through API integration, such as artificial intelligence, and take advantage of them.

4.5 billion words per day generated by the OpenAI natural language API GPT-3, just nine months after launch. (OpenAI, 2021)

Info-Tech Resources

• Develop APIs That Work Properly for the Organization
• Build a Data Integration Strategy
• Design Data-as-a-Service

Behind the design

Inspiration provided by the golden ratio

The golden ratio has long fascinated humans for its common occurrence in nature and inspired artists who adopted its proportions as a guiding principle for their creations. A new discovery of the golden ratio in economic cycles was published in August 2021 by Bert de Groot, et al. As the boundaries of value creation blur between physical and digital and the pace of change accelerates, these digital innovations may change our lives in many ways. But they are still bound by the context of the structure of the economy. Hear more about this surprising finding from de Groot and from this report’s designer by listening to our podcast. (Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 2021)

“Everything happening will adapt itself into the next cycle, and that cycle is one phi distance away.” (Bert de Groot, professor of economics at Erasmus University Rotterdam)

Listen to the Tech Insights podcast: New discovery of the golden ratio in the economy

Contributing Experts

Vijay Sundaram Chief Strategy Officer, Zoho		Jason Brommet Head of Modern Work and Security Business Group, Microsoft
Steve Orrin Federal Chief Technology Officer, Intel		Wade Barnes CEO and Founder, Farmers Edge

Contributing Experts

Raine Maida Chief Product Officer, S!NG Singer, Our Lady Peace		Geoff Osler CEO, S!NG
Mik Lernout Vice President of Product, Clio		Bert de Groot Professor of Economics, Erasmus University Rotterdam

Bibliography – Enabling the Digital Economy

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Brown, Sara. “The CIO Role Is Changing. Here’s What’s on the Horizon.” MIT Sloan, 2 Aug. 2021. Accessed 16 Aug. 2021.

de Groot, E. A., et al. “Disentangling the Enigma of Multi-Structured Economic Cycles - A New Appearance of the Golden Ratio.” Technological Forecasting and Social Change, vol. 169, Aug. 2021, pp. 120793. ScienceDirect, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2021.120793.

Hatem, Louise, Daniel Ker, and John Mitchell. “Roadmap toward a common framework for measuring the Digital Economy.” Report for the G20 Digital Economy Task Force, OECD, 2020. Accessed 19 Oct. 2021.

LaBerge, Laura, et al. “How COVID-19 has pushed companies over the technology tipping point—and transformed business forever.” McKinsey, 5 Oct. 2020. Accessed 14 June 2021.

Pomeroy, James. The booming digital economy. HSBC, Sept. 2020. Web.

Salman, Syed. “Digital Transformation Realized Through COBIT 2019.” ISACA, 13 Oct. 2020. Accessed 25 Oct. 2021.

Bibliography – Hybrid Collaboration

De Smet, Aaron, et al. “Getting Real about Hybrid Work.” McKinsey Quarterly, 9 July 2021. Web.

Herskowitz, Nicole. “Brace Yourselves: Hybrid Work Is Hard. Here’s How Microsoft Teams and Office 365 Can Help.” Microsoft 365 Blog, 9 Sept. 2021. Web.

Melin, Anders, and Misyrlena Egkolfopoulou. “Employees Are Quitting Instead of Giving Up Working From Home.” Bloomberg, 1 June 2021. Web.

Spataro, Jared. “Microsoft and LinkedIn Share Latest Data and Innovation for Hybrid Work.” The Official Microsoft Blog, 9 Sept. 2021. Web.

Subin, Samantha. “The new negotiation over job benefits and perks in post-Covid hybrid work.” CNBC, 23 Apr. 2021. Web.

Torres, Roberto. “How to Sidestep Overspend as Hybrid Work Tests IT.” CIO Dive, 26 July 2021. Accessed 16 Sept. 2021.

Wong, Christine. “How the hybrid workplace will affect IT spending.” ExpertIP, 15 July 2021. Web.

Yang, Longqi, et al. “The Effects of Remote Work on Collaboration among Information Workers.” Nature Human Behaviour, Sept. 2021, pp. 1-12. Springer Nature, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-021-01196-4.

Bibliography – Battle Against Ransomware

Berg, Leandro. “RTF Report: Combatting Ransomware.” Institute for Security and Technology (IST), 2021. Accessed 21 Sept. 2021.

Dudley, Renee. “The Extortion Economy: How Insurance Companies Are Fueling a Rise in Ransomware Attacks.” ProPublica, 27 Aug. 2019. Accessed 22 Sept. 2021.

Durbin, Steve. “Council Post: Artificial Intelligence: The Future Of Cybersecurity?” Forbes, 23 Sept. 2021. Accessed 21 Oct. 2021.

“FACT SHEET: Ongoing Public U.S. Efforts to Counter Ransomware.” The White House, 13 Oct. 2021. Web.

Jeffery, Lynsey, and Vignesh Ramachandran. “Why ransomware attacks are on the rise — and what can be done to stop them.” PBS NewsHour, 8 July 2021. Web.

McBride, Timothy, et al. Data Integrity: Recovering from Ransomware and Other Destructive Events. NIST Special Publication (SP) 1800-11, National Institute of Standards and Technology, 22 Sept. 2020. NIST Computer Security Resource Center (CSRC), https://doi.org/10.6028/NIST.SP.1800-11.

Mehrotra, Karitkay, and Jennifer Jacobs. “Crypto Channels Targeted in Biden’s Fight Against Ransomware.” BNN Bloomberg, 21 Sept. 2021. Web.

Sharma, Mayank. “Hackers demand $70m ransom after executing massive Solar Winds-like attack.” TechRadar, 5 July 2021. Web.

“Unhacked: 121 Tools against Ransomware on a Single Website.” Europol, 26 July 2021. Web.

Bibliography – Carbon Metrics in Energy 4.0

“The A List 2020.” CDP, 2021. Web.

Baazil, Diedrik, Hugo Miller, and Laura Hurst. “Shell loses climate case that may set precedent for big oil.” Australian Financial Review, 27 May 2021. Web.

“BlackRock’s 2020 Carbon Footprint.” BlackRock, 2020. Accessed 25 May 2021.

“CDP Media Factsheet.” CDP, n.d. Accessed 25 May 2021.

Glaser, April, and Leticia Miranda. “Amazon workers demand end to pollution hitting people of color hardest.” NBC News, 24 May 2021. Accessed 25 May 2021.

Little, Mark. “Why Canada should be the home of the new global sustainability standards board.” Business Council of Canada, 1 Oct. 2021. Accessed 22 Oct. 2021.

McIntyre, Catherine. “Canada vying for global headquarters to oversee sustainable-finance standards.” The Logic, 22 July 2021. Web.

“Net Zero Scorecard.” Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit, 2021. Accessed 25 May 2021.

Sayer, Peter. “Greenhouse gas emissions: The next big issue for CIOs.” CIO, 13 Oct. 2021. Web.

“Scope 1 and Scope 2 Inventory Guidance.” US EPA, OAR. 14 Dec. 2020. Web.

Sorkin, Andrew Ross. “BlackRock C.E.O. Larry Fink: Climate Crisis Will Reshape Finance.” The New York Times, 14 Jan. 2020. Web.

“Sustainable IT Pledge.” CIO Strategy Council, 2021. Accessed 22 Oct. 2021.

Bibliography – Intangible Value Creation

Areddy, James T. “China Creates Its Own Digital Currency, a First for Major Economy.” Wall Street Journal, 5 Apr. 2021. Web.

Boar, Codruta, et al. Impending arrival - a sequel to the survey on central bank digital currency. BIS Papers No 107, Jan. 2020. Web.

Brainard, Lael. “Speech by Governor Brainard on Private Money and Central Bank Money as Payments Go Digital: An Update on CBDCs.” Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, 24 May 2021. Accessed 28 May 2021.

Howcroft, Elizabeth, and Ritvik Carvalho. “How a 10-second video clip sold for $6.6 million.” Reuters, 1 Mar. 2021. Web.

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“Expert Comment From Warwick Business School: Problems With El Salvador’s Bitcoin Experiment Are Unsurprising.” Mondo Visione, 8 Sept. 2021. Accessed 10 Sept. 2021.

Goldstein, Caroline. “In Its Ongoing Bid to Draw Crypto-Collectors, Sotheby’s Unveils a Replica of Its London H.Q. in the Blockchain World Decentraland.” Artnet News, 7 June 2021. Web.

Hamacher, Adriana. “Taco Bell to Charmin: 10 Big Brands Jumping On The NFT Bandwagon.” Decrypt, 22 Mar. 2021. Web.

Hazan, Eric, et al. “Getting tangible about intangibles: The future of growth and productivity?” McKinsey. 16 June 2021. Web.

Bibliography – Intangible Value Creation

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Jiang, Shangrong, et al. “Policy Assessments for the Carbon Emission Flows and Sustainability of Bitcoin Blockchain Operation in China.” Nature Communications, vol. 12, no. 1, Apr. 2021, p. 1938. Springer Nature, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-22256-3.

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Taylor, Luke. “Bitcoin: El Salvador’s Cryptocurrency Gamble Hit by Trading Loophole.” New Scientist, 25 Oct. 2021. Web.

Bibliography – Automation as a Service

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About the research

Tech trends survey

As part of its research process for the 2022 Tech Trends Report, Info-Tech Research Group conducted an open online survey among its membership and wider community of professionals. The survey was fielded from August 2021 to September 2021, collecting 475 responses.

The underlying metrics are diverse, capturing 14 countries and regions and 16 Industries.

Industry

Department

Role

IT Spend

Respondents on average spent 35 million per year on their IT budget.

Accounting for the outlier responses – the median spend sits closer to 4.5 million per year. The highest spend on IT was within the Government, Healthcare, and Retail & Wholesale sectors.

Prepare for the Upgrade to Windows 11

The upgrade is inevitable, but you have time, and you have options.

Analyst Perspective

Upgrading to Windows 11 is easy, and while it should be properly investigated and planned, it should absolutely be an activity you undertake.

“You hear that Mr. Anderson? That is the sound of inevitability.” ("The Matrix Quotes" )

The fictitious Agent Smith uttered those words to Keanu Reeves’ character, Neo, in The Matrix in 1999, and while Agent Smith was using them in a very sinister and figurative context, the words could just as easily be applied to the concept of upgrading to the Windows 11 operating system from Microsoft in 2022.

There have been two common, recurring themes in the media since late 2019. One is the global pandemic and the other is cyber-related crime. Microsoft is not in a position to make an impact on a novel coronavirus, but it does have the global market reach to influence end-user technology and it appears that it has done just that. Windows 11 is a step forward in endpoint security and functionality. It also solidifies the foundation for future innovations in end-user operating systems and how they are delivered. Windows-as-a-Service (WAAS) is the way forward for Microsoft. Windows 10 is living on borrowed time, with a defined end of support date of October 14, 2025. Upgrading to Windows 11 is easy, and while it should be properly investigated and planned, it should absolutely be an activity you undertake.

It is inevitable!

P.J. Ryan

Research Director, Infrastructure & Operations

Info-Tech Research Group

Executive Summary

Your Challenge

• Windows 10 is going EOL in 2025. That is closer than you think.
• Many of your endpoints are not eligible for the Windows 11 upgrade. You can’t afford to replace all your endpoints this year. How do you manage this Microsoft-initiated catastrophe?
• You want to stay close to the leading edge of technology and services, but how do you do that while keeping your spending in check and within budget?

Common Obstacles

• The difference between Windows 10 and Windows 11 is not clear. Windows 11 looks like Windows 10 with some minor changes, mostly cosmetic. Many online users don’t see the need. Why upgrade? What are the benefits?
• The cost of upgrading devices just to be eligible for Windows 11 is high.
• Your end users don’t like change. This is not going to go over well!

Info-Tech's Approach

• Spend wisely. Space out your endpoint replacements and upgrades over several years. You do not have to upgrade everything right away.
• Be patient. Windows 11 contained some bugs when it was initially released. Microsoft fixed most of the issues through monthly quality updates, but you should ensure that you are comfortable with the current level of functionality before you upgrade.
• Use the upgrade ring approach. Test your applications with a small group first, and then stage the rollout to increasingly larger groups over time.

Info-Tech Insight

There is a lot of talk about Windows 11, but this is only an operating system upgrade, and it is not a major one. Understand what is new, what is added, and what is missing. Check your devices to determine how many are eligible and ineligible. Many organizations will have to spend capital on endpoint upgrades. Solid asset management practices will help.

Insight summary

Windows 11 is a step forward in security, which is one of the primary reasons for the release of the new operating system.

Windows 11 comes with a list of hardware requirements that enable the use of tools and features that, when combined, will reduce malware infections.

The hardware requirements for Windows 11 enable security features such as password-less logon, disk encryption, increased startup protection with secure boot, and virtualization-based security.

Many organizations will have to spend capital on endpoint upgrades.

Microsoft now insists that modern hardware is required for Windows 11 for not only security but also for improved stability. That same hardware requirement will mean that many devices that are only three or four years old (as well as older ones) may not be eligible for Windows 11.

Windows 11 is a virtualization challenge for some providers.

The hardware requirements for physical devices are also required for virtual devices. The TPM module appears to be the biggest challenge. Oracle VirtualBox and Citrix Hypervisor as well as AWS and Google are unable to support Windows 11 virtual devices as of the time of writing.

Windows 10 will be supported by Microsoft until October 2025.

That will remove some of the pressure felt due to the ineligibility of many devices and the need to refresh them. Take your time and plan it out, keeping within budget constraints. Use the upgrade ring approach for systems that are eligible for the Windows 11 upgrade.

New look and feel, and a center screen taskbar.

Corners are rounded, some controls look a little different, but overall Windows 11 is not a dramatic shift from Windows 10. It is easier to navigate and find features. Oh, and yes, the taskbar (and start button) is shifted to the center of the screen, but you can move them back to the left if desired.

The education industry gets extra attention with the release of Windows 11.

Windows 11 comes with multiple subscription-based education offerings, but it also now includes a new lightweight SE edition that is intended for the K-8 age group. Microsoft also released a Windows 11 Education SE specific laptop, at a very attractive price point. Other manufacturers also offer Windows 11 SE focused devices.

Why Windows 11?

Windows 10 was supposed to be the final desktop OS from Microsoft, wasn’t it?

Maybe. It depends who you ask.

Jerry Nixon, a Microsoft developer evangelist, gained notoriety when he uttered these words while at a Microsoft presentation as part of Microsoft Ignite in 2015: “Right now we’re releasing Windows 10, and because Windows 10 is the last version of Windows, we’re all still working on Windows 10,” (Hachman). Microsoft never officially made that statement. Interestingly enough, it never denied the comments made by Jerry Nixon either.

Perhaps Microsoft released a new operating system as a financial grab, a way to make significant revenue?

Nope.

Windows 11 is a free upgrade or is included with any new computer purchase.

Market share challenges?

Doubtful.

It’s true that Microsoft's market share of desktop operating systems is dropping while Apple OS X and Google Chrome OS are rising.

In fact, Microsoft has relinquished over 13% of the market share since 2012 and Apple has almost doubled its market share. BUT:

Microsoft is still holding 75.12% of the market while Apple is in the number 2 spot with 14.93% (gs.statcounter.com).

The market share is worth noting for Microsoft but it hardly warrants a new operating system.

New look and feel?

Unlikely

New start button and taskbar orientation, new search window, rounded corners, new visual look on some controls like the volume bar, new startup sound, new Windows logo, – all minor changes. Updates could achieve the same result.

Security?

Likely the main reason.

Windows 11 comes with a list of hardware requirements that enable the use of tools and features that, when combined, will reduce malware infections.

The hardware requirements for Windows 11 enable security features such as password-less logon, disk encryption, increased startup protection with secure boot, and virtualization-based security.

The features are available on all Windows 11 physical devices, due to the common hardware requirements.

Windows 11 hardware-based security

These hardware options and features were available in Windows 10 but not enforced. With Windows 11, they are no longer optional. Below is a description and explanation of the main features.

How do all the hardware-based security features work?

This scenario explains how a standard boot up and login should happen.

You turn on your computer. Secure Boot authorizes the processes and UEFI hands over control to the operating system. Windows Hello works with TPM and uses a pin to authenticate the user and the operating systems gives you access to the Windows environment.

Now imagine the same process with various compromised scenarios.

You turn on your computer. Secure Boot does not recognize the signature presented to it by the second process in the boot sequence. You will be presented with a “Secure Boot Violation” message and an option to reboot. Your computer remains protected.

You boot up and get past the secure boot process and UEFI passes control over to the Windows 11 operating system. Windows Hello asks for your pin, but you cannot remember the pin and incorrectly enter it three times before admitting temporary defeat. Windows Hello did not find a matching pin on the TPM and will not let you proceed. You cannot log in but in the eyes of the operating system, it has prevented an unauthorized login attempt.

You power up your computer, log in without issue, and go about your morning routine of checking email, etc. You are not aware that malware has infiltrated your system and modified a page in system memory to run code and access the operating system kernel. VBS and HVCI check the integrity of that code and detect that it is malicious. The code remains isolated and prevented from running, protecting your system.

TPM, Hello, UEFI with Secure Boot, VBS and HVCI all work together like a well-oiled machine.

“Microsoft's rationale for Windows 11's strict official support requirements – including Secure Boot, a TPM 2.0 module, and virtualization support – has always been centered on security rather than raw performance.” – Andrew Cunningham, arstechnica.com

“Windows 11 raises the bar for security by requiring hardware that can enable protections like Windows Hello, Device Encryption, virtualization-based security (VBS), hypervisor-protected code integrity (HVCI), and Secure Boot. These features in combination have been shown to reduce malware by 60% on tested devices.” – Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, Computerworld

Can any device upgrade to Windows 11?

In addition to the security-related hardware requirements listed previously, which may exclude some devices from Windows 11 eligibility, Windows 11 also has a minimum requirement for other hardware components.

Windows 7 and Windows 10 were publicized as being backward compatible and almost any hardware would be able to run those operating systems. That changed with Windows 11. Microsoft now insists that modern hardware is required for Windows 11 for not only security but also improved stability.

Software Requirement

You must be running Windows 10 version 2004 or greater to be eligible for a Windows 11 upgrade (“Windows 11 Requirements”).

Complete hardware requirements for Windows 11

• 1 GHz (or faster) compatible 64-bit processor with two or more cores
  • Not all processors are compatible; compatible processors are listed in this link: “Windows Processor Requirements”
• 4 GB RAM
• 64 GB or more of storage space
• Compatible with DirectX 12 or later with WDDM 2.0 driver
  • DirectX connects the hardware in your computer with Windows. It allows software to display graphics using the video card or play audio, as long as that software is DirectX compatible. Windows 11 requires version 12 (“What are DirectX 12 compatible graphics”).
  • WDDM is an acronym for Windows Display Driver Model. WDDM is the architecture for the graphics driver for Windows (“Windows Display Driver Model”).
  • Version 2.0 of WDDM is required for Windows 11.
• 720p display greater than 9" diagonally with 8 bits per color channel
• UEFI Secure Boot capable
• TPM 2.0 chip

(“Windows 11 Requirements”)

Windows 11 may challenge your virtual environment

When Windows 11 was initially released, some IT administrators experienced issues when trying to install or upgrade to Windows 11 in the virtual world.

The Challenge

The issues appeared to be centered around the Windows 11 hardware requirements, which must be detected by the Windows 11 pre-install check before the operating system will install.

The TPM 2.0 chip requirement was indeed a challenge and not offered as a configuration option with Citrix Hypervisor, the free VMware Workstation Player or Oracle VM VirtualBox when Windows 11 was released in October 2021, although it is on the roadmap for Oracle and Citrix Hypervisor. VMware provides alternative products to the free Workstation Player that do support a virtual TPM. Oracle and Citrix reported that the feature would be available in the future and Windows 11 would work on their platforms.

Short-Term Solutions

VMware and Microsoft users can add a vTPM hardware type when configuring a virtual Windows 11 machine. Microsoft Azure does offer Windows 11 as an option as a virtual desktop. Citrix Desktop-As-A-Service (DAAS) will connect to Azure, AWS, or Google Cloud and is only limited by the features of the hosting cloud service provider.

Additional Insight

According to Microsoft, any VM running Windows 11 must meet the following requirements (“Virtual Machine Support”):

• It must be a generation 2 VM, and upgrading a generation 1 VM to Windows 11 (in-place) is not possible
• 64 GB of storage or greater
• Secure Boot capable with the virtual TPM enabled
• 4 GB of memory or greater
• 2 or more virtual processors
• The CPU of the physical computer that is hosting the VM must meet the Windows 11 (“Windows Processor Requirements”)

What’s new or updated in Windows 11?

The following two slides highlight some of the new and updated features in Windows 11.

Security

The most important change with Windows 11 is what you cannot see – the security. Windows 11 adds requirements and controls to make the user and device more secure, as described in previous slides.

Taskbar

The most prominent change in relation to the look and feel of Windows 11 is the shifting of the taskbar (and Start button) to the center of the screen. Some users may find this more convenient but if you do not and prefer the taskbar and start button back on the left of your screen, you can change it in taskbar settings.

Updated Apps

Paint, Photos, Notepad, Media Player, Mail, and other standard Windows apps have been updated with a new look and in some cases minor enhancements.

User Interface

The first change users will notice after logging in to Windows 11 is the new user interface – the look and feel. You may not notice the additional colors added to the Windows palette, but you may have thought that the startup sound was different, and the logo also looks different. You would be correct. Other look-and-feel items that changed include the rounded corners on windows, slightly different icons, new wallpapers, and controls for volume and brightness are now a slide bar. File explorer and the settings app also have a new look.

Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams is now installed on the taskbar by default. Note that this is for a personal Microsoft account only. Teams for Work or School will have to be installed separately if you are using a work or school account.

What’s new or updated in Windows 11?

Snap Layouts

Snap layouts have been enhanced and snap group functionality has been added. This will allow you to quickly snap one window to the side of the screen and open other Windows in the other side. This feature can be accessed by dragging the window you wish to snap to the left or right edge of the screen. The window should then automatically resize to occupy that half of the screen and allow you to select other Windows that are already open to occupy the remaining space on the screen. You can also hover your mouse over the maximize button in the upper right-hand corner of the window. A small screen with multiple snap layouts will appear for your selection. Multiple snapped Windows can be saved as a “Snap Group” that will open together if one of the group windows are snapped in the future.

Widgets

Widgets are expanding. Microsoft started the re-introduction of widgets in Windows 10, specifically focusing on the weather. Widgets now include other services such as news, sports, stock prices, and others.

Android Apps

Android apps can now run in Windows 11. You will have to use the Amazon store to access and install Android apps, but if it is available in the Amazon store, you can install it on Windows 11.

Docking

Docking has improved with Windows 11. Windows knows when you are docked and will minimize apps when you undock so they are not lost. They will appear automatically when you dock again.

This is not intended to be an inclusive list but does cover some of the more prominent features.

What’s missing from Windows 11?

The following features are no longer found in Windows 11:

• Backward compatibility
  • The introduction of the hardware requirements for Windows 11 removed the backward compatibility (from a hardware perspective) that made the transition from previous versions of Windows to their successor less of a hardware concern. If a computer could run Windows 7, then it could also run Windows 10. That does not automatically mean it can also run Windows 11.
• Internet Explorer
  • Internet Explorer is no longer installed by default in Windows 11. Microsoft Edge is now the default browser for Windows. Other browsers can also be installed if preferred.
• Tablet mode
  • Windows 11 does not have a "tablet" mode, but the operating system will maximize the active window and add more space between icons to make selecting them easier if the 2-in-1 hardware detects that you wish to use the device as a tablet (keyboard detached or device opened up beyond 180 degrees, etc.).
• Semi-annual updates
  • It may take six months or more to realize that semi-annual feature updates are missing. Microsoft moved to an annual feature update schema but continued with monthly quality updates with Windows 11.
• Specific apps
  • Several applications have been removed (but can be manually added from the Microsoft Store by the user). They include:
    • OneNote for Windows 10
    • 3D Viewer
    • Paint 3D
    • Skype
• Cortana (by default)
  • Cortana is missing from Windows 11. It is installed but not enabled by default. Users can turn it on if desired.

Microsoft included a complete list of features that have been removed or deprecated with Windows 11, which can be found here Windows 11 Specs and System Requirements.

Windows 11 editions

• Windows 11 is offered in several editions:
  • Windows 11 Home
  • Windows 11 Pro
  • Windows 11 Pro for Workstations
  • Windows 11 Enterprise Windows 11 for Education
  • Windows 11 SE for Education
• Windows 11 hardware requirements and security features are common throughout all editions.
• The new look and feel along with all the features mentioned previously are common to all editions as well.
• Windows Home
  • Standard offering for home users
• Pro versus Pro for Workstations
  • Windows 11 Pro and Pro for Workstations are both well suited for the business environment with available features such as support for Active Directory or Azure Active Directory, Windows Autopilot, OneDrive for Business, etc.
  • Windows Pro for Workstations is designed for increased demands on the hardware with the higher memory limits (2 TB vs. 6 TB) and processor count (2 CPU vs. 4 CPU).
  • Windows Pro for Workstations also features Resilient File System, Persistent Memory, and SMB Direct. Neither of these features are available in the Windows 11 Pro edition.
  • Windows 11 Pro and Pro for Workstations are both very business focused, although Pro may also be a common choice for non-business users (Home and Education).
• Enterprise Offerings
  • Enterprise licenses are subscription based and are part of the Microsoft 365 suite of offerings.
  • Windows 11 Enterprise is Windows 11 Pro with some additional addons and functionality in areas such as device management, collaboration, and security services.
  • The level of the Microsoft 365 Enterprise subscription (E3 or E5) would dictate the additional features and functionality, such as the complete Microsoft Defender for Endpoint suite or the Microsoft phone system and Audio Conferencing, which are only available with the E5 subscription.

Windows 11 Education Editions

With the release of a laptop targeted specifically at the education market, Microsoft must be taking notice of the Google Chrome educational market penetration, especially with headlines like these.

“40 Million Chromebooks in Use in Education” (Thurrott)

“The Unprecedented Growth of the Chromebook Education Market Share” (Carklin)

“Chromebooks Gain Market Share as Education Goes Online” (Hruska)

“Chromebooks Gain Share of Education Market Despite Shortages” (Mandaro)

“Chromebook sales skyrocketed in Q3 2020 with online education fueling demand” (Duke)

• Education licenses are subscription based and are part of the Microsoft 365 suite of offerings. Educational pricing is one benefit of the Microsoft 365 Education model.
• Windows 11 Education is Windows 11 Pro with some additional addons and functionality similar to the Enterprise offerings for Windows 11 in areas such as device management, collaboration, and security services. Windows 11 Education also adds some education specific settings such as Classroom Tools, which allow institutions to add new students and their devices to their own environment with fewer issues, and includes OneNote Class Notebook, Set Up School PCs app, and Take a Test app.
• The level of the Microsoft 365 Education subscription (A3 or A5) would dictate the additional features and functionality, such as the complete Microsoft Defender for Endpoint suite or the Microsoft phone system and Audio Conferencing, which are only available with the A5 subscription.
• Windows 11 SE for Education:
  • A cloud-first edition of Windows 11 specifically designed for the K-8 education market.
  • Windows 11 SE is a light version of Windows 11 that is designed to run on entry-level devices with better performance and security on that hardware.
  • Windows 11 SE requires Intune for Education and only IT admins can install applications.
• Microsoft and others have come out with Windows SE specific devices at a low price point.
  • The Microsoft Surface Laptop SE comes pre-loaded with Windows 11 SE and can be purchased for US$249.00.
  • Dell, Asus, Acer, Lenovo, and others also offer Windows 11 SE specific devices (“Devices for Education”).

Initial Reactions

Below you can find some actual initial reactions to Windows 11.

Initial reactions are mixed, as is to be expected with any new release of an operating system. The look and feel is new, but it is not a huge departure from the Windows 10 look and feel. Some new features are well received such as the snap feature.

The shift of the taskbar (and start button) is the most popular topic of discussion online when it comes to Windows 11 reactions. Some love it and some do not. The best part about the shift of the taskbar is that you can adjust it in settings and move it back to its original location.

The best thing about reactions is that they garner attention, and thanks in part to all the online reactions and comments, Microsoft is continually improving Windows 11 through quality updates and annual feature releases.

“My 91-year-old Mum has found it easy!” Binns, Paul ITRG

“It mostly looks quite nice and runs well.” Jmbpiano, Reddit user

“It makes me feel more like a Mac user.” Chang, Ben Info-Tech

“At its core, Windows 11 appears to be just Windows 10 with a fresh coat of paint splashed all over it.” Rouse, Rick RicksDailyTips.com

“Love that I can snap between different page orientations.” Roberts, Jeremy Info-Tech

“I finally feel like Microsoft is back on track again.” Jawed, Usama Neowin

“A few of the things that seemed like issues at first have either turned out not to be or have been fixed with patches.” Jmbpiano, Reddit user

“The new interface is genuinely intuitive, well-designed, and colorful.” House, Brett AnandTech

“No issues. Have it out on about 50 stations.” Sandrews1313, Reddit User

“The most striking change is to the Start menu.” Grabham, Dan pocket-lint.com

How do I upgrade to Windows 11?

The process is very similar to applying updates in Windows 10.

• Windows 11 is offered as an upgrade through the standard Windows 10 update procedure. Windows Update will notify you when the Windows 11 upgrade is ready (assuming your device is eligible for Windows 11).
  • Allow the update (upgrade in this case) to proceed, reboot, and your endpoint will come back to life with Windows 11 installed and ready for you.
• A fresh install can be delivered by downloading the required Windows 11 installation media from the Microsoft Software Download site for Windows 11.
• Business users can control the timing and schedule of the Windows 11 rollout to corporate endpoints using Microsoft solutions such as WSUS, Configuration Manager, Intune and Endpoint Manager, or by using other endpoint management solutions.
• WSUS and Configuration Manager will have to sync the product category for Windows 11 to manage the deployment.
• Windows Update for Business policies will have to use the target version capability rather than using the feature update referrals alone.
• Organizations using Intune and a Microsoft 365 E3 license will be able to use the Feature Update Deployments page to select Windows 11.
• Other modern endpoint management solutions may also allow for a controlled deployment.

Info-Tech Insight

The upgrade itself may be a simple process but be prepared for the end-user reactions that will follow. Some will love it but others will despise it. It is not an optional upgrade in the long run, so everyone will have to learn to accept it.

When can I upgrade to Windows 11?

You can upgrade right now BUT there is no need to rush. Windows 11 was released in October 2021 but that doesn’t mean you have to upgrade everyone right away. Plan this out.

• Build deployment rings into your Windows 11 upgrade approach: This approach, also referred to as Canary Releases or deployment rings, allows you to ensure that IT can support users if there's a major problem with the upgrade. Instead of disrupting all end users, you are only disrupting a portion of end users.
  • Deploy the initial update to your test environment.
  • After testing is successful or changes have been made, deploy Windows 11 to your pilot group of users.
  • After the pilot group gives you the thumbs up, deploy to the rest of production in phases. Phases are sometimes by office/location, sometimes by department, sometimes by persona (i.e. defer people that don't handle updates well), and usually by a combination of these factors.
  • Increase the size of each ring as you progress.
• Always back up your data before any upgrade.

Deployment Ring Example

Pilot Ring - Individuals from all departments - 10 users

Ring #1 - Dev, Finance - 20 Users

Ring #2 - Research - 100 Users

Ring #3 - Sales, IT, Marketing - 500 Users

Upgrade your eligible devices and users to Windows 11

Build Windows 11 Deployment Rings

Instructions:

1. Identify who will be in the pilot group. Use individuals instead of user groups.
2. Identify how many standard rings you need. This number will be based on the total number of employees per office.
3. Map groups to rings. Define which user groups will be in each ring.
4. Allow some time to elapse between upgrades. Allow the first group to work with Windows 11 and identify any potential issues that may arise before upgrading the next group.
5. Track and communicate. Record all information into a spreadsheet like the one on the right. This will aid in communication and tracking.

What are my options if my devices cannot upgrade to Windows 11?

Don’t rush out to replace all the ineligible endpoint devices. You have some time to plan this out. Windows 10 will be available and supported by Microsoft until October 2025.

Use asset management strategies and budget techniques in your Windows 11 upgrade approach:

• Start with current inventory and determine which devices will not be eligible for upgrade to Windows 11.
• Prioritize the devices for replacement, taking device age, the role of the user the device supports, and delivery times for remote users into consideration.
• Take this opportunity to review overall device offerings and end-user compute strategy. This will help decide which devices to offer going forward while improving end-user satisfaction.
• Determine the cost for replacement devices:
  • Compare vendor offerings using an RFP process.
• Use the hardware asset management planning spreadsheet on the next slide to budget for the replacements over the coming months leading up to October 2025.

Leverage Info-Tech research to improve your end-user computing strategy and hardware asset management processes:

New to End User Computing Strategies? Start with Modernize and Transform Your End-User Computing Strategy.

New to IT asset management? Use Info-Tech’s Implement Hardware Asset Management blueprint.

Use Info-Tech’s HAM Budgeting Tool to plan your hardware asset budget

Build a Windows 11 Device Replacement Budget

The link below will open up a hardware asset management (HAM) budgeting tool. This tool can easily be modified to assist in developing and justifying the budget for hardware assets for the Windows 11 project. The tool will allow you to budget for hardware asset refresh and to adjust the budget as needed to accommodate any changes. Follow the instructions on each tab to complete the tool.

A sample of a possible Windows 11 budgeting spreadsheet is shown on the right, but feel free to play with the HAM budgeting tool to fit your needs.

HAM Budgeting Tool

Related Info-Tech Research

Modernize and Transform Your End-User Computing Strategy

This project helps support the workforce of the future by answering the following questions: What types of computing devices, provisioning models, and operating systems should be offered to end users? How will IT support devices? What are the policies and governance surrounding how devices are used? What actions are we taking and when? How do end-user devices support larger corporate priorities and strategies?

Implement Hardware Asset Management

This project will help you analyze the current state of your HAM program, define assets that will need to be managed, and build and involve the ITAM team from the beginning to help embed the change. It will also help you define standard policies, processes, and procedures for each stage of the hardware asset lifecycle, from procurement through to disposal.

Bibliography

aczechowski, et al. “Windows 11 Requirements.” Microsoft, 3 June 2022. Accessed 13 June 2022.

Binns, Paul. Personal interview. 07 June 2022.

Butler, Sydney. “What Is Trusted Platform Module (TPM) and How Does It Work?” Help Desk Geek, 5 August 2021. Accessed 18 May 2022.

Carklin, Nicolette. “The Unprecedented Growth of the Chromebook Education Market Share.” Parallels International GmbH, 26 October 2021. Accessed 19 May 2022.

Chang, Ben. Personal interview. 26 May 2022.

Cunningham, Andrew. “Why Windows 11 has such strict hardware requirements, according to Microsoft.” Ars Technica, 27 August 2021. Accessed 19 May 2022.

Dealnd-Han, et al. “Windows Processor Requirements.” Microsoft, 9 May 2022. Accessed 18 May 2022.

“Desktop Operating Systems Market Share Worldwide.” Statcounter Globalstats, June 2021–June 2022. Accessed 17 May 2022.

“Devices for education.” Microsoft, 2022. Accessed 13 June 2022.

Duke, Kent. “Chromebook sales skyrocketed in Q3 2020 with online education fueling demand.” Android Police, 16 November 2020. Accessed 18 May 2022.

Grabham, Dan. “Windows 11 first impressions: Our initial thoughts on using Microsoft's new OS.” Pocket-Lint, 24 June 2021. Accessed 3 June 2022.

Hachman, Mark. “Why is there a Windows 11 if Windows 10 is the last Windows?” PCWorld, 18 June 2021. Accessed 17 May 2022.

Howse, Brett. “What to Expect with Windows 11: A Day One Hands-On.” Anandtech, 16 November 2020. Accessed 3 June 2022.

Hruska, Joel. “Chromebooks Gain Market Share as Education Goes Online.” Extremetech, 26 October 2020. Accessed 19 May 2022.

Jawed, Usama. “I am finally excited about Windows 11 again.” Neowin, 26 February 2022. Accessed 3 June 2022.

Jmbpiano. “Windows 11 - What are our initial thoughts and feelings?” Reddit, 22 November 2021. Accessed 3 June 2022.

Lumunge, Erick. “UEFI and Legacy boot.” OpenGenus, n.d. Accessed 18 May 2022.

Bibliography

Mandaro, Laura. “Chromebooks Gain Share of Education Market Despite Shortages.” The Information, 9 September 2020. Accessed 19 May 2022.

Murtaza, Fawad. “What Is Virtualization Based Security in Windows?” Valnet Inc, 24 October 2021. Accessed 17 May 2022.

Roberts, Jeremy. Personal interview. 27 May 2022.

Rouse, Rick. “My initial thoughts about Windows 11 (likes and dislikes).” RicksDailyTips.com, 5 September 2021. Accessed 3 June 2022.

Sandrews1313. “Windows 11 - What are our initial thoughts and feelings?” Reddit, 22 November 2021. Accessed 3 June 2022.

“The Matrix Quotes." Quotes.net, n.d. Accessed 18 May 2022.

Thurrott, Paul.” Google: 40 Million Chromebooks in Use in Education.” Thurrott, 21 January 2020. Accessed 18 May 2022.

Vaughan-Nichols, Steven J. “The real reason for Windows 11.” Computerworld, 6 July 2021, Accessed 19 May 2022.

“Virtual Machine Support.” Microsoft,3 June 2022. Accessed 13 June 2022.

“What are DirectX 12 compatible graphics and WDDM 2.x.” Wisecleaner, 20 August 2021. Accessed 19 May 2022.

“Windows 11 Specs and System Requirements.” Microsoft, 2022. Accessed 13 June 2022.

“Windows Display Driver Model.” MiniTool, n.d. Accessed 13 June 2022.

Microsoft Teams Cookbook

Recipes for best practices and use cases for Microsoft Teams.

Table of contents

Executive Brief

Section 1: Teams for IT

Section 2: Teams for End Users

Executive Summary

Situation

Remote work calls for leveraging your Office 365 license to utilize Teams – but IT is unsure about best practices for governance and permissions.

Without a framework or plan for governing the rollout of Teams, IT risks overlooking secure use of Teams, the phenomenon of “teams sprawl,” and not realizing how Teams integrates with Office 365 more broadly.

Complication

Teams needs to be rolled out quickly, but IT has few resources to help train end users with Teams best practices.

With teams, channels, chats, meetings, and live events to choose from, end users may get frustrated with lack of guidance on how to use Teams’ many capabilities.

Resolution

Use Info-Tech’s Microsoft Teams Cookbook to successfully implement and utilize Teams. This cookbook includes recipes for:

• IT best practices concerning governance of the creation process and Teams rollout.
• End-user best practices for Teams functionality and common use cases.

Key Insights

Teams is not a standalone app

Successful utilization of Teams occurs when conceived in the broader context of how it integrates with Office 365. Understanding how information flows between Teams, SharePoint Online, and OneDrive for Business, for instance, will aid governance with permissions, information storage, and file sharing.

IT should paint the first picture for team creation

No initial governance for team creation can lead to “teams sprawl.” While Teams was built to allow end users’ creativity to flow in creating teams and channels, this can create problems with a cluttered interface and keeping track of information. To prevent end-user dissatisfaction here, IT’s initial Teams rollout should offer a basic structure for end users to work with first, limiting early teams sprawl.

The Teams admin center can only take you so far with permissions

Knowing how Teams integrates with other Office 365 apps will help with rolling out sensitivity labels to protect important information being accidentally shared in Teams. Of course, technology only does so much – proper processes to train and hold people accountable for their actions with data sharing must be implemented, too.

Related Info-Tech Research

Establish a Communication and Collaboration System Strategy

Don’t waste your time deploying yet another collaboration tool that won’t get used.

Modernize Communication and Collaboration Infrastructure

Your legacy telephony infrastructure is dragging you down – modern communications and collaboration technology will dramatically improve productivity.

Migrate to Office 365 Now

One small step to cloud, one big leap to Office 365. The key is to look before you leap.

Section 1: Teams for IT

Governance best practices and use cases for IT

From determining prerequisites to engaging end users.

IT fundamentals

• Creation process
• Teams rollout

Use cases

• Retain and search for legal/regulatory compliance
• Add an external user to a team
• Delete/archive a team

Overview: Creation process

IT needs to be prepared to manage other dependent services when rolling out Teams. See the figure below for how Teams integrates with these other Office 365 applications.

Which Microsoft 365 license do I need to access Teams?

• Microsoft 365 Business Essentials
• Microsoft 365 Business Premium
• Office 365 Enterprise, E1, E3, or E5
• Office 365 Enterprise E4 (if purchased prior to its retirement)

Please note: To appeal to the majority of Info-Tech’s members, this blueprint refers to Teams in the context of Office 365 Enterprise licenses.

Assign admin roles

You will already have at least one global administrator from setting up Office 365.

Global administrators have almost unlimited access to settings and most of the data within the software, so Microsoft recommends having only two to four IT and business owners responsible for data and security.

Info-Tech Best Practice

Configure multifactor authentication for your dedicated Office 365 global administrator accounts and set up two-step verification.

Once you have organized your global administrators, you can designate your other administrators with “just-enough” access for managing Teams. There are four administrator roles:

Prepare the network

There are three prerequisites before Teams can be rolled out:

• UDP ports 3478 through 3481 are opened.
• You have a verified domain for Office 365.
• Office 365 has been rolled out, including Exchange Online and SharePoint Online.

Microsoft then recommends the following checklist to optimize your Teams utilization:

• Optimize calls and performance using the Call Quality Dashboard.
• Assess network requirements in the Network Planner in the Teams admin center.
• Ensure all computers running Teams client can resolve external DNS queries.
• Check adequate public IP addresses are assigned to the NAT pools to prevent port exhaustion.
• Route to local or regional Microsoft data centers.
• Whitelist all Office 365 URLs to move through security layers, especially IDS/IPS.
• Split tunnel Teams traffic so it bypasses your organization’s VPN.

Info-Tech Best Practice

For online support and walkthroughs, utilize Advisor for Teams. This assistant can be found in the Teams admin center.

Team Creation

You can create and manage Teams through the Teams PowerShell module and the Teams admin center. Only the global administrator and Teams service administrator have full administrative capabilities in this center.

Governance over team creation intends to prevent “teams sprawl” – the phenomenon whereby end users create team upon team without guidance. This creates a disorganized interface, with issues over finding the correct team and sharing the right information.

Prevent teams sprawl by painting the first picture for end users:

1. Decide what kind of team grouping would best fit your organization: by department or by project.
2. Start with a small number of teams before letting end users’ creativity take over. This will prevent initial death by notifications and support adoption.
3. Add people or groups to these teams. Assign multiple owners for each team in case people move around at the start of rollout or someone leaves the organization.
4. Each team has a general channel that cannot be removed. Use it for sharing an overview of the team’s goals, onboarding, and announcements.

Info-Tech Best Practice

For smaller organizations that are project-driven, organize teams by projects. For larger organizations with established, siloed departments, organize by department; projects within departments can become channels.

Integrations with SharePoint Online

Teams does not integrate with SharePoint Server.

Governance of Teams is important because of how tightly it integrates with other Office 365 apps, including SharePoint Online.

A poor rollout of Teams will have ramifications in SharePoint. A good rollout will optimize these apps for the organization.

Teams and SharePoint integrate in the following ways:

• Each team created in Teams automatically generates a SharePoint team site behind it. All documents and chat shared through a team are stored in that team’s SharePoint document library.
• As such, all files shared through Teams are subject to SharePoint permissions.
• Existing SharePoint folders can be tied to a team without needing to create a new one.
• If governance over resource sharing in Teams is poor, information can get lost, duplicated, or cluttered throughout both Teams and SharePoint.

Info-Tech Best Practice

End users should be encouraged to integrate their teams and channels with existing SharePoint folders and, where no folder exists, to create one in SharePoint first before then attaching a team to it.

Permissions

Within the Teams admin center, the global or Teams service administrator can manage Teams policies.

Typical Teams policies requiring governance include:

• The extent end users can discover or create private teams or channels
• Messaging policies
• Third-party app use

Chosen policies can be either applied globally or assigned to specific users.

Info-Tech Best Practice

If organizations need to share sensitive information within the bounds of a certain group, private channels help protect this data. However, inviting users into that channel will enable them to see all shared history.

External and guest access

Within the security and compliance center, the global or Teams service administrator can set external and guest access.

External access (federation) – turned on by default.

• Lets you find, call, and chat with users in other domains. External users will have no access to the organization’s teams or team resources.

Guest access – turned off by default.

• Lets you add individual users with their own email address. You do this when you want external users to access teams and team resources. Approved guests will be added to the organization’s active directory.

If guest access is enabled, it is subject to Azure AD and Office 365 licensing and service limits. Guests will have no access to the following, which cannot be changed:

• OneDrive for Business
• An organization’s calendar/meetings
• PSTN
• Organization’s hierarchical chart
• The ability to create, revise, or browse a team
• Upload files to one-on-one chat

Info-Tech Best Practice

Within the security and compliance center, you can allow users to add sensitivity labels to their teams that can prevent external and guest access.

Expiration and archiving

To reduce the number of unused teams and channels, or delete information permanently, the global or Teams service administrator can implement an Office 365 group expiration and archiving policy through the Teams admin center.

If a team has an expiration policy applied to it, the team owner will receive a notification for team renewal 30 days, 15 days, and 1 day before the expiry date. They can renew their team at any point within this time.

• To prevent accidental deletion, auto-renewal is enabled for a team. If the team owner is unable to manually respond, any team that has one channel visit from a team member before expiry is automatically renewed.
• A deleted Office 365 group is retained for 30 days and can be restored at any point within this time.

Alternatively, teams and their channels (including private) can be archived. This will mean that all activity for the team ceases. However, you can still add, remove, and update roles of the members.

Retention and data loss prevention

Retention policies can be created and managed in the Microsoft 365 Compliance Center or the security and compliance center PowerShell cmdlets. This can be applied globally or to specific users.

By default, information shared through Teams is retained forever.

However, setting up retention policies ensures data is retained for a specified time regardless of what happens to that data within Teams (e.g. user deletes).

Info-Tech Best Practice

To prevent external or guest users accessing and deleting sensitive data, Teams is able to block this content when shared by internal users. Ensure this is configured appropriately in your organization:

• For guest access in teams and channels
• For external access in meetings and chat

Please note the following limitations of Teams’ retention and data loss prevention:

• Organization-wide retention policies will need to be manually inputted into Teams. This is because Teams requires a retention policy that is independent of other workloads.
• As of May 2020, retention policies apply to all information in Teams except private channel messages. Files shared in private channels, though, are subject to retention policies.
• Teams does not support advanced retention settings, such as a policy that pertains to specific keywords or sensitive information.
• It will take three to seven days to permanently delete expired messages.

Teams telephony

Teams has built-in functionality to call any team member within the organization through VoIP.

However, Teams does not automatically connect to the PSTN, meaning that calling or receiving calls from external users is not immediately possible.

Bridging VoIP calls with the PSTN through Teams is available as an add-on that can be attached to an E3 license or as part of an E5 license.

There are two options to enable this capability:

• Enable Phone System. This allows for call control and PBX capabilities in Office 365.
• Use direct routing. You can use an existing PSTN connection via a Session Border Controller that links with Teams (Amaxra).

Steps to implement Teams telephony:

1. Ensure Phone System and required (non-Microsoft-related) services are available in your country or region.
2. Purchase and assign Phone System and Calling Plan licenses. If Calling Plans are not available in your country or region, Microsoft recommends using Direct Routing.
3. Get phone numbers and/or service numbers. There are three ways to do this:
   • Get new numbers through the Teams admin center.
   • If you cannot get new numbers through the Teams admin center, you can request new numbers from Microsoft directly.
   • Port or transfer existing numbers. To do this, you need to send Microsoft a letter of authorization, giving them permission to request and transfer existing numbers on your behalf.
4. To enable service numbers, including toll-free numbers, Microsoft recommends setting up Communications Credits for your Calling Plans and Audio Conferencing.

Overview: Teams rollout

1. From Skype (and Slack) to Teams
2. Gain stakeholder purchase
3. Employ a phased deployment
4. Engage end users

Skype for Business is being retired; Microsoft offers a range of transitions to Teams.

Combine the best transition mode with Info-Tech’s adoption best practices to successfully onboard and socialize Teams.

From Skype to Teams

Skype for Business Online will be retired on July 31, 2021. Choose from the options below to see which transition mode is right for your organization.

Skype for Business On-Premises will be retired in 2024. To upgrade to Teams, first configure hybrid connectivity to Skype for Business Online.

Islands mode (default)

• Skype for Business and Teams coexist while Teams is rolled out.
• Recommended for phased rollouts or when Teams is ready to use for chat, calling, and meetings.
• Interoperability is limited. Teams and Skype for Business only transfer information if an internal Teams user sends communications to an external Skype for Business user.

Teams only mode (final)

• All capabilities are enabled in Teams and Skype for Business is disabled.
• Recommended when end users are ready to switch fully to Teams.
• End users may retain Skype for Business to join meetings with non-upgraded or external parties. However, this communication is only initiated from the Skype for Business external user.

Collaboration first mode

• Skype for Business and Teams coexist, but only Teams’ collaboration capabilities are enabled. Teams communications capabilities are turned off.
• Recommended to leverage Skype for Business communications yet utilize Teams for collaboration.

Meetings first mode

• Skype for Business and Teams coexist, but only Teams’ meetings capabilities are enabled.
• Recommended for organizations that want to leverage their Skype for Business On-Premises’ Enterprise Voice capability but want to benefit from Teams’ meetings through VoIP.

From Slack to Teams

The more that’s left behind in Slack, the easier the transition. As a prerequisite, pull together the following information:

• Usage statistics of Slack workspaces and channels
• What apps end users utilize in Slack
• What message history you want to export
• A list of users whose Slack accounts can map on to required Microsoft accounts

Test content migration

Your Slack service plan will determine what you can and can’t migrate. By default, public channels content can be exported. However, private channels may not be exportable, and a third-party app is needed to migrate Direct Messages.

Files migration

Once you have set up your teams and channels in Teams, you can programmatically copy files from Slack into the target Teams channel.

Apps migration

Once you have a list of apps and their configurations used in Slack’s workspaces, you can search in Teams’ app store to see if they’re available for Teams.

User identity migration

Slack user identities may not map onto a Microsoft account. This will cause migration issues, such as problems with exporting text content posted by that user.

Info-Tech Best Practice

Avoid data-handling violations. Determine what privacy and compliance regulations (if any) apply to the handling, storage, and processing of data during this migration.

Gain stakeholder purchase

Change management is a challenging aspect of implementing a new collaboration tool. Creating a communication and adoption plan is crucial to achieving universal buy-in for Teams.

To start, define SMART objectives and create a goals cascade.

Sample list of stakeholder-specific benefits from improving collaboration

Use these activities to define what pain points stakeholders face and how Teams can directly mitigate those pain points.

Employ a phased deployment

Info-Tech Best Practice

Deploy Teams over a series of phases. As such, if you are already using Skype for Business, choose one of the coexistence phases to start.

1. Identify and pilot Teams with early adopters that will become your champions. These champions should be formally trained, be encouraged to help and train their colleagues, and be positively reinforced for their efforts.
2. Iron out bugs identified with the pilot group and train middle management. Enterprise collaboration tool adoption is strongly correlated with leadership adoption.
   1. Top-level management
      Control and direct overall organization.
   2. Middle management
      Execute top-level management’s plans in accordance with organization’s norms.
   3. First-level management
      Execute day-to-day activities.
3. Use Info-Tech’s one-pager marketing template to advertise the new tool to stakeholders. Highlight how the new tool addresses specific pain points. Address questions stemming from fear and uncertainty to avoid employees’ embarrassment or their rejection of the tool.

1. Extend the pilot to other departments and continue this process for the whole organization.

(Source: Rationalize Your Collaboration Tools (coming soon), Tools:GANTT Chart and Marketing Materials, Activities: 3.2A – 3.2B)

Info-Tech Insight

Be in control of setting and maintaining expectations. Aligning expectations with reality and the needs of employees will lower onboarding resistance.

Engage end users

Short-term best practices

Launch day:

• Hold a “lunch and learn” targeted training session to walk end users through common use cases.
• Open a booth or virtual session (through Teams!) and have tool representatives available to answer questions.
• Create a game to get users exploring the new tool – from scavenger hunts to bingo.

Launch week:

• Offer incentives for using the tool and helping others, including small gift cards.
• Publicize achievements if departments hit adoption milestones.

Long-term best practices

• Make available additional training past launch week. End users should keep learning new features to improve familiarity.
• Distribute frequent training clips, slowly exposing end users to more complex ways of utilizing Teams.
• Continue to positively reinforce and recognize those who use Teams well. This could be celebrating those that help others use the tool, how active certain users are, and attendance at learning events.

Info-Tech Best Practice

Microsoft has a range of training support that can be utilized. From instructor-led training to “Coffee in the Cloud” sessions, leverage all the support you can.

Use case #1: Retain and search data for legal/regulatory compliance

Scenario:

Your organization requires you to retain data and documents for a certain period of time; however, after this period, your organization wishes to delete or archive the data instead of maintaining it indefinitely. Within the timeframe of the retention policy, the admin may be asked to retrieve information that has been requested through a legal channel.

Purpose:

• Maintain compliance with the legal and regulatory standards to which the organization is subject.

Jobs:

• Ensure the data is retained for the approved time period.
• Ensure the policy applies to all relevant data and users.

Solution: Retention Policies

• Ensure that your organization has an Office 365 E3 or higher license.
• Set the desired retention policy through the Security & Compliance Center or PowerShell by deciding which teams, channels, chats, and users the policies will apply to and what will happen once the retention period ends.
• Ensure that matching retention policies are applied to SharePoint and OneDrive, since this is where files shared in Teams are stored.
• Be aware that Teams retention policies cannot be applied to messages in private channels.

Solution: e-Discovery

• If legally necessary, place users or Teams on legal hold in order to retain data that would be otherwise deleted by your organization’s retention policies.
• Perform e-discovery on Teams messages, files, and summaries of meetings and calls through the Security & Compliance Center.
• See Microsoft’s chart on the next slide for what is e-discoverable.

Content subject to e-discovery

E-discovery does not capture audio messages and read receipts in MS Teams.

Since files shared in private channels are stored separately from the rest of a team, follow Microsoft’s directions for how to include private channels in e-discovery. (Source: “Conduct an eDiscovery investigation of content in Microsoft Teams,” Microsoft, 2020.)

Use case #2: Add external person to a team

Scenario:

A team in your organization needs to work in an ongoing way with someone external to the company. This user needs access to the relevant team’s work environment, but they should not be privy to the goings-on in the other parts of the organization.

Jobs:

This external person needs to be able to:

• Attend meetings
• Join calls
• Chat with individual team members
• View and collaborate on the team’s files

Solution:

• If necessary, set a data loss prevention policy to prevent your users from sharing certain types of information or files with external users present in your organization’s Teams chats and public channels.
• Ensure that your Microsoft license includes DLP protection. However:
  • DLP cannot be applied to private channel messages.
  • DLP cannot block messages from external Skype for Business users nor external users who are not in “Teams only” mode.
• Ensure that you have a team set up for the project that you wish the external user to join. The external user will be able to see all the channels in this team, unless you create a private channel they are restricted from.
• Complete Microsoft’s “Guest Access Checklist” to enable guest access in Teams, if it isn’t already enabled.
• As admin, give the external user guest access through the Teams admin center or Azure AD B2B collaboration. (If given permission, team owners can also add guests through the Teams client).
• Decide whether to set a policy to monitor and audit external user activity.

Use case #3: Delete/archive a team

Scenario:

In order to avoid teams sprawl, organizations may want IT to periodically delete or archive unused teams within the Teams client in order to improve the user interface.

Alternately, if you are using a project-based approach to organizing Teams, you may wish to formalize a process to archive a team once the project is complete.

Delete:

• Determine if the team owner anticipates the team will need to be restored one day.
• Ensure that deletion does not contradict the organization’s retention policy.
• If not, proceed with deletion. Find the team in the Teams admin center and delete.
• Restore a deleted team within 30 days of its initial deletion through PowerShell.

Archive:

• Determine if the team owner anticipates the team will need to be restored one day.
• Find the relevant team in the Teams admin center and change its status to “Archived.”
• Restore the archived team if the workspace becomes relevant once again.

Info-Tech Best Practice

Remind end users that they can hide teams or channels they do not wish to see in their Teams interface. Knowing a team can be hidden may impact a team owner’s decision to delete it.

Section 2: Teams for End Users

Best practices for utilizing teams, channels, chat, meetings, and live events

From Teams how-tos to common use cases for end users.

End user basics

• Teams, channels, and chat
• Meetings and live events

Common use cases: Workspaces

• WS#1: Departments
• WS#2: A cross-functional committee
• WS#3: An innovation day event
• WS#4: A non-work-related social event
• WS#5: A project team with a defined end time

Common use cases: Meetings

• M#1: Job interview with an external candidate
• M#2: Quarterly board meeting
• M#3: Weekly recurring team meeting
• M#4: Morning stand-up/scrum
• M#5: Phone call between two people

Overview: Teams, channels, and chat

Teams

• Team: A workspace for a group of collaborative individuals.
  • Public channel: A focused area where all members of a team can meet, communicate, and share ideas and content.
  • Private channel: Like a public channel but restricted to a subset of team members, defined by channel owner.

Chat

• Chat: Two or more users collected into a common conversation thread.

For any Microsoft Teams newcomer, the differences between teams, channels, and chat can be confusing.

Use Microsoft’s figure (left) to see how these three mediums differ in their role and function.

Best practices: Workspaces 1/2

When does a Group Chat become a Channel?

• When it’s appropriate for the conversation to have a gallery – an audience of members who may not be actively participating in the discussion.
• When control over who joins the conversation needs to be centrally governed and not left up to anyone in the discussion.
• When the discussion will persist over a longer time period.
• When the number of participants approaches 100.

When does a Channel become a Team?

• When a team approaches 30 private channels, many of those private channels are likely candidates to become their own team.
• When the channel membership needs to extend beyond the boundary of the team membership.

Best practices: Workspaces 2/2

When does a Team become a Channel?

• When a team’s purpose for existing can logically be subsumed by another team that has a larger scope.

When does a Channel become a Group Chat?

• When a conversation within a channel between select users does not pertain to that channel’s scope (or any other existing channel), they should move the conversation to a group chat.
• However, this is until that group chat desires to form a channel of its own.

Create a new team

Team owner: The person who creates the team. It is possible for the team owner to then invite other members of the team to become co-owners to distribute administrative responsibilities.

Team members: People who have accepted their invitation to be a part of the team.

NB: Your organization can control who has permission to set up a team. If you can’t set a up a team, contact your IT department.

Create a new team

Decide from these two options:

• Building a team from scratch, which will create a new group with no prior history imported (steps 4.1–4.3).
• Creating a team from an existing group in Office 365, including an already existing team (steps 4.4–4.6).

NB: You cannot create a team from an existing group if:

• That group has 5,000 members or more.
• That group is in Yammer.

Decide if you want you new team from scratch to be private or public. If you set up a private team, any internal or external user you invite into the team will have access to all team history and files shared.

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Create a new team

Decide from these two options:

• Building a team from scratch, which will create a new group with no prior history imported (steps 4.1–4.3).
• Creating a team from an existing group in Office 365, including an already existing team (steps 4.4–4.6).

NB: You cannot create a team from an existing group if:

• That group has 5,000 members or more.
• That group is in Yammer.

Configure your new team settings, including privacy, apps, tabs, and members.

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Create a new channel

	On the right-hand side of the team name, click “More options.” Then, from the drop-down menu, click “Add channel.”	Name your channel, give a description, and set your channel’s privacy.
	To manage subsequent permissions, on the right-hand side of the channel name, click “More options.” Then, from the drop-down menu, click “Manage channel.”	Adding and removing members from channels: Only members in a team can see that team’s channels. Setting channel privacy as “standard” means that the channel can be accessed by anyone in a team. Unless privacy settings for a channel are set as “private” (from which the channel creator can choose who can be in that channel), there is no current way to remove members from channels. It will be up to the end user to decide which channels they want to hide.

Link team/channel to SharePoint folder

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Create a chat

Overview: Meetings and live events

Teams Meetings: Real-time communication and collaboration between a group, limited to 250 people.

Teams Live Events: designed for presentations and webinars to a large audience of up to 10,000 people, in which attendees watch rather than interact.

Depending on the use case, end users will have to determine whether they need to hold a meeting or a live event.

Use Microsoft’s table (left) to see what license your organization needs to perform meetings and live events.

Best practices: Meetings

When should an Ad Hoc Call become a Scheduled Meeting?

• When the participants need time to prepare content for the call.
• When an answer is not required immediately.
• When bringing a group of people together requires logistical organizing.

When should a Scheduled Meeting become an Ad Hoc Call?

• When the participants can meet on short notice.
• When a topic under discussion requires creating alignment quickly.

When should a Live Event be created?

• When the expected attendance exceeds 250 people.
• If the event does not require collaboration and is mostly a presenter conveying information.

Create a scheduled meeting

Create an ad hoc meeting

Tip: Use existing channels to host the chatrooms for your online meetings

When you host a meeting online with Microsoft Teams, there will always be a chatroom associated with the meeting. While this is a great place for meeting participants to interact, there is one particular downside.

Problem: The never-ending chat. Often the activity in these chatrooms can persist long after the meeting. The chatroom itself becomes, unofficially, a channel. When end users can’t keep up with the deluge of communication, the tools have failed them.

Solution: Adding an existing channel to the meeting. This ensures that discussion activity is already hosted in the appropriate venue for the group, during and after the meeting. Furthermore, it provides non-attendees with a means to catch up on the discussion they have missed.

In section two of this cookbook, we will often refer to this tactic.

Don’t have a channel for the chat session of your online meeting? Perhaps you should!

If your meeting is with a group of individuals that will be collaborating frequently, they may need a workspace that persists beyond the meeting.

Guests can still attend the meeting, but they can’t chat!

If there are attendees in your meeting that do not have access to the channel you select to host the chat, they will not see the chat discussion nor have any ability to use this function.

This may be appropriate in some cases – for example, a vendor providing a briefing as part of a regular team meeting.

However, if there are attendees outside the channel membership that need to see the meeting chat, consider another channel or simply default to not assigning one.

Meeting settings explained

Show device settings. For settings concerning audio, video, and whether viewing is private.

Show meeting notes. Use to take notes throughout the meeting. The notes will stay attached to this event.

Show meeting details. Find meeting information for: a dial-in number, conference ID, and link to join.

Enter full screen.

Show background effects. Choose from a range of video backgrounds to hide/blur your location.

Turn on the captions (preview). Turn on live speech-to-text captions.

Keypad. For dialing a number within the meeting (when enabled as an add-on with E3 or as part of E5).

Start recording. Recorded and saved using Microsoft Stream.

End meeting.

Turn off incoming video. To save network bandwidth, you can decline receiving attendee’s video.

Click “More options” to access the meetings settings.

Screen share. In the tool tray, select “Share” to share your screen. Select particular applications if you only want to share certain information; otherwise, you can share your whole desktop.

System audio share. To share your device’s audio while screen sharing, checkbox the “Include system audio” option upon clicking “Share.”

If you didn’t click that option at the start but now want to share audio during screen share, click the “Include systems audio” option in the tool tray along the top of the screen.

Give/take control of screen share. To give control, click “Give control” in the tool tray along the top of the screen when sharing content. Choose from the drop-down who you would like to give control to. In the same spot, click “Take back control” when required.

To request control, click “Request control” in the same space when viewing someone sharing their content. Click “Release control” once finished.

Start whiteboarding

1. You’ll first need to enable Microsoft Whiteboard in the Microsoft 365 admin center. Ask your relevant admin to do so if Whiteboard is not already enabled.
2. Once enabled, click “Share” in a meeting. This feature only appears if you have 3+ participants in the meeting.
3. Under the “Whiteboard” section in the bottom right, click “Microsoft Whiteboard.”
4. Click the pen icons to the right of the screen to begin sketching.

NB: Anonymous, federated, or guest users are currently not supported to start, view, or ink a whiteboard in a Teams meeting.

Will the whiteboard session be recorded if the meeting is being recorded?

No. However, the final whiteboard will be available to all meeting attendees after the meeting, under “Board Gallery” in the Microsoft Whiteboard app. Attendees can then continue to work on the whiteboard after the meeting has ended.

Create a live event

As the organizer, you can invite other people to the event who will be the “producers” or “presenters.” Producers: Control the live event stream, including being able to start and stop the event, share their own and others’ video, share desktop or window, and select layout. Presenters: Present audio, video, or a screen.

Live event settings explained

When you join the live event as a producer/presenter, nothing will be immediately broadcast. You’ll be in a pre-live state. Decide what content to share and in what order. Along the bottom of the screen, you can share your video and audio, share your screen, and mute incoming attendees. Once your content is ready to share along the bottom of the screen, add it to the screen on the left, in order of viewing. This is your queue – your “Pre-live” state. Then, click “Send now.” This content will now move to the right-hand screen, ready for broadcasting. Once you’re ready to broadcast, click “Start.” Your state will change from “Pre-live” to “Live.” Along the top right of the app will be a tools bar.

Workspace #1: Departments

Scenario: Most of your organization’s communication and collaboration occurs within its pre-existing departmental divisions.

Conventional communication channels:

• Oral communication: Employees work in proximity to each other and communicate in person, by phone, in department meetings
• Email: Department-wide announcements
• Memos: Typically posted/circulated in mailboxes

Solution: Determine the best way to organize your organization’s departments in Teams based on its size and your requirements to keep information private between departments.

Option A:

• Create a team for the organization/division.
• Create channels for each department. Remember that all members of a team can view all public channels created in that team and the default General channel.
• Create private channels if you wish to have a channel that only select members of that team can see. Remember that private channels have some limitations in functionality.

Option B:

• Create a new team for each department.
• Create channels within this team for projects or topics that are recurring workflows for the department members. Only department members can view the content of these channels.

Option C:

• Post departmental memos and announcements in the General channel.
• Use “Meet now” in channels for ad hoc meetings. For regular department meetings, create a recurring Teams calendar event for the specific department channel (Option A) or the General channel (Option B). Remember that all members of a team can join a public channel meeting.

Workspace #2: A cross-functional committee

Scenario: Your organization has struck a committee composed of members from different departments. The rest of the organization should not have access to the work done in the committee.

Purpose: To analyze a particular organizational challenge and produce a plan or report; to confidentially develop or carry out a series of processes that affect the whole organization.

Jobs: Committee members must be able to:

• Attend private meetings.
• Share files confidentially.

Solution:

Ingredients:

• Private team

Construction:

• Create a new private team for the cross-functional committee.
• Add only committee members to the team.
• Create channels based on the topics likely to be the focal point of the committee work.
• Decide how you will use the mandatory General channel. If the committee is small and the work limited in scope, this channel may be the main communication space. If the committee is larger or the work more complex, use the General channel for announcements and move discussions to new topic-related channels.
• Schedule recurring committee meetings in the Teams calendar. Add the relevant channel to the meeting invite to keep the meeting chat attached to this team and channel (as meeting organizer, put your name in the meeting invite notes, as the channel will show as the organizer in the Outlook invite).
• Remember that all members of this team will have access to these meetings and be able to view that they are occurring.

Workspace #3: An innovation day event

Scenario: The organization holds a yearly innovation day event in which employees form small groups and work on a defined, short-term problem or project.

Purpose: To develop innovative solutions and ideas.

Jobs:

• Convene small groups.
• Work toward time-sensitive goals.
• Communicate synchronously.
• Share files.

Solution:

Ingredients:

• Public team
• Channel tabs
• Whiteboard
• Planner

Construction:

• Create a team for the innovation day event.
• Add channels for each project working group.
• Communicate to participants the schedule for the day and their assigned channel.
• Use the General channel for announcements and instructions throughout the day. Ensure someone moderates the General channel for participants’ questions.
• Pre-populate the channel tabs with files the participants need to work with. To add a scrum board, refer to M#4 (Morning stand-up/Scrum) in this slide deck.
• For breakouts, instruct participants to use the “meet now” feature in their channel and how to use the Whiteboard during these meetings.
• Arrange to have your IT admin archive the team after a certain point so the material is still viewable but not editable.

Workspace #4: A non-work-related social event

Scenario: Employees within the organization wish to organize social events around shared interests: board game clubs, book clubs, TV show discussion groups, trivia nights, etc.

Purpose: To encourage cohesion among coworkers and boost morale.

Jobs:

• Schedule the event.
• Invite participants.
• Prepare the activity.
• Host and moderate the discussion.

Solution:

Ingredients:

• Public team
• Private channels
• Screen-sharing

Construction:

• Create a public team for the social event so that interested people can find and join it.
• Example: Trivia Night
  • Schedule the event in the Teams calendar.
  • Publish the link to the Trivia Night team where other employees will see it.
  • Create private channels for each trivia team so they cannot see the other competitors’ discussions. Add yourself to each private channel so you can see their answers.
  • As the host, begin a meeting in the General channel. Pose the trivia questions live or present the questions on PowerPoint via screen-sharing.
  • Ask each team to post its answers to its private channel.
• To avoid teams sprawl, ask your IT admin to set a deletion policy for the team, as long as this request does not contradict your organization’s policies on data retention. If the team becomes moribund, it can be set to auto-delete after a certain period of time.

Workspace #5: A project team with a defined end time

Scenario: Within a department/workplace team, employees are assigned to projects with defined end times, after which they will be assigned to a new project.

Purpose: To complete project-based work that fulfills business needs.

Jobs:

• Oral communication with team members.
• Synchronous and asynchronous work on project files.
• The ability to attend scheduled meetings and ad hoc meetings.
• The ability to access shared resources related to the project.

Solution:

If your working group already has its own team within Teams:

• Create a new public or private channel for the project. Remember that some functionality is not available in private channels (such as Microsoft Planner).
• Use the channel for the project team’s meetings (scheduled in Teams calendar or through Meet Now).
• Add a tab that links to the team’s project folder in SharePoint.

If your workplace team does not already have its own team in Teams:

• Determine if there is a natural fit for this project as a new channel in an existing team. Remember that all team members will be able to see the channel if it is public and that all relevant project members need to belong to the Team to participate in the channel.
• If necessary, create a new team for the project. Add the project members.
• Create channels based on the type of work that comprises the project.
• Use the channel for the project team’s meetings (scheduled in Teams calendar or through Meet Now)
• Add a tab to link to the team’s project folder in SharePoint.

Info-tech Best Practice

Hide the channel after the project concludes to de-clutter your Teams user interface.

Meeting #1: Job interview with external candidate

Scenario: The organization must interview a slate of candidates to fill an open position.

Purpose:

• Select the most qualified candidate for the job.

Jobs:

• Create a meeting, ensuring the candidate and other attendees know when and where the meeting will happen.
• Ensure the meeting is secure to protect confidential information.
• Ensure the meeting is accessible, allowing the candidate to present themselves through audio and/or visual means.
• Create a professional environment for the meeting to take place.
• Engender a space for the candidate to share their CV, research, or other relevant file.
• The interview must be transcribed and recorded.

Solution:

Ingredients:

• Private Teams meeting
• Screen-sharing
• Microsoft Stream

Construction:

• Create a Teams meeting, inviting the candidate with their email, alongside other internal attendees. The Teams meeting invite will auto-generate a link to the meeting itself.
• The host can control who joins the meeting through settings for the “lobby.”
• Through the Teams meeting, the attendees will be able to use the voice and video chat functionality.
• All attendees can opt to blur their backgrounds to maintain a professional online presence.
• The candidate can share their screen, either specific applications or their whole desktop, during the Teams meeting.
• A Teams meeting can be recorded and transcribed through Stream. After the meeting, the transcript can be searched, edited, and shared

NB: The external candidate does not need the Teams application. Through the meeting invite, the external candidate will join via a web browser.

Meeting #2: Quarterly board meeting

Scenario: Every quarter, the organization holds its regular board meeting.

Purpose: To discuss agenda items and determine the company’s future direction.

Jobs:

• Attendance and minutes must be taken.
• Votes must be recorded.
• In-camera sessions must occur.
• External experts must be included.

• Follow-up items must be assigned.
• Reports must be submitted.

Solution:

Ingredients:

• Teams calendar invite
• Planner; Forms
• Private channel
• Microsoft Stream

Construction:

• Guest Invite: Invites can be sent to any non-domain-joined email address to join a private, invitation-only channel within the team controlled by the board chair.
• SharePoint & Flow: Documents are emailed to the Team addresses, which kicks off an MS Flow routine to collect review notes.
• Planner: Any board member can assign tasks to any employee.
• Forms/Add-On: Chair puts down the form of the question and individual votes are tracked.
• Teams cloud meeting recording: Recording available through Stream. Manual edits can be made to VTT caption file. Greater than acceptable transcription error rate.
• Meeting Log: Real-time attendance is viewable but a point-in-time record needs admin access.

NB: The external guests do not need the Teams application. Through the meeting invite, the guests will join via a web browser.

Meeting #3: Weekly team meeting

Scenario: A team meets for a weekly recurring meeting. The meeting is facilitated by the team lead (or manager) who addresses through agenda items and invites participation from the attendees.

Purpose: The purpose of the meeting is to:

• Share information verbally
• Present content visually
• Achieve consensus
• Build team morale

Jobs: The facilitator must:

• Determine participants
• Book room
• Book meeting in calendar

Solution:

Ingredients:

• Meeting Place: A channel in Microsoft Teams (must be public) where all members of the meeting make up the entirety of the audience.
• Calendar Recurrence: A meeting is booked through Teams and appears in all participants’ Outlook calendar.
• Collaboration Space: Participants join the meeting through video or audio and can share screens and contribute text, images, and links to the meeting chat.

Construction:

• Ensure your team already has a channel created for it. If not, create one in the appropriate team.
• Create the meeting using the calendar view within Microsoft Teams:
  • Set the meeting’s name, attendees, time, and recurrence.
  • Add the team channel that serves as the most appropriate workplace for the meeting. (Any discussion in the meeting chat will be posted to this channel.)

NB: Create the meeting in the Teams calendar, not Outlook, or you will not be able to add the Teams channel. As meeting organizer, put your name in the meeting invite notes, as the channel will show as the organizer in the Outlook invite.

Meeting #4: Morning stand-up/scrum

Scenario: Each morning, at 9am, members of the team meet online.

Purpose: After some pleasantries, the team discusses what tasks they each plan to complete in the day.

Jobs: The team leader (or scrum master) must:

• Place all tasks on a scrum board, each represented by a sticky note denoting the task name and owner.
• Move the sticky notes through the columns, adjusting assignments as needed.
• Sort tasks into the following columns: “Not Started,” “In Progress,” and “Done.”

Solution:

Ingredients:

• Meeting Place: A channel in Microsoft Teams (must be public) where all members of the meeting make up the entirety of the audience.
• Scrum Board: A tab within that channel where a persistent scrum board has been created and is visible to all team members.

Meeting Place Construction:

• Create the meeting using the calendar view in Teams.
• Set the meeting’s name, attendees, time, and work-week daily recurrence (see left).
• Add the channel that is the most appropriate workplace for the meeting. Any meeting chat will be posted to this channel rather than a separate chat.

Scrum Board Construction:

• Add a tab to the channel using Microsoft Planner as the app. (You can use other task management apps such as Trello, but the identity integration of first-party Office 365 tools may be less hassle.)
• Create a new (or import an existing) Plan to the channel. This will be used as the focal point.

Meeting #5: Weekly team meeting

Scenario: An audio-only conversation that could be a regularly scheduled event but is more often conducted on an ad-hoc basis.

Purpose: To quickly share information, achieve consensus, or clarify misunderstandings.

Jobs:

• Dial recipient
• See missed calls
• Leave/check voicemail
• Create speed-dial list
• Conference call

Solution:

Ingredients:

• Audio call begun through Teams chat.

Construction:

• Voice over IP calls between users in the same MS Teams tenant can begin in multiple ways:
  • A call can be initiated through any appearance of a user’s profile picture: hover over user’s profile photo in the Chat list and select the phone icon.
  • Enter your last chat with a user and click phone icon in upper-right corner.
  • Go to the Calls section and type the name in the “Make a call” text entry form.
• Voicemail: Voicemail, missed calls, and call history are available in the Calls section.
• Speed dial: Speed dial lists can be created in the Calls section.
• Conference call: Other users can be added to an ongoing call.

NB: Microsoft Teams can be configured to provide an organization’s telephony for external calls, but this requires an E5 license. Additional audio-conferencing licenses are required to call in to a Teams meeting over a phone.

Bibliography 1/4

Section 1: Teams for IT › Creation Process

Overview: Creation process

• “How do I get access to Microsoft Teams?” Microsoft, n.d., support.office.com/en-us/article/how-do-i-get-access-to-microsoft-teams-fc7f1634-abd3-4f26-a597-9df16e4ca65b. Accessed 11 May 2020.
• “Logical architecture for Microsoft Teams and related services.” Microsoft, 6 Mar. 2020, docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/teams-architecture-solutions-posters. Accessed 9 May 2020.
• “Plan for governance in Teams.” Microsoft, 10 Aug. 2018, docs.microsoft.com/en-us/MicrosoftTeams/plan-teams-governance. Accessed 30 Apr. 2020.

Assign admin roles

• “Use Microsoft Teams administrator roles to manage Teams.” Microsoft, 19 Sep. 2018, docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/using-admin-roles. Accessed 9 May 2020.

Prepare the network

• “Prepare your organization's network for Microsoft Teams.” Microsoft, 28 Apr. 2020, docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/prepare-network. Accessed 9 May 2020.

Team creation

• “Best practices for organizing teams in Microsoft Teams.” Microsoft, 13 Apr. 2020, docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/best-practices-organizing. Accessed 9 May 2020.
• “Create your first teams and channels in Microsoft Teams.” Microsoft, 27 Apr. 2020, docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/get-started-with-teams-create-your-first-teams-and-channels. Accessed 9 May 2020.

Integrations with SharePoint Online

• “Configure Teams with three tiers of protection.” Microsoft, 7 May 2020, docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/solutions/configure-teams-three-tiers-protection?view=o365-worldwide. Accessed 9 May 2020.
• “File collaboration in SharePoint with Microsoft 365.” Microsoft, 21 Apr. 2020, docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/deploy-file-collaboration. Accessed 9 May 2020.

Permissions

• “Manage app permission policies in Microsoft Teams.” Microsoft, 21 Apr. 2020, docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/teams-app-permission-policies. Accessed 9 May 2020.
• “Manage messaging policies in Teams.” Microsoft, 27 Apr. 2020, docs.microsoft.com/en-us/MicrosoftTeams/messaging-policies-in-teams. Accessed 30 Apr. 2020.
• “Sensitivity labels for Microsoft Teams.” Microsoft, 22 Apr. 2020, docs.microsoft.com/en-us/MicrosoftTeams/sensitivity-labels. Accessed 9 May 2020.

Bibliography 2/4

Section 1: Teams for IT › Creation Process (cont'd.)

External and guest access

• “Add a guest to Teams.” Microsoft, 22 Apr. 2020, docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/add-guests. Accessed 30 Apr. 2020.
• “Communicate with users from other organizations in Microsoft Teams.” Microsoft, 22 Apr. 2020, docs.microsoft.com/en-us/MicrosoftTeams/communicate-with-users-from-other-organizations. Accessed 30 Apr. 2020.
• “Guest access in Microsoft Teams.” Microsoft, 22 Apr. 2020, docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/guest-access. Accessed 9 May 2020.
• “Manage external access in Microsoft Teams.” Microsoft, 22 Apr. 2020, docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/manage-external-access. Accessed 9 May 2020.
• “Microsoft Teams guest access checklist.” Microsoft, 27 Apr. 2020, docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/guest-access-checklist. Accessed 30 Apr. 2020.
• “Turn on or turn off guest access to Microsoft Teams.” Microsoft, 27 Apr. 2020, docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/set-up-guests. Accessed 9 May 2020.
• “What the guest experience is like.” Microsoft, 27 Apr. 2020, docs.microsoft.com/en-us/MicrosoftTeams/guest-experience. Accessed 4 May 2020.

Expiration and archiving

• “Archive or delete a team in Microsoft Teams.” Microsoft, 27 Apr. 2020, docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/archive-or-delete-a-team?view=o365-worldwide. Accessed 29 Apr. 2020.
• “Microsoft 365 group expiration policy.” Microsoft, 6 May 2020, docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/admin/create-groups/office-365-groups-expiration-policy?view=o365-worldwide. Accessed 9 May 2020.
• “Team expiration and renewal in Microsoft Teams.” Microsoft, 6 Feb. 2020, docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/team-expiration-renewal. Accessed 9 May 2020.

Retention and data loss prevention

• “Data loss prevention and Microsoft Teams.” Microsoft, 21 Apr. 2020, docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/compliance/dlp-microsoft-teams?view=o365-worldwide. Accessed 9 May 2020.
• “Retention policies in Microsoft Teams.” Microsoft, 5 May 2020, docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/retention-policies. Accessed 9 May 2020.

Teams telephony

• “Here's what you get with Phone System in Office 365.” Microsoft, 26 Feb. 2020, docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/here-s-what-you-get-with-phone-system. Accessed 9 May 2020.
• O’Donnell, J.P. “The killer feature in Microsoft Teams your business should be using.” Amaxra, n.d., www.amaxra.com/blog/the-killer-feature-in-microsoft-teams-your-business-should-be-using. Accessed 4 May 2020.
• “Set up Phone System in your organization.” Microsoft, 27 Apr. 2020, docs.microsoft.com/en-us/MicrosoftTeams/deploy-audio-conferencing-teams-landing-page. Accessed 4 May. 2020.
• “What is Phone System in Office 365?” Microsoft, 29 Apr. 2020, docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/what-is-phone-system-in-office-365. Accessed 9 May 2020.

Bibliography 3/4

Section 1: Teams for IT › Teams Rollout

From Skype to Teams

• “FAQ — Upgrading from Skype for Business to Microsoft Teams.” Microsoft, 27 Apr. 2020, docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/faq-journey. Accessed 9 May 2020.
• “Teams and Skype interoperability.” Microsoft, 21 Apr. 2020, docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/teams-skype-interop. Accessed 9 May 2020.
• “Understand Microsoft Teams and Skype for Business coexistence and interoperability.” Microsoft, 3 Apr. 2020, docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/teams-and-skypeforbusiness-coexistence-and-interoperability. Accessed 9 May 2020.

From Slack to Teams

• “Migrate from Slack to Microsoft Teams.” Microsoft, 14 Apr. 2020, docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/migrate-slack-to-teams. Accessed 9 May 2020.

Teams adoption

• “365 adoption guide” Microsoft, 22 Jan. 2020, query.prod.cms.rt.microsoft.com/cms/api/am/binary/RWqTOD. Accessed 9 May 2020.

Section 1: Teams for IT › Use Cases

• Acharya, Ansuman. “Microsoft Teams launches eDiscovery for calling and meetings.” Microsoft Tech Community, 2 Jul. 2018, techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-teams-blog/microsoft-teams-launches-ediscovery-for-calling-and-meetings/ba-p/210947. Accessed 30 Apr. 2020.
• “Conduct an eDiscovery investigation of content in Microsoft Teams.” Microsoft, 27 Apr. 2020, docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/ediscovery-investigation?view=o365-worldwide#overview, Accessed 29 Apr. 2020.
• “Teams cloud meeting recording: Compliance and eDiscovery for meeting recordings.” Microsoft, 27 Apr. 2020, docs.microsoft.com/en-us/MicrosoftTeams/cloud-recording#compliance-and-ediscovery-for-meeting-recordings. Accessed 29 Apr. 2020.

Bibliography 4/4

Section 2: Teams for End Users › Teams, Channels, Chat

• “Limits and specifications for Microsoft Teams.” Microsoft, 29 Apr. 2020, docs.microsoft.com/en-us/MicrosoftTeams/limits-specifications-teams. Accessed 4 May 2020.
• “Location of data in Microsoft Teams.” Microsoft, 27 Apr. 2020, docs.microsoft.com/en-us/MicrosoftTeams/location-of-data-in-teams. Accessed 4 May 2020.
• “Manage the Whiteboard in Microsoft Teams.” Microsoft, 1 Oct. 2019, docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/manage-whiteboard. Accessed 9 May 2020.
• [Microsoft Teams admin documentation.] Microsoft, n.d., docs.microsoft.com/en-us/MicrosoftTeams/teams-overview. Accessed 29 Apr. 2020.
• “Overview of teams and channels in Microsoft Teams.” Microsoft, 9 Mar. 2020, docs.microsoft.com/en-us/MicrosoftTeams/teams-channels-overview. Accessed 4 May 2020.
• “Private channels in Microsoft Teams.” Microsoft, 24 Feb. 2020, docs.microsoft.com/en-us/MicrosoftTeams/private-channels. Accessed 30 Apr. 2020.

Section 2: Teams for End Users › Meetings and Live Events

• “Admin quick start – Meetings and live events in Microsoft Teams.” Microsoft, 7 Apr. 2020, docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/quick-start-meetings-live-events. Accessed 21 Apr. 2020.
• “Get started with Microsoft Teams live events.” Microsoft, n.d., support.office.com/en-us/article/get-started-with-microsoft-teams-live-events-d077fec2-a058-483e-9ab5-1494afda578a#bkmk_roles. Accessed 29 Apr. 2020.
• “Schedule a Teams live event.” Microsoft, n.d., support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/schedule-a-teams-live-event-7a9ce97c-e1cd-470f-acaf-e6dfc179a0e2. Accessed 29 Apr. 2020.
• “Search the audit log for events in Microsoft Teams.” Microsoft, 12 Mar. 2018, docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/audit-log-events?view=o365-worldwide. Accessed 30 Apr. 2020.

Section 2: Teams for End Users › Use Cases

• “Understand calling in Microsoft Teams.” Microsoft, n.d., docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/tutorial-calling-in-teams. Accessed 9 May 2020.

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

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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
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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
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Create a Service Management Roadmap

Implement service management in an order that makes sense.

ANALYST PERSPECTIVE

"More than 80% of the larger enterprises we’ve worked with start out wanting to develop advanced service management practices without having the cultural and organizational basics or foundational practices fully in place. Although you wouldn’t think this would be the case in large enterprises, again and again IT leaders are underestimating the importance of cultural and foundational aspects such as governance, management practices, and understanding business value. You must have these fundamentals right before moving on."

Tony Denford,

Research Director – CIO

Info-Tech Research Group

Our understanding of the problem

This Research Is Designed For:

• CIO
• Senior IT Management

This Research Will Help You:

• Create or maintain service management (SM) practices to ensure user-facing services are delivered seamlessly to business users with minimum interruption.
• Increase the level of reliability and availability of the services provided to the business and improve the relationship and communication between IT and the business.

This Research Will Also Assist

• Service Management Process Owners

This Research Will Help Them:

• Formalize, standardize, and improve the maturity of service management practices.
• Identify new service management initiatives to move IT to the next level of service management maturity.

Executive summary

Situation

• Inconsistent adoption of holistic practices has led to a chaotic service delivery model that results in poor customer satisfaction.
• There is little structure, formalization, or standardization in the way IT services are designed and managed, leading to diminishing service quality and low business satisfaction.

Complication

• IT organizations want to be seen as strategic partners, but they fail to address the cultural and organizational constraints.
• Without alignment with the business goals, services often fail to provide the expected value.
• Traditional service management approaches are not adaptable for new ways of working.

Resolution

• Follow Info-Tech’s methodology to create a service management roadmap that will help guide the optimization of your IT services and improve IT’s value to the business.
• The blueprint will help you right-size your roadmap to best suit your specific needs and goals and will provide structure, ownership, and direction for service management.
• This blueprint allows you to accurately identify the current state of service management at your organization. Customize the roadmap and create a plan to achieve your target service management state.

Info-Tech Insight

Having effective service management practices in place will allow you to pursue activities such as innovation and drive the business forward. Addressing foundational elements like business alignment and management practices will enable you to build effective core practices that deliver business value. Consistent leadership support and engagement is essential to allow practitioners to focus on delivering expected outcomes.

Poor service management manifests in many different pains across the organization

Immaturity in service management will not result in one pain – rather, it will create a chaotic environment for the entire organization, crippling IT’s ability to deliver and perform.

Low Service Management Maturity

These are some of the pains that can be attributed to poor service management practices.

• Frequent service-impacting incidents
• Low satisfaction with the service desk
• High % of failed deployments
• Frequent change-related incidents
• Frequent recurring incidents
• Inability to find root cause
• No communication with the business
• Frequent capacity-related incidents

And there are many more…

Mature service management practices are a necessity, not a nice-to-have

Immature service management practices are one of the biggest hurdles preventing IT from reaching its true potential.

In 2004, PwC published a report titled “IT Moves from Cost Center to Business Contributor.” However, the 2014-2015 CSC Global CIO Survey showed that a high percentage of IT is still considered a cost center.

And low maturity of service management practices is inhibiting activities such as agility, DevOps, digitalization, and innovation.

Source: CSC Global CIO Survey: 2014-2015 “CIOs Emerge as Disruptive Innovators”

39%: Resources are primarily focused on managing existing IT workloads and keeping the lights on.

31%: Too much time and too many resources are used to handle urgent incidents and problems.

There are many misconceptions about what service management is

Misconception #1: “Service management is a process”

Effective service management is a journey that encompasses a series of initiatives that improves the value of services delivered.

Misconception #2: “Service Management = Service Desk”

Service desk is the foundation, since it is the main end-user touch point, but service management is a set of people and processes required to deliver business-facing services.

Misconception #3: “Service management is about the ITSM tool”

The tool is part of the overall service management program, but the people and processes must be in place before implementing.

Misconception #4: “Service management development is one big initiative”

Service management development is a series of initiatives that takes into account an organization’s current state, maturity, capacities, and objectives.

Misconception #5: “Service management processes can be deployed in any order, assuming good planning and design”

A successful service management program takes into account the dependencies of processes.

Misconception #6: “Service management is resolving incidents and deploying changes”

Service management is about delivering high-value and high-quality services.

Misconception #7: “Service management is not the key determinant of success”

As an organization progresses on the service management journey, its ability to deliver high-value and high-quality services increases.

Misconception #8: “Resolving Incidents = Success”

Preventing incidents is the name of the game.

Misconception #9: “Service Management = Good Firefighter”

Service management is about understanding what’s going on with user-facing services and proactively improving service quality.

Misconception #10: “Service management is about IT and technical services (e.g. servers, network, database)”

Service management is about business/user-facing services and the value the services provide to the business.

Service management projects often don’t succeed because they are focused on process rather than outcomes

Service management projects tend to focus on implementing process without ensuring foundational elements of culture and management practices are strong enough to support the change.

1. Aligning your service management goals with your organizational objectives leads to better understanding of the expected outcomes.

Understand your customers and what they value, and design your practices to deliver this value.

2. IT does not know what order is best when implementing new practices or process improvements.

Don't run before you can walk. Fundamental practices must reach the maturity threshold before developing advanced practices. Implement continuous improvement on your existing processes so they continue to support new practices.

3. IT does not follow best practices when implementing a practice.

Our best-practice research is based on extensive experience working with clients through advisory calls and workshops.

Info-Tech can help you create a customized, low-effort, and high-value service management roadmap that will shore up any gaps, prove IT’s value, and achieve business satisfaction.

Info-Tech’s methodology will help you customize your roadmap so the journey is right for you

With Info-Tech, you will find out where you are, where you want to go, and how you will get there.

With our methodology, you can expect the following:

• Eliminate or reduce rework due to poor execution.
• Identify dependencies/prerequisites and ensure practices are deployed in the correct order, at the correct time, and by the right people.
• Engage all necessary resources to design and implement required processes.
• Assess current maturity and capabilities and design the roadmap with these factors in mind.

Doing it right the first time around

You will see these benefits at the end

✓ Increase the quality of services IT provides to the business.

✓ Increase business satisfaction through higher alignment of IT services.

✓ Lower cost to design, implement, and manage services.

✓ Better resource utilization, including staff, tools, and budget.

Focus on a strong foundation to build higher value service management practices

Info-Tech Insight

Focus on behaviors and expected outcomes before processes.

Foundational elements

• Operating model facilitates service management goals
• Culture of service delivery
• Governance discipline to evaluate, direct, and monitor
• Management discipline to deliver

Stabilize

• Deliver stable, reliable IT services to the business
• Respond to user requests quickly and efficiently
• Resolve user issues in a timely manner
• Deploy changes smoothly and successfully

Proactive

• Avoid/prevent service disruptions
• Improve quality of service (performance, availability, reliability)

Service Provider

• Understand business needs
• Ensure services are available
• Measure service performance, based on business-oriented metrics

Strategic Partner

• Fully aligned with business
• Drive innovation
• Drive measurable value

Info-Tech Insight

Continued leadership support of the foundational elements will allow delivery teams to provide value to the business. Set the expectation of the desired maturity level and allow teams to innovate.

Follow our model and get to your target state

Before moving to advanced service management practices, you must ensure that the foundational and core elements are robust enough to support them. Leadership must nurture these practices to ensure they are sustainable and can support higher value, more mature practices.

Each step along the way, Info-Tech has the tools to help you

Phase 1: Launch the Project

Assemble a team with the right talent and vision to increase the chances of project success.

Phase 2: Assess Current State

Understand where you are currently on the service management journey using the maturity assessment tool.

Phase 3: Build Roadmap

Based on the assessments, build a roadmap to address areas for improvement.

Phase 4: Build Communication slide

Based on the roadmap, define the current state, short- and long-term visions for each major improvement area.

Info-Tech Deliverables:

• Project Charter
• Assessment Tools
• Roadmap Template
• Communication Template

CIO call to action

Improving the maturity of the organization’s service management practice is a big commitment, and the project can only succeed with active support from senior leadership.

Ideally, the CIO should be the project sponsor, even the project leader. At a minimum, the CIO needs to perform the following activities:

1. Walk the talk – demonstrate personal commitment to the project and communicate the benefits of the service management journey to IT and the steering committee.

Improving or adopting any new practice is difficult, especially for a project of this size. Thus, the CIO needs to show visible support for this project through internal communication and dedicated resources to help complete this project.

2. Select a senior, capable, and results-driven project leader.

Most likely, the implementation of this project will be lengthy and technical in some nature. Therefore, the project leader must have a good understanding of the current IT structure, senior standing within the organization, and the relationship and power in place to propel people into action.

3. Help to define the target future state of IT’s service management.

Determine a realistic target state for the organization based on current capability and resource/budget restraints.

4. Conduct periodic follow-up meetings to keep track of progress.

Reinforce or re-emphasize the importance of this project to the organization through various communication channels if needed.

Stabilizing your environment is a must before establishing any more-mature processes

CASE STUDY

Industry: Manufacturing

Source: Engagement

Challenge

• The business landscape was rapidly changing for this manufacturer and they wanted to leverage potential cost savings from cloud-first initiatives and consolidate multiple, self-run service delivery teams that were geographically dispersed.

Solution

Original Plan

• Consolidate multiple service delivery teams worldwide and implement service portfolio management.

Revised Plan with Service Management Roadmap:

• Markets around the world had very different needs and there was little understanding of what customers value.
• There was also no understanding of what services were currently being offered within each geography.

Results

• Plan was adjusted to understand customer value and services offered.
• Services were then stabilized and standardized before consolidation.
• Team also focused on problem maturity and drove a continuous improvement culture and increasing transparency.

MORAL OF THE STORY:

Understanding the value of each service allowed the organization to focus effort on high-return activities rather than continuous fire fighting.

Understand the processes involved in the proactive phase

CASE STUDY

Industry: Manufacturing

Source: Engagement

Challenge

• Services were fairly stable, but there were significant recurring issues for certain services.
• The business was not satisfied with the service quality for certain services, due to periodic availability and reliability issues.
• Customer feedback for the service desk was generally good.

Solution

Original Plan

• Review all service desk and incident management processes to ensure that service issues were handled in an effective manner.

Revised Plan with Service Management Roadmap:

• Design and deploy a rigorous problem management process to determine the root cause of recurring issues.
• Monitor key services for events that may lead to a service outage.

Results

• Root cause of recurring issues was determined and fixes were deployed to resolve the underlying cause of the issues.
• Service quality improved dramatically, resulting in high customer satisfaction.

MORAL OF THE STORY:

Make sure that you understand which processes need to be reviewed in order to determine the cause for service instability. Focusing on the proactive processes was the right answer for this company.

Have the right culture and structure in place before you become a service provider

CASE STUDY

Industry: Healthcare

Source:Journal of American Medical Informatics Association

Challenge

• The IT organization wanted to build a service catalog to demonstrate the value of IT to the business.
• IT was organized in technology silos and focused on applications, not business services.
• IT services were not aligned with business activities.
• Relationships with the business were not well established.

Solution

Original Plan

• Create and publish a service catalog.

Revised Plan: with Service Management Roadmap:

• Establish relationships with key stakeholders in the business units.
• Understand how business activities interface with IT services.
• Lay the groundwork for the service catalog by defining services from the business perspective.

Results

• Strong relationships with the business units.
• Deep understanding of how business activities map to IT services.
• Service definitions that reflect how the business uses IT services.

MORAL OF THE STORY:

Before you build and publish a service catalog, make sure that you understand how the business is using the IT services that you provide.

Calculate the benefits of using Info-Tech’s methodology

To measure the value of developing your roadmap using the Info-Tech tools and methodology, you must calculate the effort saved by not having to develop the methods.

A. How much time will it take to develop an industry-best roadmap using Info-Tech methodology and tools?

Using Info-Tech’s tools and methodology you can accurately estimate the effort to develop a roadmap using industry-leading research into best practice.

B. What would be the effort to develop the insight, assess your team, and develop the roadmap?

This metric represents the time your team would take to be able to effectively assess themselves and develop a roadmap that will lead to service management excellence.

C. Cost & time saving through Info-Tech’s methodology

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 keeps 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 are used throughout all four options.

Create a Service Management Roadmap – project overview

Workshop overview

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