- As an application leader, you are expected to quickly familiarize yourself with the current state of your applications environment.
- You need to continuously demonstrate effective leadership to your applications team while defining and delivering a strategy for your applications department that will be accepted by stakeholders.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
- The applications department can be viewed as the face of IT. The business often portrays the value of IT through the applications and services they provide and support. IT success can be dominantly driven by the application team’s performance.
- Conflicting perceptions lead to missed opportunities. Being transparent on how well applications are supporting stakeholders from both business and technical perspectives is critical. This attribute helps validate that technical initiatives are addressing the right business problems or exploiting new value opportunities.
Impact and Result
- Get to know what needs to be changed quickly. Use Info-Tech’s advice and tools to perform an assessment of your department’s accountabilities and harvest stakeholder input to ensure that your applications operating model and portfolio meets or exceeds expectations and establishes the right solutions to the right problems.
- Solidify the applications long-term strategy. Adopt best practices to ensure that you are striving towards the right goals and objectives. Not only do you need to clarify both team and stakeholder expectations, but you will ultimately need buy-in from them as you improve the operating model, applications portfolio, governance, and tactical plans. These items will be needed to develop your strategic model and long-term success.
- Develop an action plan to show movement for improvements. Hit the ground running with an action plan to achieve realistic goals and milestones within an acceptable timeframe. An expectations-driven roadmap will help establish the critical structures that will continue to feed and grow your applications department.
Lay the Strategic Foundations of Your Applications Team Research & Tools
Start here – read the Executive Brief
Read our concise Executive Brief to find out why you should develop an applications strategy, review Info-Tech’s methodology, and understand the four ways we can support you in completing this project.Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:
- Lay the Strategic Foundations of Your Applications Team – Phases 1-3
1. Get to know your team
Understand your applications team.
- Lay the Strategic Foundations of Your Applications Team – Phase 1: Get to Know Your Team
- Applications Strategy Template
- Applications Diagnostic Tool
2. Get to know your stakeholders
Understand your stakeholders.
- Lay the Strategic Foundations of Your Applications Team – Phase 2: Get to Know Your Stakeholders
3. Develop your applications strategy
Design and plan your applications strategy.
- Lay the Strategic Foundations of Your Applications Team – Phase 3: Develop Your Applications Strategy
Workshop: Lay the Strategic Foundations of Your Applications Team
Workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.
1 Get to Know Your Team
The Purpose
Understand the expectations, structure, and dynamics of your applications team.
Review your team’s current capacity.
Gauge the team’s effectiveness to execute their operating model.
Key Benefits Achieved
Clear understanding of the current responsibilities and accountabilities of your teams.
Identification of improvement opportunities based on your team’s performance.
Activities
1.1 Define your team’s role and responsibilities.
1.2 Understand your team’s application and project portfolios.
1.3 Understand your team’s values and expectations.
1.4 Gauge your team’s ability to execute your operating model.
Outputs
Current team structure, RACI chart, and operating model
Application portfolios currently managed by applications team and projects currently committed to
List of current guiding principles and team expectations
Team effectiveness of current operating model
2 Get to Know Your Stakeholders
The Purpose
Understand the expectations of stakeholders.
Review the services stakeholders consume to support their applications.
Gauge stakeholder satisfaction of the services and applications your team provides and supports.
Key Benefits Achieved
Grounded understanding of the drivers and motivators of stakeholders that teams should accommodate.
Identification of improvement opportunities that will increase the value your team delivers to stakeholders.
Activities
2.1 Understand your stakeholders and applications services.
2.2 Define stakeholder expectations.
2.3 Gauge stakeholder satisfaction of applications services and portfolio.
Outputs
Expectations stakeholders have on the applications team and the applications services they use
List of applications expectations
Stakeholder satisfaction of current operating model
3 Develop Your Applications Strategy
The Purpose
Align and consolidate a single set of applications expectations.
Develop key initiatives to alleviate current pain points and exploit existing opportunities to deliver new value.
Create an achievable roadmap that is aligned to organizational priorities and accommodate existing constraints.
Key Benefits Achieved
Applications team and stakeholders are aligned on the core focus of the applications department.
Initiatives to address the high priority issues and opportunities.
Activities
3.1 Define your applications expectations.
3.2 Investigate your diagnostic results.
3.3 Envision your future state.
3.4 Create a tactical plan to achieve your future state.
3.5 Finalize your applications strategy.
Outputs
List of applications expectations that accommodates the team and stakeholder needs
Root causes to issues and opportunities revealed in team and stakeholder assessments
Future-state applications portfolio, operating model, supporting people, process, and technologies, and applications strategic model
Roadmap that lays out initiatives to achieve the future state
Completed applications strategy