Building an IT Strategic Plan

Course Overview
(Music) Hi everybody. My name is Jason Edleman, and welcome to my course, Building an IT Strategic Plan. I'm an IT professional who has served in such varied roles from software engineer to vice president of IT. I've not only engineered solutions, but I have also ran teams of engineers, as well as set strategy and governance for Fortune 500 companies. Did you know that many people have great ideas, but it's those who can execute on them that makes the greatest impact. In this course, we're going to show how to build your own IT strategic plan through the lives of two fictional characters, Brad and Tiffany, as they navigate Turning Iris, the SaaS company they work for. Some of the major topics that we'll cover include building relationships and becoming a trusted advisor, learning how to assess the current state of the company and assessing priorities, how to develop your future state vision, how to build a roadmap to get there, and finally, how to communicate your vision and gain buy-in. By the end of this course, you will learn all the topics mentioned, plus you may learn a few other things along the way. Before beginning this course, you should be familiar with the basics of building relationships, emotional intelligence, IT operations, and business. I hope you'll join me on this journey to learn about the basics of building a plan, with How to Build an IT Strategic Plan course, at Pluralsight.

Knowing What Is Important and Why
We are going to take a trip on the maturity machine and fast forward to a place where Brad and Tiffany have successfully become trusted advisers within the organization. I can do this as an author, well, because I'm the author. Tiffany and Brad have both built strong relationships with the key VPs and C levels. Let's take a look at what they plan on tackling next. Tiffany and Brad will begin to focus on figuring out what is currently important to everyone, as well as understand some of the IT operational basics. Here's what they plan to achieve. Collecting up the requests that are sprinkled throughout the company, figuring out how to prioritize, getting agreement on what the organization calls important, sizing efforts and getting IT's view on the work, and understanding money and investment strategies. Let's see how Brad and Tiffany decide to move this ball forward, with the help of Sara, of course.

Transformational Strategy
When Brad and Tiffany started this journey, they had some great ideas around re-platforming Turning Iris's software. Then they realized in order to win hearts and minds, they needed to build relationships and trust. Next, they learned a lot about how Turning Iris IT was operating currently. With the coaching of Sara and others, Brad and Tiffany will be focused on the target state and strategic road mapping activities of the business context; how that business context or situation impacts IT in regards to people, process, technology, data, sourcing, location, and timing; defining the plan's scope; laying down the vision, mission, and guiding principles; identifying IT goals; define the initiatives and tie them to those IT goals; sequencing initiatives and building the roadmap; and what's it going to cost. Let's pick up where they last left off. "You've done some excellent work, " says Sara. "Thanks, but there's still so much more to go. Is there any chance we could do a trade? " Tiffany asks. "What are you thinking? " Sara replies. "If Brad and I could get an hour or two of your time, we would gladly take you out for dinner and drinks. Somewhere nice, I promise. " "I think I can swing that. When are you thinking? " Sara asks. "How about tonight? " Tiffany tosses back to Sara. "Sure, 7pm? You know the place I like, " says Sara. "I do. See you then. "

Delivering a Successful Message
Wow, Tiffany and Brad have come so far and have learned so much in such a short amount of time. They are feeling really good about themselves, their target state, and how their roadmap will help Turning Iris get there. What they must do now is get their strategy in front of everybody, so here's what they plan to do. With a little help from Sara, determine what should be communicated, begin communicating the strategy with key people, take feedback from those meetings and incorporate it back into the strategy as best as they can, and finally, help craft the message to the staff on the new direction.