Creating an IT Strategy - Management by Maxim

I have heard that 90% of all businesses do not have a written Business Strategy.  Its in their heads - but as an Enterprise Architect how do you extract it so that you can create a viable IT Strategy?  Often times CxOs don't have time to have a strategic dialogue.  One way to solve this problem is to employ the "Maxim Process"

The Maxim Process is described by Broadbent and Kitzis as a pragmatic way to extract enough information for a good enough IT strategy while not investing more than a day’s workshop with senior management. The CIO will organize a workshop with CxOs, which will lead to documenting 2 kinds of so-­‐called Maxims:

  • Business Maxims
  • And as a result IT Maxims

Maxims are a few concise principles that are used to document the strategic direction of an enterprise. A Maxim workshop will usually not produce more than around 5 business maxims. For each of those, management will derive 4-­‐5 maxims for the IT function that will help to support them.

Maxim

A typical Maxim Workshop will be split up into two parts:

  • Part 1: Finding the Business Maxims,
  • Part 2: Deriving the IT Maxims

An external facilitator should moderate the workshop day and process.

To give examples imagine an old economy financial service provider like a big insurance company that runs more than one brand name on the market. For such an enterprise you could find the following business maxim:

  • Create synergies in back office and service functions wherever brand identity is not compromised

IT maxims that could be deducted from such a business strategy could be:

  • Define standard architectures and platforms used by all of the group’s companies in order to leverage synergies and to reduce IT cost
  • Harmonize the IT application systems for the group’s companies wherever there is a business case for this.

 

SOURCE: TOGAF9 QuickStart Guide 2009

Allen Bonde's 10 Steps to a Practical Social Media Business Strategy

1. Create a mission statement -- What are your top-level objectives for applying social media and Web 2.0? And how will you achieve them? Ideally, this can be boiled down to one statement, articulating both the vision and where you aim to focus in terms of specific strategies. Don’t skip – or skimp on – this one; it’s important.

2. Assign owners – Who will take the mission, build the team, secure the budget, identify the tools needed? And who will own each channel, like LinkedIn, Twitter, your blog, etc., as you scale up the program? In about half of the organizations we have looked at, marketing owns social media, but this is mostly because early social business tended to focus on marketing or online commerce first.

3. Outline employee policies -- Do you have a corporate social media handbook, with policies, style guides and guidance for employees looking to participate (on behalf of the company) in public forums and social sites? And as you roll out new social business tools, beyond creating awareness – see below – how will you encourage new behaviors and even innovative uses for these social tools?

4. Identify existing communities -- Where are discussions taking place now? For consumer products, they may take place on Amazon or Facebook, while business topics may originate on LinkedIn or internal forums. But it’s also likely that most discussions will span multiple social (and traditional) channels and involve both user-generated and enterprise content. Your social business strategy will need to address all of these!

5. Create a marketing plan -- How will you promote and roll out your new (or existing) social capabilities? Will word-of-mouth marketing be sufficient? Also, a training plan, incentives and recognition programs for frequent posters to communities and moderators will be needed.

6. Develop individual channel strategies -- Depending on which channels best fit the goals of your social business strategy, it’s important to look at the “role” and “tone” of each, think about cross-links (e.g., Facebook promotion back to your corporate blog) and leverage monitoring and benchmarking tools for tracking discussions, sentiment and your current “influence.” For example, Twitter Grader is a good way to see how you stack up in the world of Twitter.

7. Develop community strategies and programs – How will you support existing communities via new social business tools and encourage the widest number of users to share, publish and comment on information, whether it exists inside or outside the enterprise? In addition, what is needed to measure reputation and enable a trust model that scales across all communities?

8. Develop your platform strategy -- As companies look to integrate social channels with core business processes, a growing number are turning to social business software (SBS) platforms like those from Jive, OutStart or RightNow via its HiveLive acquisition. In evaluating these options, it is important to outline enterprise requirements (built-in expertise location, mobile access, etc.) and dependencies to help you scale from individual communities to enterprise collaboration and social networking.

9. Create a social business dashboard -- What metrics will you use to show the ROI for your programs? In the customer service arena, reduced costs from avoided calls or email and higher customer satisfaction are two proven measures to start with. For enterprise use of Web 2.0 in other areas, improved information sharing and lower communication costs are additional benefits that could be measured and tracked.

10. Publish an action plan -- What tactics are needed to fulfill your social business vision over the next 12 to 18 months? Typically, these plans start with management activities (steps 1, 2, 3 and 9), marketing-oriented tasks (steps 4, 5 and 6), content and community development (steps 4 and 7) and technology rollout (steps 7 and 8). Ideally, for each tactic, you want to articulate specific skills needed, timeframes and dependencies, and field trials to test assumptions and readiness for proceeding with subsequent phases.

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