Improve IT Business Alignment With An Infrastructure Roadmap

Info-Tech Research Group 1Info-Tech Research Group 1
Info-Tech Research Group, Inc. is a global leader in providing IT research and advice.
Info-Tech’s products and services combine actionable insight and relevant advice with
ready-to-use tools and templates that cover the full spectrum of IT concerns.
© 1997-2016 Info-Tech Research Group Inc.
Improve IT-Business Alignment with an
Infrastructure Roadmap
Let the roadmap be your Rosetta Stone.
Info-Tech's products and services combine actionable insight and relevant advice with ready-to-use tools
and templates that cover the full spectrum of IT concerns.© 1997 - 2016 Info-Tech Research Group

IT departments are failing and may not even realize it. Their failure is not in the
daunting task of keeping core services up and running, but in demonstrating an
understanding of business needs and requirements. An infrastructure roadmap
corrects this problem of perception and clearly communicates how IT enables the
business and prepares it for the future.
Business stakeholders look elsewhere for IT services. Is this fair? No – well, maybe.
But the business has to be accountable for its previous actions. Being informed by the
past enables better decision making in the future. In a rapidly changing technical
and business environment it is equally unfair for IT to appear rigid and backward-
facing. Stability must be balanced with agility.
Infrastructure must reach out and engage with the stakeholders to logically
coordinate activity and timing. More important though is their responsibility to
contextualize all activities, past, present, and future, directly linking them to the
goals of the business and explicitly demonstrating their value.
An infrastructure roadmap is an essential planning activity and communications
tool. A forward-looking roadmap provides the what, why, how, and when of IT
plans. No action in infrastructure, from adopting a new technology to refreshing or
maintaining a current technology, can be in isolation.
John Annand,
Senior Manager, Infrastructure
Info-Tech Research Group
IT is failing and business stakeholders are looking elsewhere.
ANALYST PERSPECTIVE

This Research is Designed For: This Research Will Help You:
This Research Will Assist: This Research Will Help You:
This Research Is Designed For: This Research Will Help You:
This Research Will Also Assist: This Research Will Help Them:
Our understanding of the problem
Infrastructure Directors
CIOs
Operations Manager or VP
Departmental Managers or VPs
Create a shared understanding of the value
infrastructure delivers to the business.
Establish priorities for Infrastructure initiatives.
Demonstrate how IT investments support
business goals.
Deliver value from emerging technologies
successfully and at the right time.
Server, Network, and Storage Managers
Project Managers
End-User Compute and Device Managers
Integrate planning and hardware replacement
cycles with overall business goals.
Suggest projects or initiatives to enable
business goals.
Allocate resources correctly for the timely
delivery of milestone events on the roadmap.

Resolution
Situation
Complication
Info-Tech Insight
Executive summary
• Business executives have a perception that by focusing on maximizing
infrastructure reliability, availability, and serviceability (RAS), IT is
ignoring contextual business goals.
• Communication between infrastructure management and executives is
inadequate and unpersuasive.
• Data required to manage capacity and evaluate risk is of poor quality.
• Sub-optimal investment in technology results in corporate infrastructure
lacking the capacity and agility of third-party providers.
• Business units bypass corporate IT and the associated governance and
control, for their technology needs
• Infrastructure practices are dismissed as cost centers at best, inhibitors
at worst, and are not embraced as business enablers.
• Open a channel to communicate stakeholder goals directly to the infrastructure practice and infrastructure capabilities to
the business stakeholder.
• Develop a methodology for project creation and prioritization that reflects current business goals.
• Design a tool that can produce output meaningful to various audiences using the same data set.
• Make data-driven decisions regarding asset refresh and maintenance, and evaluate their impact on the roadmap initiatives.
• Maintain the roadmap as an iterative document capable of adjusting to changes according to a standard procedure.
1. Think of the roadmap as a service, not
a product. Its value is inversely
proportional to the time since its last
update.
2. In recognizing technical debt, the
roadmap addresses the legacy of past
decisions.
3. As a broker of services, Infrastructure
must evaluate new technologies and
trends for business relevance,
acceptable risk, and appropriate fit.
4. Shadow IT can provide business-ready
initiatives that need only to be tweaked
to align with Infrastructure’s internal
goals.

Infrastructure directors and their departments are failing to
meet business stakeholder needs
Seventy percent of business stakeholders “somewhat
consistently” look externally to purchase IT services.
46.0%
60.0%
62.0%
54.0%
40.0%
38.0%
0.0%
10.0%
20.0%
30.0%
40.0%
50.0%
60.0%
70.0%
Overall Satisfaction
With IT Core Services
IT's Ability to Deliver
Solutions That Meet
Business Needs
IT's Understanding of
Business Needs and
Requirements
Business Stakeholders’ Satisfaction With IT
Dissatisfied Satisfied
Source: Info-Tech CIO Business Vision Diagnostic; N=2,369
According to Info-Tech’s
Business Vision survey:
• Only 53.8% of business
leaders are satisfied with IT
core services.
• Less than 40% are satisfied
with IT’s ability to deliver
solutions that satisfy business
capability needs.
Some of these findings can be
attributed to the CIO’s inability
to:
• Effectively manage
stakeholder relationships.
• Understand the capability
needs of business partners.
• Enable innovation to help
business stakeholders
capitalize on technology
opportunities.

Situation Result Insight
• NASA develops technology
across 15 distinct areas,
representing the efforts of its
18,000 staff and nearly
250,000 external workers.1
• Technologies developed had
the potential to overlap; while
they delivered value, they did
not necessarily contribute to
the core NASA mission.2
• During a visit in 2010, the
President instructed NASA to
align its technology portfolio to
its mission.3
• The goals were to reduce
costs and duplication, and
increase efficiency and
effectiveness.4
• The Office of the Chief
Technologist (OCT) provides
agency-wide technology
coordination to align
investments, fill gaps to meet
mission requirements,
anticipate future needs, and
minimize duplication of effort.5
• NASA’s 2010 roadmaps listed
140 challenges and 320
technology candidates.6
• The 2015 iteration added 44
technology areas, was 2,100
pages in length, and had 340
authors. It is fed by a real-time
database that tracks investment
and project status, and
responds to changing priorities.7
NASA focuses its efforts in response to President
Obama’s challenge
CASE STUDY
• Roadmaps require
considerable effort to produce
and executive support in order
to be successful.
• An initiative may have value,
but does not necessarily align
to the business goals.
• Different departments can
have similar needs and a
roadmap easily identifies
duplication of efforts.
• Stakeholders want to see that
all possibilities have been
considered and the roadmap
can serve that purpose.
Part 1/4
Source: nasa.gov
See endnotes

Ante up in order to stay in the game; keeping the lights on is
just table stakes
Innovator – Transforms the Business
Reliable Technology Innovation
Business Partner – Expands the Business
Effective Execution on Business Projects, Strategic
Use of Analytics and Customer Technology
Trusted Operator – Optimizes the Business
Effective Fulfillment of Work Orders, Functional
Business Applications, and Reliable Data Quality
Firefighter – Supports the Business
Reliable Infrastructure and IT Service Desk
Unstable – Struggles to Support
Inability to Provide Reliable Business Services
Transform your infrastructure practice from a firefighter
to a business partner or an innovator.
Mitigating risk is no longer sufficient, all departments are under increasing
pressure to deliver more and more direct value to the business
Ask not what your business has done for IT infrastructure lately, ask what IT
infrastructure is doing to enable your business for tomorrow!

Spend time developing relationships and see pay-off in
improved satisfaction across all IT services
Relationships are 24% stronger
among Innovators than Operators.
Operators score a 71% average in
relationship satisfaction.
Relationships are 22% weaker among
Firefighters than Operators.
OverallsatisfactionwithIT
Perceived Value of IT
Firefighters Operators Innovators
Info-Tech Insight
The most successful relationships have a
common vocabulary.
A proper infrastructure roadmap translates IT
activities into the language of business
strategy, goals, and initiatives.
Source: Info-Tech Benchmarking and Diagnostic
Programs; N=21,367
Communication is paramount. You have to put in the work and the time to
hear what the business is saying in order to deliver and meet its expectations.
– John Hansknecht, Director of Technology
University of Detroit Jesuit High School & Academy

0
As organizations grow in size and complexity so should the number of participants and stakeholders involved in
these activities. IT leaders must formalize the infrastructure roadmap to ensure mutual understanding and support
of next steps.
Contextualize goals and actions for all business units with the
connective tissue of an infrastructure roadmap
These processes vary widely but are broadly
represented here by:
1. Strategy to enable objectives.
2. Asset management to control the lifecycle of
the asset portfolio.
3. Project management to allocate resources
& deliver projects on time and budget.
4. Architecture or enterprise planning.
A roadmap connects the dots to show how
various decisions and investments relate to
each other.
A roadmap is the overlay that keeps planning
processes unified while maintaining flexibility.
Strategy
Asset
Management
Project
Management
Architecture
Infrastructure
Roadmap
“Our roadmap” often refers to an implied understanding of direction. Explicit
understanding of destination allows steps to emerge from a combination of core
planning processes.

Actively manage the perception of competing business and
infrastructure demands
Business has objectives of growth, change, and
continuous improvement. A roadmap will fail to
serve its purpose if not designed for agility.
Stability alone is NOT a sufficient purpose
of IT infrastructure.
IT is increasingly expected to be more responsive
and agile. This increases the need for reliability,
availability, and stability.
Infrastructure managers are fundamentally
responsible for ensuring stability.
Agility Stability
IT leaders are being forced to think more like product
developers: defining the future rather than simply accepting it.
• Technology-enabled business models are emerging in
industries where IT was previously a back-office function.
• Disruptive technologies are emerging from more
directions.
Roadmaps are simple, adaptable,
‘strategic lenses’ through which the
evolution of complex systems can be
viewed, [and which support]
dialogue and communication.
The roadmap is a fulcrum that strikes a balance between expected stability
and required agility.
Source: Robert Phaal and David Probert,
“Technology Roadmapping”

Plot a path early on that gives real meaning for future and
near-future initiatives
Manage the lifecycle of aging equipment in order to meet capacity demands.
Initiate a schedule of infrastructure projects required to achieve business goals.
Communicate to the executive how Infrastructure is supporting enterprise objectives.
Realign IT resources quickly when faced with disruption.
The short-term (1 year) roadmap
is definite. Your destination is
precise and you know the steps
along the way.
The medium-term (3 years)
roadmap is semi-solid. Your
destination is more of a region
plus or minus a few stops.
The long-term (3-5+ years)
roadmap is fluid. Goals must be
foundational in order to withstand
the uncertainty of the long term.
Info-Tech Insight
The roadmap is a service, not a product.
You update your GPS in real time, why not your roadmap? A series of three
medium-term roadmaps is more valuable than a single exercise every five
years. The best roadmap is an iterative process rather than specific document.
1
2
3
4

Info-Tech Research Group ‹#›
Info-Tech Research Group Helps IT Professionals To:
 Quickly get up to speed
with new technologies
 Make the right technology
purchasing decisions – fast
 Deliver critical IT
projects, on time and
within budget
 Manage business expectations
 Justify IT spending and
prove the value of IT
 Train IT staff and effectively
manage an IT department

Improve IT Business Alignment With An Infrastructure Roadmap

Empfohlen

Empfohlen

Weitere ähnliche Inhalte

Was ist angesagt?

Was ist angesagt? (20)

Ähnlich wie Improve IT Business Alignment With An Infrastructure Roadmap

Ähnlich wie Improve IT Business Alignment With An Infrastructure Roadmap (20)

Mehr von Info-Tech Research Group

Mehr von Info-Tech Research Group (20)

Kürzlich hochgeladen

Kürzlich hochgeladen (20)

Improve IT Business Alignment With An Infrastructure Roadmap