CIO Guide:

Strategic Planning
and Prioritization
Establish strategic objectives and prioritize
action steps to achieve IT objectives

© 2020 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

1 CIO Guide: Strategic Planning and Prioritization

© 2020 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
 Developing IT strategic plans can take too much time and resources,
and still fail to generate direction that is clear, actionable, current
and relevant. To develop impactful IT strategic plans, CIOs must
turn to business strategy, design the strategic planning process, and
ultimately, they need to get started.

This guide will help you:

n Establish strategic objectives for IT
n Align IT initiatives with business goals
n Prioritize actionable steps to achieve IT objectives
n Build and document a strategic plan
n Communicate strategy to win support for execution

In Gartner’s 2017 CIO Survey, only 23%

of respondents rated their organization
as effective or very effective at business
strategy and planning. Only 29%
reported themselves as effective or very
effective at IT strategy and planning.

2 CIO Guide: Strategic Planning and Prioritization

© 2020 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
This comes down to three key challenges affecting CIOs. They are:
1
IT strategic plans focus on a midterm planning horizon, typically 12 to 18
months, and must be based on and reflect the organization’s strategic
direction. CIOs may find that the business strategy is not clear and
actionable, and does not convey the “why” and “what” to assure the
development of an aligned, enabling information and technology strategic
plan.
2
IT strategic plan development that is designed to be swift and focused
can stay in sync with fast-moving, changing business conditions. Without
a tight process, strategic plan development can lose focus, deviate from
scope, take too long to deliver and, as a result, diminish its currency and
relevance.
3
An IT strategic plan development exercise that starts with resources in
place, governance agreed, and stakeholders aware, aligned and available,
mitigates delivery risk. Lack of preparation creates a high-impact risk that
the process may fail to generate requisite advocacy, smoothly progress
as planned and accommodate inevitable but unforeseeable in-flight
discoveries or disruptions.
3 CIO Guide: Strategic Planning and Prioritization
© 2020 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
In order to create strategic business change with a
successful IT strategic plan, CIOs should turn to the
business strategy to deduce the “why” and “what.” If no
business strategy exists, they should discuss with their CxO
colleagues to get their best understanding of what the
strategy might be.
Clear and achievable plans should also be established for
the strategic plan development process. CIOs can use any
existing or previously used plan as the starting point, with
a prepare, assess and plan framework to scope, schedule
and design the process.
Finally, start the strategic plan development process
by organizing resources, establishing governance
structure, alerting and engaging key decision makers and
stakeholders, and communicating the plan.
Design the Strategic Plan Process Prepare
Establish a clear and achievable plan for the There are three key questions in the “prepare” phase for a CIO:

strategic plan development process. What role does the CIO have today, and what role
does the CIO want to have in the strategic planning
Getting Started
process? Driving the strategic planning process can
Prepare
be an excellent way to cement a leadership role at the
C-suite. Collaborating with a business colleague can be
Assess a great way to get access to the C-suite if the CIO does
not have a leadership role within it yet.
Plan
What is the right perspective for your business?
An inside-out perspective asks how the business can
Act
affect the customer, market, industry or ecosystem. An
outside-in perspective asks how the customer, market,
Measure
industry or ecosystem can provide guidance for the
business. The answer to this question clarifies who
Communicate needs to participate in the strategic planning process.

What is the current role of the business in the greater

ecosystem, and what might be the right role moving
forward?

Based on the answers to the questions in this phase, define who will
help develop and govern the strategic plan.

4 CIO Guide: Strategic Planning and Prioritization

© 2020 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Assess
Three key areas the CIO must assess in the getting started phase of
strategic planning are:
n What is the prior experience with strategic planning?
n Does your organization have the expertise to perform the business
and environment aspects of the strategic planning process? If
not, engage external consultants or individuals. Be diligent in seeking
people who fit with your organization and IT culture and agenda.
Plan
The “plan” phase of getting started pulls together the strategic planning
process. If CIOs are intersecting an existing business strategy process,
then integrate these planning steps into that business process. If one
does not exist, use these steps to get started:
n Define the process with timeline and decision-making milestones.
n Build into your plan the work it takes to get the answers to the
questions that were not known during the “assess” phase.

n Does your organization have a strategic planning process already
defined?
l If a planning process does exist and is active, integrate your
plans into the overall plan. This activity alone reinforces that
the information and technology strategy is part of the business
strategy.
n Schedule the project team and decision-making meetings on the
calendars, ensuring all the attendees are invited.
Now that the strategy development process is defined and decision-
making meetings are scheduled, CIOs can start the process.

l If a planning process exists but is not active, refresh the plan as
necessary to make sure it reflects the current environment and a
relevant time frame, and is sufficiently dynamic to address today’s
more dynamic environment.

l If a planning process does not exist, create the plan. Use the
recommendations in this note as guidance.

5 CIO Guide: Strategic Planning and Prioritization

© 2020 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Establish a Governance Structure, Engage Decision Makers
and Stakeholders, and Communicate the Plan
Organize and engage, book, and/or acquire your resources — budget,
team, location, travel and logistics, information, and tools. Get the
budget approved and funded as early as possible. Approve, or gain
approval for and make the stakeholders aware of, the costs upfront.
Allow contingency, but only a small one (e.g., plus 10%), so there is less
temptation to extend scope or time. Use the plan to estimate costs and
expenses covering:
n External and internal resources, including incidental time for
specialists
n Systems and tools for the team
n Team workspace(s) — ideally a dedicated, co-located area or room
n Meeting rooms and communication costs
n Costs of travel or research
Decide the strategic plan team structure, size and characteristics.
This will become a small, close-knit, cross-functional team. It should
include at least one or two senior business participants. It may present
a logistical problem for them to set aside their day jobs to dedicate time
and intellect for the duration.
Include a few people who have the potential to bring new ideas to the
table. The team requires diverse skills, experience and demographics.
The team should comprise people with intelligence, creativity, potential
and functional skills. Entrepreneurial as well as intrapreneurial attitudes
will help ensure the team looks ahead and outward as well as networks
within the organization.
6 CIO Guide: Strategic Planning and Prioritization
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Find the right team leader. This is often an external specialist, but
sometimes an internal strategy expert. It’s a person with deep
experience in developing information and technology strategic plans,
managing change, and stimulating innovation. Ideally, the leader will
have an intimate knowledge of your organization, environment or
market. The individual will have the intellect and capacity to learn quickly
and enhance the way the strategic plan development team works and
the desired result. The leader should be a bridge between the C-suite,
IT and the strategic plan development team, as well as a coach and
creative, curious thinker.
Arrange the appropriate workspace(s) and meeting rooms, including
any remote or off-site locations, for the duration of the exercise. Have
a coordinator make sure it is setup, equipped and ready to use as
soon as the first resource arrives to start work. A poor experience and
wasted time organizing logistics at the start sets the wrong tone and
may undermine morale and productivity. Pre-book travel and any other
requirements as much as possible to minimize delay and wasted effort
from the team. The team must immediately focus on strategy — not
“hygiene factors.” The human environment matters, and it’s a simple
tactic to send the right messages to the team. Letting them know that
their time and intellect are important and valued will lead to a better
outcome.
Deliver a short kick off and alignment session for the team as soon as
it forms. Team members need to quickly align on the strategic plan
development approach, principles, tasks and plan, and the team’s own
values. Form the team as early as possible.
 Establish Governance and Engage
Stakeholders
Establish the governance structure, forming governance, review
and decision-making teams. Engage key decision makers and
stakeholders. Name the lead stakeholder, or sponsor. Ideally, that
person will be a member of the senior leadership team. This person is
accountable for the value that is generated by the initiative and has a
stake in the outcome. If there is already an IT steering committee or
an IT portfolio investment committee, the leader of this committee
could be the sponsor.

Set and communicate the schedule and ground rules for the sponsor,
CxO and senior contributors who need to commit time to this
process. Participation is neither optional nor should it be delegated.
Participation is how the strategic plan becomes real and change
starts. This is a “go/no-go” requirement. If the sponsor or senior
stakeholders do not turn up for more than one consecutive meeting,
we recommend you halt the exercise and raise the initiative’s risk
profile, unless and until this issue is resolved. Worst-case scenario, this
requires a replacement with equivalent status, knowledge and ability
to make the time commitment.

Run a governance kickoff meeting where the intent, plan, schedule

and operating principles are communicated and agreed on by all the
people involved in governance teams for this exercise. This could be
the first meeting, giving them the opportunity to share feedback and
start owning the process and eventual outcome.

7 CIO Guide: Strategic Planning and Prioritization

© 2020 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Communicate
Communicate as openly as possible, widely across the organization,
before, during and after the exercise. Like any initiative, there is value
in transparency. Report progress and outcomes along the way to
influencers and decision makers.
The spread of well-designed communication and tactics should increase
the delivered value of the strategy. The two-way flow of information,
sending messages and receiving feedback during the process, could
mitigate the risk of blind spots for the strategic plan development team.
Design and follow a regular cadence of managed communication.
Decide how to most widely engage the organization to garner maximum
support and share what you learn. Through announcements at events
and gatherings, posters in the workplace, digital channels, and/or
symbolic gestures such as giving away small branded artifacts, you can
make this activity visible and garner interest.
Decide how and when to communicate with the board, executive team,
project management office (PMO), governance, audit/risk, finance/
investment and program steering committees. They may be interested
in the evolving IT strategy and curious to understand how the CIO is
operating and leading change. External stakeholders also should be part
of the communication plan.
Encourage people from all areas and levels of the organization to
volunteer new information, ideas and perspectives on internal and
external situations. These incidental and sometimes contrary or
unexpected inputs will help ensure the strategy is fresh, well-informed,
current and relevant. Well-communicated messages during and after the
process should build trust in the process through high transparency, and
support for and acceptance of the delivered strategy when it proceeds
to execution.

8 CIO Guide: Strategic Planning and Prioritization

© 2020 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
 Kickoff
Kick off with an IT strategic plan kickoff workshop. The initial event
in the planned exercise should be a tightly orchestrated workshop
designed to:
n Create consensus that IT has accurately deduced and/or
understands the business strategy.
n Examine the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats in
the current business and information and technology environment.
n Explore the architecture, operating mode, people, governance,
sourcing and culture opportunities.

Business strategy development serves the critical function of

providing direction to the organization on what the business needs to
do and why the business needs to do it. Once the business strategy
is defined, the strategic plan process requires dialogue across the
business that is as valuable as the plan document itself. An effective
strategic plan development process ensures the dialogue and
artifacts are worth the time.

If business leaders do not initiate strategic planning, CIOs

should take the opportunity and initiate the planning exercise
themselves.

Get started on strategic plan development

and discover business strategy tools and
techniques at Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo
2020, to turn complexity and chaos into real
strategy execution initiatives.

9 CIO Guide: Strategic Planning and Prioritization

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10 CIO Guide: Strategic Planning and Prioritization

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11 CIO Guide: Strategic Planning and Prioritization

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