Be Prepared: Elements of an IT Roadmap

Sometimes navigating an IT map can be quite a bit like being a scout earning your wilderness survival merit badge - it feels like you are in the woods, not much of a map or path to use as a guide but maybe with a compass and your will you can survive.  It's better to have the right tools and the right knowledge so you can lead yourself out of the wilderness and onto a clear path.  To help you, this is an orienteering guide to IT road-mapping and will help you on your way to earning a merit badge.  Better yet, this will help you live the Scout motto: Be Prepared!

First of all, managing an IT infrastructure is not something to go about haphazardly.  It is easy to get into a situation where you spend more than what was planned, but still don't get what you want.  These gaps in your infrastructure, whether it is application or network or process, may also leave you vulnerable to security risks, loss of revenue, or worse.

So, you need a plan.  In order to create a plan, you must understand the IT infrastructure must be able to support and enable.  Once this is understood, decisions of how flexible and adaptable this needs to be is another step.  Then the question of whether to manage this in house or with suppliers such as managed service providers or development houses becomes the next topic.  And then timelines vs. spend on how to get there.

This process is what I call IT road-mapping.  It can get complicated and take quite a bit of time.  It also can be easy to go about this process the wring way and end up quickly going down the wrong path jeopardizing the company whether by losing customers and revenue, creating security risks, or spending way more than expected.  This is not a process to speed along quickly just to get it done or to do in a vacuum.

Enough about what not to do.  This is about the key things you should do!

In order to take us through the key elements critical for achieving the goals of the IT road mapping process in a smooth manner, we'll use the Scout Law as a guide.

Scout Law: A scout is…

TRUSTWORTHY. Tell the truth and keep promises. People can depend on you.

LOYAL. Show that you care about your family, friends, Scout leaders, school, and country.

HELPFUL. Volunteer to help others without expecting a reward.
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Company goals, honest evaluation, better for employees - scalable, retention.  Much of the evaluation process is looking at people, processes, and systems.  Tracing how the business operates with pain points, critical advantages over competition, and process measurement are the key elements.

Loyalty, helpfulness, and trustworthiness describe a good company culture, so the first element is to have focus on the company goals.

To have a good road mapping process, there needs to be an endpoint in mind.  Don't just wander about in the woods, but set the goal of aligning business processes, spend, functionality, and security to the specific overall company goals. 

What are the key automation, communication, process enablement, or data analysis requirements for your company?  Do these set apart the company from competition, or do they streamline processes or increase quality?  If you can't describe the main benefits to some part of the IT infrastructure, then how is the spend justified?  It is better to get rid of it due to licensing, labor and support, development, network, and security burdens.

Preparing the IT roadmap, and answering these types of questions together as an organization is incredibly beneficial to getting everyone onto the same page with a singular vision.  As you get down the road of deciding which applications or functions are vital versus lower priority items, discussions weighing the options between cost and timing get vetted for crucial changes in company direction, and therefore prepare organizations in the company for when changes can be enabled with the new applications or features.

After the first iteration of creating an IT roadmap, it is important to regularly revisit is to ensure timelines are being met with the anticipated functions within the right spend (trustworthiness), but also to see where changes to the roadmap are needed due to changes in the direction of the business, market, or customers.

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FRIENDLY. Be a friend to everyone, even people who are very different from you.

COURTEOUS. Be polite to everyone and always use good manners.

KIND. Treat others as you want to be treated . Never harm or kill any living thing without good reason.
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Speaking of customers, the IT road-mapping process is most successful when focused on the customers.  After all, without the revenue, how can you spend anything?

Researching ways to attract more customers or to increase retention and repeat business are a couple of areas where newer technology is an important consideration.  Anything new has a risk, so there needs to be quite a bit of study and learning what other industries are doing, what new features and packaged software is available, and where customers are aiming.  It is critical to get this last element into your plan - the customer must be happy with the path your IT roadmap is heading down so you can join together with a journey out of the woods onto a successful trail.  After all, an exceptional customer experience will keep the relationship going.

The other areas of the business cannot be ignored.  Improvements which impact cost, delivery, or quality must also be weighed with how to spend time and resources as these directly affect the customer as well.  Reducing risk and addressing security is a must, just like quality - both of these can end up sinking a company quickly, and the threat of ransomware, viruses, cyber attacks, glitches which require you to restore from a backup are all real and impactful problems, so protection is a requirement.

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OBEDIENT. Follow the rules of your family, school, and pack. Obey the laws of your community and country.

CHEERFUL. Look for the bright side of life. Cheerfully do tasks that come your way. Try to help others be happy.

THRIFTY. Work to pay your own way. Try not to be wasteful. Use time, food, supplies, and natural resources wisely.
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Obedient points to the company goals and requirements.  Thrifty is controlling the spend with an honest examination of what is needed versus not.  However, it is easy to try to justify custom built systems or applications due to the ownership people feel when they have created something.  It is hard to let go of that feeling and look at the landscape objectively.  However, it is the right thing to do when it comes to creating an IT roadmap.

If custom applications provide a competitive advantage instead of off the shelf systems, then that is a discussion of the impact of the advantage compared to the cost of supporting and enhancing that customization. 

If the off the shelf system is discussed and customizations are "required" to match the way your business operates, then have a good look at those business processes.  Keep in mind that these software companies have worked with many of their customers to create these applications, and the processes used in many places are performed without customizations to their systems

Great care needs to be taken in selecting the correct system as well.  There are many different software packages out there, so finding one that aligns to your business is vital to limit spend and maximize the effectiveness of the software.  Some business process re-engineering should be performed with any new application in order to get the most out of automations as well.

Also, you can have a great cloud presence and experience without always going to Azure, AWS, or Google.  There are other options, but the above considerations must be compared against the cost of these different solutions - the performance, security, talent and skills, benefits, etc., must all be part of the roadmap.

So just as roadmaps have twists and turns and new adventures all of the time, it is best to focus on the new opportunities cheerfully, be glad of experience with the systems or customizations in the past, but be objective when it comes to determining the right solution for the company.

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BRAVE. Face difficult situations even when you feel afraid. Do what you think is right despite what others might be doing or saying.

CLEAN. Keep your body and mind fit . Help keep your home and community clean.

REVERENT. Be reverent toward God. Be faithful in your religious duties. Respect the beliefs of others.
…

Bravery: Be bold with decisions, but not reckless.  This goes for selecting systems, but also applies to making changes with an organization.  Converting to an outsourcing model such as with a managed service provider may provide opportunities for staff members to become vendor managers or to fill another role.  Be brave to make the changes needed in order to have the right staff - it is better for everyone in the long run for people to be in jobs that are needed where they have the right talent and skills. 

Make sure you keep a clean environment - secure and organized.  Monitoring is a must, keeping on top of problems, risks, outages, backups, and threats will keep your landscape clean.  Getting rid of what is not needed, and freeing space, resources, and financial burdens will keep IT healthy.  Educating employees on how to handle security risks like phishing emails, and how to quickly contact IT when problems occur is critical.

IT road-mapping is a process which can bring out the passion in people.  Respect the opinions of others to keep the process on track.  My advice is to be flexible to changes in the business which affect the roadmap, and communicate with realistic options so beneficial decisions can be made.

Earning my wilderness survival merit badge was one of many great experiences in my journey to becoming an Eagle Scout.  It was a very rewarding experience where I learned many skills I've used throughout my life. 

Planning out an IT infrastructure and how to get there from a current state can also be a beneficial and rewarding experience if done correctly. Liberty Technology Advisors can guide this process, as well as provide interim CIO, IT strategy, business process re-engineering, and system selection services. As part of these services, we put you on the right path and also impart the skills with you to keep moving forward.

Last bits of advice:

• Security cannot be overstressed - have multiple layers of backups and a good disaster recovery plan.
• Reserve time, budget, and resources to work towards the IT roadmap goals or the investment will become larger as neglected technology ages and gets cripplingly outdated.
• Spread the expenses over time rather than trying to make huge leaps everywhere all at once.
• Have a plan. Revisit the plan. Test the plan. Execute the plan.

And always live the Scout motto - Be Prepared!