Agile IT Strategy Achieves Major Objectives Every 3 – 9 Months

The notion of agility is getting a lot of attention these days and agility is clearly an effective short term tactic for iteratively building application systems. But the question arises as to just what agility means in the context of longer term IT strategy.

 

How do we apply agility to achieving business goals that go beyond the creation of a single application system? In a recent post, "A Process for Strategic Agility [Instead of Strategic Planning]", I put forth the idea of using John Boyd’s OODA Loop (Observe – Orient – Decide – Act) as a model for strategic IT agility. In that post I proposed the idea that the Act phase needs to be segmented into of a series of actions that move a company toward its goal by achieving major objectives (I’ll call them “interim destinations”) every three to nine months. In this post I’ll talk about how work can be structured in those three to nine month Act phases so as to deliver what is needed in the time available.

 

 

It’s critical to structure work so as to reach these interim destinations every 3 – 9 months because if it takes longer then there is significant risk that unforeseen changes will make the work (and the strategy it supports) irrelevant. As interim destinations are reached companies can make strategic course corrections, and these course corrections work best when they can leverage new capabilities provided by the systems developed during that time.

 

[ I do lively presentations on this and related topics - mhugos@yahoo.com ] 

 

Define It, Design It and Build It

 

Since agility (both short term tactical and longer term strategic agility) is more about doing simple things well than doing complex things fast, I use a simple three step process when I want to act in an agile manner. No matter what you are trying to do, there are always only three things you ever need to do to get something done. First you must define what it is you are going to do; then you must design how you are going to do it; and lastly, you must do it – build it. So I call my three step process “Define – Design – Build”.

 

These steps are illustrated in the diagram below. It shows the people who participate in each step and the deliverables created in each step. When people follow this process they produce consistently competent results (and when I’ve been tempted into taking shortcuts and skipping some of these deliverables I’ve paid the price). So I structure the Act phase of the strategic agility process using these three steps.

Each of the deliverables in these three steps is well understood in the IT profession. None of this is new. Because these deliverables are well understood, it is possible to keep the work (relatively) simple, and thus it is possible to get things done quickly and competently. The power of this approach lies in its simplicity.

 

The diagram below shows how I applied the Define – Design – Build sequence to act in a strategic manner. A company where I was CIO identified business goals that required significant IT support and they needed to accomplish their goals in about two years or risk being left behind by changing business conditions. I structured the work on each project into define, design and build steps and ran the projects in parallel so that as they were completed, the resulting systems combined to provide the functionality the company needed to reach its interim destinations. Once an interim destination was reached, we assessed the situation and built upon those capabilities to reach the next interim destination on our way to accomplishing the company’s two year business goals.

 

 

We identified three major new systems: NetLink was the supply chain system that would link the company with its suppliers and customers and handle all aspects of order processing; a new data warehouse and business intelligence system was needed to provide timely data for customer service, sales and operating decisions; and the company website had to be completely redesigned to make it the portal that delivered the capability of the first two systems to users. The fourth major project was to build out the company’s data center to support those new application systems.

 

Characteristics of an Agile and Successful IT Strategy

 

There was a company-wide strategic planning exercise that kicked off the whole thing. That was where we decided on the business goals and agreed on the IT support required to reach those goal. Notice the define step happened at the beginning of each year and after that we focused on designing and building the needed systems. During periods where there was overlap between the design and build work there was an iterative process where we fine tuned system designs based on feedback from the build work.

 

And finally, notice there was a short pilot project where we produced the first instance of the data warehouse and BI reporting system. This short project was still divided into the three steps and it was very effective as a proof of concept. Within about 30 days we produced a working system that showed people we were on the right path and gave us the support and funding we needed to proceed with the larger infrastructure and system development projects.

 

One last note is that in designing and building systems, strategic agility works best with a combination of speed, simplicity and boldness. Speed is necessary to respond effectively to high change environments. Simplicity makes speed possible and increases the chances of project success. And boldness is what maximizes the impact and value of the systems delivered. Don’t just do what everyone else is doing. Do something different and unexpected because that has the best probability of delivering the competitive advantage your company is looking for. General Patton, one of the most effective Allied generals in World War II, defined these three qualities as the secret to his success.

 

[ More on strategic IT agility in my newest Kindle e-book The Strategically Focused Tactically Agile CIO. (Amazon has free downloads of the Kindle app; install it and read on your PC, Apple, iPhone, Android, Blackberry or Kindle.]