Developing IT Strategy and the "Social Contract" That Makes It Stick

CFAR's Approach to IT Strategy
CFAR's approach to strategy development for information technology is especially useful in universities, academic medical centers and other "loosely-coupled" organizations where change efforts are difficult. It succeeds even in settings where the parties have mismatched expectations and where the tensions and toughest choices reflect legitimate needs on both sides. The result is a sustainable, supportable IT strategy. Clients discover their strengths and build the frameworks to support those strengths. The planning process itself helps change how people work together. It helps create the "social contract" — or new behaviors and working agreements — that sustain the plan.

Five Components
CFAR's participative process brings a project team through five components in the development of IT strategy and its initial implementation.

1. Shared Understanding of Needs and the Current Situation. Any plans for the future need to be based on a critical, realistic understanding of the current situation — an understanding that is shared enough among participants for them to move forward. In this phase, participants learn what the plan will need to accomplish — they gain a sense of magnitude not always understood by users and a sense of urgency and interdependency not always acknowledged by information technology(IT) staff.

2. New Model — An Early "Theory" of How Things Could be Different. The project team develops a new model of the system (not just the technology but the array of supports and standards around it) as the institution would like it to be. For a while the team may sustain competing new models in order to learn from the contrast. At this stage, the excitement and cautious optimism of together developing a new "theory" of how things could be different come to the fore.

3. Gap Analysis and Priorities. The team identifies gaps between the new model and the current situation and figures out priorities for closing those gaps. This is the beginning of the action plan.

4. Focus on Key Issues. In this phase the team focuses on a few concrete and specific key issues. This may involve "issue groups" to develop areas such as user support or standards in more detail. Or it may involve piloting specific aspects of the new model to help the team learn what will be needed and to build organizational support for the overall effort.

5. Integration — Finalizing the Plan and Strategies to Refresh. At this stage, the team integrates the work done in various areas by various groups and pulls it together into a formal plan. The team makes sure there are mechanisms for keeping the new model current in a rapidly-changing environment.

The Players

The participation structure ensures that the "system is in the room." It includes the right mix of people so that solutions can work for many, not just the few. To make sure that such a large planning group is productive, the process is well structured and well facilitated.

Players can include:

• Executive Sponsors — Who authorize the work and support it over time.
• Steering Committee — Who set direction, integrate across issues and capture learning about how to have strategic IT conversations effectively.
• Issue Groups — Who dig more deeply into key issues and begin moving forward on them.
• Members of the Community — Who can feed the process by any number of methods, including focus groups, surveys and town meetings.