What is an IT Strategy Plan?
IT KPIs are measurable values used by IT Teams to track and determine progress on specific business objectives. These KPIs help determine how well IT Teams are performing.
What's included in this IT strategy template?
- 4x IT Teams Focus Areas
- 14x IT Teams Objectives
- 26x IT Teams Project
- 26x IT Teams KPIs
Who is this IT strategy plan for?
As technology plays such a predominant role across all levels of an organization; this template can be utilized across the board and can be applied to organizations operating in different industries: from internal stakeholders such as individuals within an IT Team and employees working on other business processes and projects in the same organization, to external stakeholders like customers and suppliers.
How is this IT strategy plan relevant to your organization?
A succinct IT Teams strategy template can streamline processes and facilitate a smooth, collaborative and dynamic business environment.
1. Define clear examples of your focus areas
It’s important to define a clear area of focus within your strategy. To identify these focus areas it’s important to consider how many things can you realistically focus on at one time?
A few ideas for some focus areas within your IT strategy plan can be: Measuring Processes and Solutions, Financial Metrics, Performance, Security.
It’s important to keep these focus areas succinct and minimal so that you are not focusing on too many areas and are able to actually accomplish your goals and objectives.
2. Think about the objectives that could fall under that focus area
A strategic objective differs from a strategic Focus Area - in the way that it is specific in what you want to achieve, has a deadline attached, and once completed will be replaced by another, different objective.
Examples of strategic objectives for the focus area of Security can be (but are not limited to): Increase data security; Improve company's cybersecurity; Improve confidentiality and integrity of data.
3. Set yourself measurable targets (KPIs) to tackle the objective
KPIs help provide measurable substance to make goals more tangible. Different individuals within your organization can be responsible for completing different KPIs. However, every individual contribution will eventually help in accomplishing the organizational objective.
An example of some KPIs that fall under the objective Increase data security can be Reduce occurrences of the breach, Improve data recovery due to back up, Decrease data migration and back up.
You can also add fixed measurements in the form of percentages and numbers, as well as fixed time frames to give you a better understanding of your progress with regards to achieving this objective.
4. Implement related projects to achieve the KPIs
Projects can help you capitalize on resources to ensure you are working efficiently, productively, and prioritizing the right projects to achieve your KPIs and thus your final objectives.
Examples of projects to instill under the focus area security could be Test security systems and software on a fortnightly basis; Delegate a software team to encrypt software and delete redundant data; Implement a new antivirus system; Launch a security awareness training program; Conduct external penetration testing; Review, refine and document back-up policies.
5. Utilize Cascade tools to track and visualize performance
You can also optimize widgets that can be created on Cascade’s dashboards to display KPIs and other projects in the form of bar graphs and line charts. These can be displayed with various data and be cumulative or non-cumulative based on how in-depth you want them to be.