Identifying Strategic Technologies

This step ensuresat we understand at a high level which technologies and computer applications exist today or are promised in the future. It identifies which technologies can be instrumental in enabling the new business processes to deliver improved performance to our important stakeholders. It should also help define the priorities for a new technological infrastructure to be aligned with process/business change.

Techniques

A numberof techniques have good potential for identifying strategic technologies:

• Technology watch

• Technology principles definition

• Application architecture development

• Technology infrastructure definition

• Scoring and matrix analysis

Lessons Learned

Understand what the new processes are attempting to accomplish first, and then start with the principles of an effective technology environment (the “big rules”) that must be satisfied so that technology decisions are based on business value. Complete the phrase, “If this is what must happen for the business, technologically it’s vital that....” Assess the options, asking, “Can we deliver results within the existing policies, procedures, and technology plan, or do we have a compelling reason to change?” Also ask, “What are the ‘big rules’ that must be in place to make the change effective?” For example, you might decide that all functional applications will be designed from reusable software components.

Establish a “technology watch” team, responsible for actively searching out technologies, vendors, and examples that might stimulate ideas beyond the traditional. Ask the question, “Of all the existing and emerging technologies that we can find, which ones could help the processes reach their targets? Will they enable a different but better way of achieving performance breakthrough?” Then examine the applications (or business objects) required to support the new approach with the new technology. Finally, ask what information requirements must be managed.

Of the many ways to define or refine technology architecture, the most effective ones are business and process based. The intent of the work is to find the opportunities and enable the realignment of the technology plans and associated architectures–not to rebuild all architectures right now but to provide input for their renewal, which should be ongoing. Create or update the technology architecture by using the Critical Success Factors for technology and the total set of requirements for technology change. Identify the impact of change on applications, information, and object architectures.

Use process-to-technology grids for simplicity of tracking. Grids should have axes of “Value provided to process” and “Ease of deployment.” The recommended technologies should appear in the top-right corners.

This step requires an iterative approach with refinement and feedback added each time through.