Strategic Planning and Jam

Whilst IT strategic planning has become more and more the way forward, with more and more advice on how to do it, there remains one area within most organisations which constantly fails to deliver its promised potential.

The big problem is how do you get from a strategy to delivered systems? Well, you will get lots of advice on how to build large, complex strategies covering every aspect of the organisations IT from people to networks. Problem is these strategies are never implemented. They are not implemented because of a lack of commitment, or because they are wrong, or that the technologies or skills are not there. No, it is simply that reality tends to intrude, and all these strategies tend to take five to seven years to implement. 'But what about delivering something useful today?' is the cry from the top, 'you have been promising jam tomorrow for the last twenty years', 'when are we going to see some return on our investment in you?'