In strategy work completeness is key, be that Data Strategy or IT Strategy. If stakeholders can point to areas that have been left out they can doubt the recommendations. So how do we find the unknown, unknowns?
For data strategy work this problem can be magnified by the informal federation of the data communities in lower data mature organisations. How do we assess if you have all of the right people to talk to, and have touched all of the areas of data assets in the organisation?
The same problem occurs in IT strategy when we are trying to assess if we have included all of the application areas. Not all IT systems are run by the IT team, there is always an exception or two. Those exceptions are still valid parts of the IT strategy, otherwise we would risk the IT strategy becoming an internal-looking initiative for the grandeur of the IT team, rather than the benefit of the organisation.
Organisation charts are sometimes used to assess the completeness of these strategies. If we tick off all of the teams then we must be complete, right? Organisation structures are built based on individuals’ capabilities and opportunities. They don’t necessarily follow a clean functional approach. Therefore from an organisation chart, it is not easy to identify who is doing exactly what. Sometimes hidden areas of business processes exist as extensions to quite different teams. For example business innovation as part of an IT department, environmental impact processes as part of a logistics department or business change as part of a finance department.
I have found that capability models are my best friend for assessing completeness. A capability model is a functional model of the business at a high level. Often using techniques like value chain modelling to define these capabilities. Focusing on the support functional needs for the organisation as well as the value chain delivery. Building a capability model for strategy work is perhaps a few days of work, it should only have a few dozen functions even at level 2 of detail. It gives us back value as a target to map our strategy assessment to.
For data strategy, we can map data subjects or assets to the capability model. Now every function of the business is producing data. Though not all will be the current focus of attention. Functions that have no associated data subjects or assets are a gap in our data strategy. We might be able to justify that gap as out of the current scope but not ignore the gap. The capability model is the tool to walk through the function of the business and therefore assess where data is being created or imported.
Similar is true in IT strategy where we can map the applications to the capability model. Do we have functions of the business that have no IT system support? That might be correct as they may just be using desktop tools like Excel. This could though represent an opportunity to support the business further with a future IT application. There may also be an unknown application, perhaps SaaS, in this space. Again the gap cannot just be ignored. Valid gaps need to be justified as such.
In my approach to Data and IT Strategy that I share in my Udemy courses, the capability model is a key part. One of the techniques I believe that any strategist in these fields must know.
To learn more about capability models and their use in Data and IT Strategy take a look at my courses on Udemy:
If you are interested in Data Strategy, IT Strategy, IT Architecture, IoT, or Raspberry PI and Pico, please do follow me on social media.
