Strategies

Strategies are the actions that need to be taken to achieve the objectives and ultimately realise the vision. Strategies are important because they stipulate what will be undertaken by the agency to achieve the strategic objectives. Strategies also begin to frame the nature of future strategic initiatives and related investment.

The activities in this guideline should be conducted in collaboration with the stakeholders identified in the Sponsorship, scope and stakeholders guideline and can be incorporated into other stakeholder planning workshops.

Audience

A practitioner in the context of this guideline can include one or more of the following roles:

• Digital and ICT strategic planners
• Agency and service strategic planners
• Workforce planners
• Business analysts
• Information managers.

Strategies should be aligned to the objectives and benefits already identified as part of the previous digital or ICT planning activities.

Refer to the Vision guideline activities and the business changes identified in the Benefits, business change and enablers guideline dependency networks or an investment logic mapping. These will help practitioners and participants in planning workshops to identify and define strategies.

Align strategies with objectives

Where the method of directly aligning the digital or ICT strategic objectives to the business objectives has been used, it is relatively easy to continue the process of direct alignment and align or map the underpinning digital or ICT strategies to the digital or ICT objectives.

Where the concept of planning horizons has been used, strategies will also need to be structured around the planning horizons and the digital or ICT objectives across those planning horizons (e.g., horizons of 1 year, 3 years, and 5 years).

Strategic themes

Themes can be an effective way of ensuring the strategies have been defined across a range of areas and considerations such as governance, business changes and workforce capability have been considered.

Depending on the context on the related objective it may be necessary to consider strategies across several themes. In some cases, themes may form focus areas or pillars for the strategy. Examples of potential strategic themes are provided in the table below.

Create a strategic document

A strategic document is about setting a future direction for the organisation, devising objectives and identifying a range of strategies so the organisation might achieve its objectives. A strategic document is higher level, more strategic in nature, and may span longer time periods than operational strategies. Strategic documents focus on the ‘what’ and ‘why’ of the strategy being proposed.

Once created, a strategic document can then be translated into operational actions and activities through the agency’s operational planning process. An operational plan provides more detailed information and strategies required to run the agency. These plans may be more exact and provide greater detail about the how, who and when strategies will apply.

Visit Digital and ICT best practice methodologies for more resources and information to help inform the development of digital and ICT strategies.

In relation to each strategy, consider if it will be universal and be explicit about who may be impacted. For example, the strategy may only relate to a segment of customer, a regional or specific sites or business areas.

When developing strategies, consider strategies that:

• increase the secure provision or sharing of information and how people access information
• address barriers, reduce the exposure to risk, or take advantage of opportunities
• enhance the collaboration between staff, partners, the community and industry
• enhance services or better support services
• modify existing policies or introduce new policies
• modify systems or implement new capability including new or changing technology services
• change the way investment in ICT is managed and governed
• plan for, acquire or grow new workforce skills and capabilities including:
  • improving attraction and recruitment
  • improving labour supply
  • increasing investment in development
  • improving employment agility
  • improving participation, retention and culture
  • improving workforce planning governance and capability.

Refer to the Workforce profile guideline for help assessing internal and external labour supply and consider how it may affect your agency’s strategies.

Strategies should be reviewed as part of the workshop to determine their appropriateness and alignment to business, digital or ICT objectives. This review should include:

• consistency with the overall vision and objectives
• level of fit with the resources and opportunities available
• anticipated resistance and barriers and how they can be minimised, these will be discussed further in the guideline relating to risks
• confirmation that strategies are complete, or if gaps and strategies exist that have not yet been identified
• if strategies developed will conflict with any other strategies.

Depending on the nature of the strategy or plan being developed it may be necessary to separate strategies that are strategic in nature from those that are operational.

Practitioners should consider which strategies defined in the workshop are more operational in nature and obtain agreement from participants to carry those strategies across to the operational planning cycle. This will ensure the digital or ICT strategy or plan is not weighed down by strategies that are largely operational in nature.

The methods outlined in this guideline are iterative. It might take several workshops with several diverse groups of stakeholders to articulate the final digital or ICT strategies.

It is important to ‘play back’ the outputs of workshops to participants within a short timeframe after the workshop. This will maintain interest and ensure the participants feel like their time and contribution was worthwhile.

Once the digital or ICT strategies have been defined, consideration needs to be given to any strategic risks as well as the strategies required to mitigate those risks.

Go to the Risks and challenges guideline as your next step to developing strategies.