Guaranteeing Future Alignment

  Strategy  

Here’s some really practical food for thought from Harvard professor, F. Warren McFarlan.  He calls Information Technology the New Strategic Weapon – which sounds like “computers are good” to most of us, but it’s interesting given that these are the guys (Harvard, in the form of HBR) who were saying that IT doesn’t matter anymore.

The point that he makes in this online lecture, is that legacy systems last much longer than anyone ever intends.  Alignment up front is critical, but flexibility is important as well, because business goals change over time – far more quickly than systems become obsolete.  The real value in this video comes when he talks about the key concepts from his book, Connecting the Dots.   

In his mind, IT portfolio alignment is all about:

-          chunking

-          managing cultural overload

-          managing common threads

His focus is on approaches for doing things right up front to ensure future flexibility.  If you like his lecture, you can take a look at this 13 page excerpt from his book.

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