Serene Software IT Strategy Services

Serene IT Strategy Services

Serene Software uses a practical, focused, and well worn process to help its customers discover, define and refine IT Strategy artifacts appropriate for providing insight into tradeoffs and opportunities and guiding daily IT activities. The result is a strategy focused on prudent IT investments that aligns IT initiatives with business priorities.

Serene conducts quick, focused IT Strategy workshops and analysis sessions resulting in actionable IT Strategies. Our strategy process avoids lofty IT initiatives that provide little benefit to the daily work of IT staff or their business customers. Strategy products include: General IT, SOA, Data, Security, IT Financial Planning and Analysis, and Legacy Analysis & Retirement.

What is IT Strategy & What Does it Do?

Strategy Overviews

Strategy initiatives in general can elicit rolling eyes, painful memories of extended conversations about Mission vs. Vision statements, and recollections of weighty documents that sat on the shelf for years while the organization got on with the “real work”. Serene avoids weak strategy outcomes by challenging its customers to iterate towards clarity, coherence, and prioritization. The result is a practical rule set that guides IT customers, IT governance participants, and IT resources in making practical daily choices. Organizations experiencing confusion related to IT vs. Business goals and outcomes, where IT lacks a driving organizational mandate, where the business’s expectations are out of line with IT’s budget, or where upcoming initiatives in key areas (SOA, Legacy Analysis & Retirement, Information Architecture) present critical challenges should consider developing clear & productive IT related strategies.

Strategy Is

Strategy Does

• Coherent, prioritized rules used to determine when, where, and how IT will respond to business, technical, financial inputs

• Adaptable actions scheduled to carefully implement priorities, reduce risk, and deliver value

• Create value for IT customers

• Coordinate IT priorities with the business

• Enhances company strengths

• Create priorities and eliminate confusion

• Define a value model for success

IT Strategy:

Many, if not most, IT departments operate without an overarching IT Strategy leaving IT and related resources to intuit priorities and direction. This minimizes coherent progress and introduces ambiguity and error. Serene helps clients build practical, actionable and coherent strategies for use in budgeting, governance activities, and overall alignment.

SOA Strategy:

As organizations plan to formally adopt a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), they find there are many planning and investment choices related to infrastructure, governance, the development of a service portfolio, education & training, and budgeting and allocation models. The development of a SOA Strategy provides the organizing rules and high level planning around which subsequent decisions can be made yielding faster achievement and higher SOA related value.

Legacy Analysis & Retirement:

Most IT departments have several decades of IT investment and some legacy systems that, through a variety of factors, have become costly to maintain and difficult to evolve. The modernization, replacement or isolation of these artifacts is a challenging and error prone exercise that requires clarity of forethought to execute without disruption to the business, unbudgeted cost overruns, and other IT “black eyes”. Serene Legacy Analysis & Retirement Strategies allow customers to crystallize prioritized objectives, system and people dependencies, a realistic plan forward, and a realistic budget.