Laying the Groundwork for Cloud

Chapter 2. Create Your Target Strategy

All journeys need a strategy that encapsulates the motivation to change and sets your direction so that you can navigate its course to a successful outcome. In this chapter, I’ll explain how the cloud vision must identify and prioritize clear objectives that become strategic milestones along your journey. We will also uncover the alignment with the operating model and how to unlock agility and what that means related to automation and workforce efficiency. We will identify how accelerators and maturity models can help break the journey down into clear and manageable stages.

Establish Your Strategic Vision

Without clear vision, change within your organization is unlikely to gain traction. An important step in defining your strategy is identifying why cloud is important and what digital expectations lie ahead. A modern business landscape needs technology to enable business success.

To achieve your business aspirations, your technology organization needs to close gaps in customer expectation by embracing a service-driven target operating model (financial, experience, business agility). An operating model focusing on services drives efficiency and breaks organizations out of the locked-in supply chain. Competition drives change, and organizations that don’t translate technology investment to business value face eroding markets.

To achieve the benefits of cloud you need a broad and top-down strategy. This is in contrast to a single technology ...