Strategy and resourcing overview

Every business has a set of objectives and a strategy (written or unwritten, explicit or implied) that says how it wants to achieve its objectives. In some businesses the use of systems is acknowledged as a key part of the business strategy, while in others systems are much less important.

But whatever the role of systems, the IT or IS function will have an IT strategy (again: written or unwritten, explicit or implied) that describes how it will meet the objectives set by the business. What should such a strategy cover? Firstly, it must say something about its approach to the provision of systems and support to the business, including governance (how decisions are made about projects and priorities, financial and budgetary aspects), the standards to which it will operate (technical and other), and how in general it will organize itself and manage its relationship with the business. Such a strategy may also include how work will be resourced.

The IT HR strategy

Though the IT or IS strategy may say something about resourcing, there are many more HR-related dilemmas that IT employers must resolve.

What are the key skills needed to deliver on the IT strategy?

Where will these come from?

What is the balance between internal development and external recruitment likely to be?

What are the general principles underlying areas like reward, motivation and development?

What is the employee proposition offered to people in IT?

The answers to these questions can together be described as an IT HR strategy.

As with other types of strategy this may be written or unwritten, explicit or implied. And here, as with other types of strategy, there is some danger in not clarifying the strategy but leaving it unarticulated inside the heads of people across IT and HR.

The principal danger is that every head might contain a different 'strategy'. So the IT recruiters may be looking for one set of attributes while the IT managers who produce performance ratings may be penalizing those same behaviours. Or the reward structure may make no allowance for the need to recruit the 'big hitters' that are essential to the delivery of IT's objectives.

For these reasons companies must ensure that all members of the IT management team, and IT HR, are working to the same assumptions. You can test this by asking each to write down (independently) what they believe the IT HR principles to be. You do not have an effective  IT HR strategy unless everyone writes down the same things!