Patrick
2
When the number of IT options continues to grow, it becomes increasingly more difficult to have the range and depth of expertise needed to select, maintain and optimize the right IT solutions. How can I prioritise the best for my company?
Hi Patrick,
let us assume that you are looking for IT solutions to solve certain existing or upcoming business problems and you are not "simply" dealing with topics like obsolescence, reduction of operational risk, etc. within the IT world itself.
If this is the case, the first thing you should be doing is building an inventory of the use cases your organization has. Once you have formalized and clustered your needs, you can go to a second step and look at benchmarks in the market for tools that fall into each category. From these, you should be selecting some for further analysis. It might be relevant to consider the opinion of experts, which is available in very many whitepapers (Gartner is always a nice starting point for instance).
Thirdly and most importantly, you should think about a scorecard system to evaluate your pre-selection within the context of your own organization. Here it is relevant to collect both functional and technical inputs. Talk to your users and identify their needs and expectations, their past experiences and the technologies they know. Do not forget to do the same with your technical teams.
Finally, make sure you harmonize both views in a standardized overview allowing you to perform the final comparison. In case you cannot find an unequivocal conclusion, consider doing some "proofs of concept" with those tools scoring the highest in your evaluation.
By the end of the day it is not so much about having a whole lot of tools, it is about having the right tools to solve the problems we face on a daily basis. So answering directly your question regarding priority, identify your use cases and your needs before doing any IT stuff, priority will follow naturally once you have this clear. Don't start building a car if you just need a bicycle.