Cloud Platform Strategy

The purpose of the platform strategy is to create a shared vision that aligns and enables an organisation's broader business strategies and priorities. It creates a future vision of platform services, new and improved ways of working, and the associated benefits. The platform strategy will provide direction for the platform services function, act as a decision-making guide, and enable measurement of progress and benefits realisation.

We believe simplicity is critical when designing a platform strategy as it allows improved stakeholder understanding and alignment, and greater actionability.

Our simplified approach starts with two elements:

1. Define – where do you want to go and why, to establish internal alignment and support for the future vision.

2. Activate – provide guidance for action and measurement of progress.

Platform Strategy – Define:

North Star:

•       Provides a definition of what “good” looks like.

•       Aligns platform strategy to organisational priorities.

•       Creates a shared future vision for platform service across the organisation. 

Stakeholder Engagement:

•       Catalyst to connect the needs of users, group IT functions, and platform services.

•       Collaborative process balancing departmental vs organisational requirements.

•       Formation of future platform strategy governance / leadership. 

Platform Strategy – Activate:

Strategic Principles:

•       Platform principles that guide platform projects to align to the “North Star”.

•       Shared point of reference (guide) regarding both strategic and day to day decision making.

•       Facilitates platform service selection, rationale and benefit.

Mechanisms & Metrics:

•       Design “mechanisms” that support the move to cloud-centric ways of working.

•       Design platform roadmap (implementation horizon) and metrics to track progress.

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DigiRen Platform Strategies deliver:

1. Platform 'The North Star': desired state of platform services in 2-3 years; depicting the service model, cloud-centric ways of working, and alignment to organisational strategies and priorities.

2. Strategic Principles: Platform services strategic principles; including definitions and principles purpose, context and usage.

3. Mechanisms & Metrics: The platform strategy will be broken into maturity horizon’s and include mechanisms that facilitate a shift to cloud-centric ways of working with metrics that allow measurement of progress.

Key to the platform strategy is the inclusion, collaboration and agreement from a cross-functional stakeholder group. A successful platform strategy will require change across the organisation, and as such this stakeholder agreement and support is vital for both short- and long-term success. Additionally, members of this stakeholder group will play a role in future platform strategy governance forums.