What Are the Resources Needed to Build an IT Strategy from Scratch?

Building an IT strategy from scratch requires more than drafting a document. It depends on a set of coordinated resources: the people who frame and validate decisions, the information assets that establish factual baselines, the tools that provide traceability, and the governance capabilities that ensure the strategy becomes a durable decision record rather than an isolated artifact. These resources form the foundation for strategic judgment, prioritization, and alignment.

In this context, “resources” refers not only to staffing but also to decision capacity, analytical depth, facilitation capability, and the underlying systems and processes that support strategic coherence. A strategy can only be as strong as the evidence, constraints, and governance mechanisms that shape it.

Key takeaways

Building from scratch requires specialized roles, solid baseline inputs, analytical capability, and governance readiness.
Resource requirements increase with organizational complexity, stakeholder diversity, regulatory expectations, and architectural constraints.
Strong resourcing does not guarantee strategy quality; it enables a feasible process, a credible decision record, and a strategy that can be governed over time.

Core human resources (roles and capabilities)

Human resources form the backbone of the strategy effort. Developing an IT strategy demands a combination of strategic leadership, analytical rigor, and synthesis capability.

Strategy leadership

A strategy initiative requires clear leadership to define scope, frame decisions, and maintain alignment across stakeholders. This responsibility typically sits with the CIO, an IT strategy lead, or a portfolio owner accountable for investment framing. Their role is not to write every section but to guide the strategic direction and ensure that decisions remain coherent.

Analytical and facilitation roles

Building a strategy requires teams that can interpret evidence, evaluate options, and manage decision conversations. Business analysts, enterprise architects, and financial modelers provide the analytical grounding, while decision facilitators help structure trade-off discussions. Without these capabilities, strategies tend to drift toward narrative description rather than evidence-based direction.

Governance participants

The strategy must meet enterprise constraints and oversight expectations. Participants from risk, compliance, security, finance, and key business units provide the perspectives needed to validate assumptions, expose dependencies, and test feasibility. Their involvement ensures that the strategy reflects reality rather than aspiration.

Documentation and synthesis capability

The strategy must be expressed consistently, regardless of how many contributors provide content. Writers and synthesis roles normalize language, consolidate inputs, and ensure that the resulting document is coherent and interpretable. This capability becomes more important as stakeholder count increases.

Human Resources Required for Building an IT Strategy from Scratch

Resource Category	Purpose	Typical Roles	Why It Matters
Strategy Leadership	Sets direction, scope, and decision framing	CIO, IT strategy lead, portfolio owner	Ensures the strategy effort has authority, boundaries, and alignment across executives
Analytical Capability	Provides evidence interpretation and scenario evaluation	Business analysts, enterprise architects, financial modelers	Turns raw data into decision inputs and prevents purely narrative strategies
Decision Facilitation	Manages prioritization and trade-off conversations	Strategy facilitators, portfolio moderators	Reduces decision bottlenecks and ensures conflicting interests are surfaced and resolved
Governance Participation	Validates constraints and oversight requirements	Risk, security, compliance, finance, business leaders	Helps ensure feasibility and prevents rework caused by misaligned assumptions
Documentation & Synthesis	Converts inputs into coherent, stable strategic content	Technical writers, editors, synthesis roles	Maintains consistency of tone, structure, and terminology across contributors

Required information resources

Building an IT strategy without adequate information leads to guesswork. The strategy must rest on credible, current, and representative data.

Business inputs

Strategy begins with understanding the enterprise direction. Business objectives, operating model structures, and performance indicators define the outcomes that IT must support. These inputs anchor the strategy and prevent drift toward technology-driven narratives.

Current-state evidence

A strategy built from scratch must acknowledge existing realities. Capability baselines, architecture summaries, cost models, and technical debt indicators provide the evidence needed to understand gaps, constraints, and opportunities. Without them, prioritization will be unstable or misaligned.

Constraint sets

Constraints are as important as objectives. Risk obligations, compliance requirements, architectural standards, and funding guardrails determine what is feasible. These constraints shape prioritization and reduce ambiguity in decision-making.

Portfolio insights

Understanding current commitments prevents conflicts between new strategic initiatives and ongoing execution. In-flight projects, cross-domain dependencies, and capacity profiles inform what can realistically change and over what time horizon.

Information Resources Needed to Build a Strategy Baseline

Information Type	Examples	What It Enables
Business Inputs	Enterprise objectives, operating model, performance indicators	Alignment between business intent and IT priorities
Current-State Evidence	Capability baselines, architecture summaries, cost models, resilience indicators	Realistic prioritization and appropriate sequencing
Constraint Sets	Risk obligations, compliance requirements, architectural standards, funding limits	Clear feasibility boundaries and decision discipline
Portfolio Insights	In-flight initiatives, dependency maps, capacity profiles	Avoids conflicts between new strategy and existing commitments

Tools and platforms

Tools provide structure, traceability, and shared understanding. They support collaboration, baseline gathering, and performance measurement. Perhaps the most important IT strategy tool is a robust IT Strategy Template.

Collaboration and drafting tools

Shared workspaces and knowledge repositories allow contributors to work from the same sources and sustain version control. This reduces rework and misalignment across teams.

Architecture and portfolio systems

Architecture repositories, CMDBs, and portfolio management systems provide authoritative data about systems, dependencies, and investments. These tools supply the factual foundation for strategy decisions.

Measurement and reporting tools

Outcome measurement requires a stable set of tools that catalog KPIs, track performance, and support governance reporting. Dashboards and scorecards allow reviewers to evaluate whether strategic intent is being realized.

Governance resources

Strategy creation is only one part of the process. Governance resources determine whether the strategy is reviewable, approvable, and sustainable across cycles.

Decision forums

The strategy must pass through defined bodies such as executive steering groups, architecture committees, and risk forums. These groups validate constraints, approve trade-offs, and confirm direction. Their involvement anchors the strategy within enterprise governance.

Review cadence

Periodic reviews—alignment checkpoints, prioritization sessions, and final approval cycles—maintain momentum and ensure that decisions are made at the right level. A cadence also prevents last-minute surprises or fragmented interpretations.

Baseline processes

Effective governance relies on predictable processes for tracking issues, logging decisions, and managing dependencies. These processes provide continuity across cycles and ensure that the strategy evolves rather than resetting each year.

Contextual factors that expand resource needs

Some environments require more intensive resources due to structural complexity.
Resource needs increase when organizations operate across multiple business units or geographies, when regulatory oversight demands extensive evidence, when mergers and acquisitions introduce integration challenges, or when legacy environments create baseline uncertainty. These conditions heighten the requirement for analytical depth, governance

Factors and Their Impact on Required Resources

Context Factor	Impact on Resource Requirements
Organizational Complexity	Increases coordination effort, analytical depth, and synthesis workload
Regulatory Oversight	Requires more rigorous evidence, governance participation, and documentation
Mergers & Acquisitions	Expands baseline work, dependency mapping, and facilitation needs
Multi-Region Operations	Raises alignment overhead, increases variation in constraints, and adds to synthesis complexity
Legacy Environments	Requires additional architecture analysis, cost modeling, and modernization assessment

Common resourcing gaps

Many strategy efforts falter not because of flawed ideas but because of missing resources. Frequent gaps include the absence of clear decision ownership, incomplete or outdated baseline information, limited analytical bandwidth, and insufficient measurement expertise. Without these elements, teams struggle to produce a strategy that is both credible and governable.

A simple readiness check can highlight where resourcing gaps are most likely to undermine the strategy effort:

Resource Readiness Checklist

Area	Readiness question	If “no,” likely risk
Strategy leadership	Is there a named leader accountable for the IT strategy and its approval path?	Direction drifts, decisions stall, and ownership becomes fragmented.
Decision forums	Are the governance forums that will review and approve the strategy clearly defined?	Strategy is created without a clear route to approval or enforcement.
Business inputs	Are current business objectives and operating model descriptions available and agreed?	IT priorities risk misalignment with business expectations.
Current-state evidence	Do you have recent, credible baselines for capabilities, architecture, cost, and risk posture?	Prioritization becomes speculative and difficult to defend.
Constraint clarity	Are key constraints (risk, compliance, funding, architecture) documented and accepted?	Infeasible strategies are proposed and later reworked or rejected.
Portfolio view	Is there a consolidated view of in-flight initiatives and major dependencies?	New strategy conflicts with existing commitments and capacity limits.
Analytical capacity	Do you have access to people who can interpret data and model options?	Decisions are made on narrative and opinion rather than structured evidence.
Facilitation capability	Is there someone equipped to run prioritization and trade-off sessions?	Stakeholder conflicts remain unresolved and decisions are delayed.
Documentation and synthesis	Is there a plan for consolidating inputs into a single, coherent strategy record?	The final artifact becomes fragmented, inconsistent, or hard to review.
Measurement expertise	Can someone define outcome KPIs and basic baselines for the strategy?	Strategy lacks measurable outcomes and cannot be governed effectively.
Tooling	Do existing tools support collaboration, baselines, and reporting for strategy work?

Frequently asked questions (FAQ)

Do small organizations need the same resources?

The categories remain similar, but scale differs. Smaller organizations often combine roles and reduce analytical granularity, but they still require credible baselines, explicit decision ownership, and functional governance participation.

How do I prioritize resources when capacity is limited?

Prioritize resources that directly affect decision readiness: accurate baselines, defined governance forums, and the analytical capacity to evaluate options. These components determine whether the strategy will withstand review.

Can external partners fill internal resource gaps?

External partners can provide analytical support, facilitation, or baseline assessments. Internal ownership remains essential for decisions, constraints, and governance alignment, because a strategy is ultimately an internal commitment, not an external deliverable.