AI Changed IT Strategy Forever
AI is fundamentally changing the scale, depth, and speed at which CIOs can manage strategy
I’m an unabashed AI proponent. Rather than fear the inevitable, I encourage my team and clients to embrace the possibilities of AI, even if it makes some of their own work redundant. IT Strategy is the perfect example.
For years, IT strategy was slow, expensive, and operationally disruptive. Consulting engagements were necessary because gathering meaningful stakeholder input, synthesizing patterns, and building credible strategic direction required enormous manual effort and specialized expertise. Even then, by the time the strategy was complete, portions of it were already aging. AI changes that equation.
Most discussions about AI in IT focus on productivity improvements: coding acceleration, automation, copilots, and operational efficiency. Those developments just scratch the surface. I believe more important disruptions may occur inside IT management discipline.
With AI, IT strategy development can be fundamentally re-engineered. CIOs can now engage stakeholders more broadly, identify patterns faster, and maintain a continuous understanding of operational friction, stakeholder sentiment, and changing business expectations. This can be done at a scale and speed that was previously impractical, at a significantly lower cost and (hopefully) with better business outcomes. That changes everything about IT Strategy.
I’ve watched this come to life in our own MeasureIT® solution after augmenting with AI capabilities. Our clients routinely achieve deeper insights and move from feedback to action dramatically faster. Their IT strategy development becomes broader, faster, and more rigorous—without sacrificing credibility. It’s not uncommon to move from feedback phase to completed strategy in two weeks.
More importantly, AI makes it practical to manage strategy continuously. Again, adapting our own tools, we’ve empowered CIOs to integrate their strategy into daily operations and continually refine IT’s direction as business conditions evolve.
I’m far from an evangelist, but I’ve already seen how AI creates a much more dynamic management model for IT— one where strategy remains connected to how the organization is actually operating.
This article is extracted from our white paper, The Disruption and Reengineering of IT Strategy.
