Day 1

Aligning to the business

•   The difficulties of aligning IT to business priorities
•   An overview of business alignment opportunities - the ‘alignment life-cycle’
•   Best practice in aligning IT to the business
•   A practical framework for IT to business alignment
•   Putting together an alignment strategy

Getting organized

•   Identifying prioritized business needs
•   The role of IT’s sponsors and stakeholders in aligning to IT
•   Case study — “Consulting study of a misaligned business”

 Alignment through good governance

•   A practical model of IT governance
•   Aligning strategy — the essence of an aligned business strategy
•   Aligning projects — managing project portfolios and resolving conflicts of priority
•   Aligning operations — setting KPIs and gathering accurate feedback from business users and sponsors

 Alignment through people

•   The importance of IT’s brand
•   The difference between perception and reality
•   Bringing it all together — a business alignment game

Day 2

Building successful business relationship plans

•   The business relationship management sales cycle
•   Setting objectives and planning relationship campaigns
•   Assessing political power and leverage
•   Techniques for building influence
•   Becoming a ‘kingpin’ for your company

 Working with sponsors, stakeholders and key users

•   Building bridges with the business — rapport and credibility
•   Techniques for identifying the real needs of customers
•   Role play — An unsanctioned project
•   Questioning and active listening techniques
•   Handling objections — Resolving difficult situations with users and stakeholders
•   Role play — A problem with email?
•   Gaining commitment

Day 3

Communicating technology

•   Creating a compelling technology message — IT’s elevator pitch
•   Presenting technology to non-technical audiences
•   Communication styles and the skills of the actor

Handling difficult situations

•   Handling difficult staff
•   The art of communications in influencing outcomes
•   Structuring group presentations
•   Presenting at a high level to senior management

Day 4

Delivering operational excellence

•   Continual Service Improvement Model
•   An overview of different continual improvement frameworks, including ITIL, Six sigma and Lean IT
•   Using continual improvement frameworks to gain business advantage
•   Techniques of root cause analysis to resolve problems
•   Examples and guidelines of success

Project management excellence

•   Starting well — correcting the flaws in business cases and project initiation
•   Making project reporting do the work — the code of RAG reporting
•   Effective management of project steering committees
•   Guidelines for effective project portfolio management
•   A compendium of IT project management wisdom - lessons learnt from successful and failed projects

Day 5

Excellence in managing IT teams

•   Choosing good people
•   Getting the best from your team
•   The importance of team dynamics and its affect on team performance
•   Setting goals and vision to enhance performance
•   Some exercises in IT team leadership
•   Effective coaching techniques and developing staff in real time
•   Playing to strengths — the benefits of strengths-based coaching
•   Round table — reflections and actions