How can you prioritize emerging IT trends for your organization?

1 Assess your current IT capabilities

Before you explore the latest IT trends, you need to have a clear understanding of your current IT situation. What are your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats? How well are you meeting the needs and expectations of your customers, employees, and stakeholders? How efficient and effective are your IT processes, systems, and services? How mature and adaptable is your IT governance, architecture, and culture? Conducting a comprehensive IT assessment will help you identify your gaps, risks, and priorities.

2 Scan the IT environment

Next, you need to scan the IT environment for emerging trends, technologies, and best practices. You can use various sources of information, such as industry reports, research papers, blogs, podcasts, webinars, conferences, and online communities. You can also leverage your network of peers, partners, vendors, and experts to get insights and feedback. The key is to be curious, open-minded, and critical. Not every IT trend is relevant or beneficial for your organization. You need to filter out the noise and focus on the signals.

3 Evaluate the IT trends

Once you have a list of potential IT trends, you need to evaluate them based on their relevance, impact, feasibility, and alignment with your organization. You can use various criteria, such as business value, customer satisfaction, competitive advantage, operational efficiency, security, compliance, cost, time, and resources. You can also use various tools, such as SWOT analysis, PESTLE analysis, cost-benefit analysis, and risk assessment. The goal is to assess the pros and cons of each IT trend and compare them with your current IT capabilities and goals.

5 Implement the IT trends

Finally, you need to implement the IT trends that you have prioritized. You need to plan, execute, monitor, and control your IT projects and initiatives. You need to involve your stakeholders, assign roles and responsibilities, define scope and objectives, allocate resources and budget, set milestones and deliverables, manage risks and issues, measure results and outcomes, and ensure quality and standards . You also need to foster a culture of innovation, collaboration, and learning in your IT team and organization.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?