Technical strategy
On this page 9 topics
Overview
Topics
- Investment planning
- modernization
- platform vs product priorities
Learn first
4.5 h of practice (estimate)
Learning outcomes
- Write a technical strategy with diagnosis, guiding policies, and coherent actions.
- Balance platform investment against product delivery with explicit allocation.
- Prioritize modernization by business risk and opportunity.
- Tie the strategy to measurable outcomes and review it periodically.
Lessons
Lab and exercises
Lab
SRA-010-LAB1 · Commerce 2030 strategy draft
Outcomes: 1–4 · Time: ~3 h
- Collect evidence from your earlier work: landscape map, roadmap and obsolescence calendar, data ownership, regional plan, resilience posture, forecast, economics, compliance.
- Write the diagnosis: three to four challenges with causes and evidence.
- Write three to five guiding policies with explicit trade-offs.
- Define coherent actions with owners and sequence, and the investment split across three years, including a modernization priority list.
- Define outcome measures with baselines and targets and a review process.
- Test traceability: every action to the diagnosis, every measure to an outcome.
Acceptance: every action traceable to the diagnosis; outcomes measurable.
Exercises (case-based; six exercises)
| ID | Outcome | Task |
|---|---|---|
| SRA-010-EX01 | 1 | Critique a "strategy" that lists five goals; rewrite it as diagnosis, policies, and actions. |
| SRA-010-EX02 | 1 | Write a diagnosis of three challenges for a given evidence pack and state what each predicts about policy. |
| SRA-010-EX03 | 2 | Write the allocation for year one (product, platform, reliability) and explain what happens if product asks for 100% product work. |
| SRA-010-EX04 | 2 | Prepare a five-minute defense of a 30% platform allocation including answers to two objections. |
| SRA-010-EX05 | 3 | Prioritize eight modernization candidates by risk, opportunity, cost, and dependency; mark one "never". |
| SRA-010-EX06 | 4 | Define five outcome measures with baselines, targets, owners, and a trigger for revising the strategy. |
Show solutions
- EX01 Goals like "be scalable" have no cause or trade-off. A strategy states: diagnosis (why scaling is hard now), policies (for example regional ownership of state, buy generics), actions (owned migrations), and what is excluded.
- EX02 Each challenge has cause, evidence, and consequence; the diagnosis should let a reader predict the policy (for example coupling causes delay, so policy limits cross-domain coupling).
- EX03 For example year one 60% product, 30% platform and modernization, 10% reliability and compliance. At 100% product: lead time and incident risk rise, end-of-life work becomes emergencies; offer a staged compromise tied to measures.
- EX04 Lead with business outcomes (lead time, risk, cost per order), show evidence, state what 30% buys by milestone, propose a review at six months with fallback.
- EX05 Rank end-of-life datastores with near deadlines and marketplace enablers first; defer large rewrites with low risk; "never" for a stable system with no change demand and low risk.
- EX06 Examples: lead time for change, incident minutes, cost per order, share of services past end of support, platform adoption. Revise on missed targets two periods running or changed assumptions.
Outcome 1 is also covered by the lab; outcome 4 by the lab traceability test and quiz.
Workplace evidence: a technical strategy you authored or co-authored that guided investment.
Quiz
Outcomes: O1 diagnosis, policies, actions · O2 platform versus product allocation · O3 prioritizing modernization · O4 measuring and revising.
A self-check for you: nothing is graded, saved or sent anywhere. Choose an answer, then check it. You can try again as often as you like.
Practical part
Six case exercises SRA-010-EX01 to EX06 plus the lab, defended as a strategy to role-played product leadership. Pass: at least five of six exercises correct, quiz at least 8/10, and a strategy draft in which every action traces to the diagnosis and outcomes are measurable.
Common mistakes
Strategy as a list of goals; no explicit trade-offs; actions that ignore the diagnosis.
Assessment
Strategy defense.
Workplace evidence
A technical strategy you authored or co-authored that guided investment.
Career relevance
The core of the Senior A capstone and Staff technical strategy (STF-002).