10 free IT strategic planning templates and examples for CIOs

What goes into IT strategic planning: Free templates and in-depth guides

These free IT strategic planning templates and examples of IT strategic plans can help CIOs develop strategies that become powerful tools for the business.

1. Gartner

Offering: Your One-Page IT Strategy

Gartner is of the mind that IT strategic plans are WORN: written once, read never. To address the sit-on-the-shelf fate of such documents, Gartner analyst Heather Colella offers a template and guide for a one-page IT strategic plan. A central tenet of this plan -- besides being on one page -- is that CIOs will help their companies perform better through storytelling that shows how IT strategies drive business success. "Storytelling helps CIOs and IT leaders to engage business leaders in a strategy business conversation by visualizing the business model in a way that can be easily shared for collaboration across the enterprise," Colella explained.

Gartner recommends the following four steps in preparation for a one-page plan:

• Step 1. Know how you succeed.
• Step 2. Understand your differentiators.
• Step 3. Develop a rich story from a specific viewpoint.
• Step 4. Draw a picture to commit your strategy to paper.

The details on translating a strategy story into a strategic plan are spelled out in this guide. It also discusses the three foundational elements of any strategic plan: business objectives, business capabilities and key performance indicators (KPIs).

2. Info-Tech Research Group

Offering: SME IT Strategic Plan Template

This free IT strategic plan template spells out simple yet effective procedures for aligning IT strategy with the company's strategic objectives and initiatives. It's designed for small and midsize enterprises. Note that registration is required and can take a few minutes to gain access.

The template includes the following sections:

• Purpose of plan.
• Corporate strategy.
• Business initiatives to support corporate strategy.
• IT strategy.
• IT strategic plan to support business initiatives.
• IT strategic plan Gantt chart.

3. CIO Index

Offering: IT Strategy Template

This IT strategic planning template lists 21 questions aimed at helping IT executives develop a plan that reflects business pain points and objectives. Registration is required for the downloadable template.

The 21 questions are grouped in five categories:

• Baseline. This section is designed to establish a baseline for IT and the business leaders by asking questions such as: "What are your top five business pain points?" "What are your top five business objectives?" "How do you plan to achieve these objectives?" "What will we gain by leveraging IT capability across the business?" Charts and tables help build an accurate picture of the current state of IT and the business.
• Business analysis. This category deals with the company's customers, products and competition. Questions include: "Who is your customer?" "What is [your] current business model?" "What is each products' profitability, market and channel?" This section includes a SWOT chart to analyze the company's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.
• IT strategy analysis. This section of the IT strategy template digs into factors that thwart business success. Questions include: "What is in the way of achieving business imperatives?" (The template offers examples of several possible complications that hinder success.) "Can IT help achieve your business imperatives?" "What will we gain by leveraging IT capability (selling, manufacturing, buying or servicing) across the business?"
• Environment trend analysis. The two questions in this category ask leaders to think about the five top business trends and the five top technology trends, then assess which of the five in each area will affect their business and how.
• Current IT capability analysis. This section asks organizations to analyze how much they spend on IT, where they spend it and why. Questions include: "What is your technology ROI?" "Does your business plan include a technology plan?"

4. Process Street

Offering: IT Strategic Planning Template

The Process Street IT Strategic Planning Template is a prebuilt workflow and checklist designed to help organizations develop, implement and manage their IT strategy. This template is suitable for teams that prefer a task-oriented, actionable approach to strategic planning, with built-in checkpoints for feedback, data governance and continuous improvement. Registration is required to access and edit the template.

The template guides users through the following step-by-step workflow:

• Audit the existing IT infrastructure.
• Identify improvements and business-aligned opportunities.
• Conduct a gap analysis to compare current capabilities with desired outcomes.
• Develop the IT roadmap, prioritize initiatives, estimate budget requirements and secure stakeholder approvals.
• Implement the strategy, monitor progress and make ongoing adjustments as needed.

Instead of starting from scratch, teams can run this template in Process Street. Each step in the template becomes a task that can be assigned to individuals, be tracked for completion and has relevant information or documents attached.

5. Apptio

Offering: 10 Essential KPIs for the IT Strategic Planning Process

Apptio's guide to developing an effective IT strategic plan lays out the 10 KPIs deemed essential for delivering business value. These KPIs focus on financial fundamentals, delivery, innovation and agility to support the business strategy. Apptio notes that these aren't "operational measures of 'feeds and speeds' -- they are proof points that IT is delivering business value." Registration is required to access the full guide.

The following comprise Apptio's 10 KPIs for the IT strategic plan:

• IT spend vs. plan (Opex and Capex variance).
• Application and service total cost.
• Percent of IT spend on cloud.
• Product lead time.
• Business value delivered by portfolio per quarter.
• Percent of IT investment on run, grow and transform-the-business.
• Percent of project spend on customer-centric initiatives.
• IT spend by business unit.
• Customer satisfaction scores for business-facing services.
• Percent of IT investment by business initiative.

6. Cascade

Offering: IT Strategy Template

The Cascade IT Strategy Template is designed to help IT teams align their technology initiatives with broader business goals while making execution measurable and manageable. Registration is required to access and use the template. It is built around five key components that ensure clarity, alignment and accountability:

• Focus areas. Broad strategic themes that guide the IT strategy.
• Objectives. Specific, measurable goals under each focus area.
• Projects. Initiatives that drive progress toward objectives.
• KPIs. Metrics to track success and progress.
• Execution platforms. The Cascade platform provides real-time analytics, progress dashboards and cross-functional collaboration tools.

Cascade's IT strategy template is highly scalable. Its visual and intuitive design makes it ideal for stakeholder presentations. Its execution-focused approach ensures that teams move beyond planning to track progress and adapt strategies as needed. The template is designed for CIOs, IT directors and strategy leads, as well as teams overseeing digital transformation, cloud migration or cybersecurity initiatives.

7. GroWrk

Offering: Basic IT Strategy Template

The GroWrk Basic IT Strategy Template is a two-page framework designed to help IT leaders align technology initiatives with business goals. Here's a breakdown of its key components:

• Vision and mission. The vision sets long-term goals, such as driving innovation through secure, scalable tech. The mission defines the IT team's daily focus on delivering reliable, user-focused services that boost business productivity.
• Goals and objectives. Strategic goals align IT with business priorities through measurable, time-bound objectives. These include boosting uptime, migrating to the cloud and improving support to ensure clear and actionable progress.
• SWOT analysis. SWOT offers a clear view of IT strengths and weaknesses, opportunities including AI and cloud, and threats from cyber-risks and compliance shifts.
• Technology roadmap. The roadmap presents a phased timeline: short-term upgrades, such as multifactor authentication and network improvements; medium-term goals, such as cloud migration; and long-term strategies involving AI analytics and ERP modernization.
• Implementation plan. The implementation plan defines how initiatives will be executed. It assigns roles and responsibilities to project leads, sets timelines and allocates budgets. This ensures accountability and helps stakeholders track progress across departments and vendors.
• Governance and framework. A governance framework establishes decision-making protocols and policy guidelines. For example, IT investments above a certain threshold might require executive approval.
• KPIs. These metrics are essential for measuring the success of IT initiatives. Common ones include system uptime, ROI on technology investments and employee satisfaction with IT services.

3 IT strategic plan examples

IT strategic plans for higher education institutions and government agencies are readily found on the web. Here are three examples.

8. Harvard University

Example: IT Strategic Plan

Harvard's IT strategic plan is a collaborative effort overseen by its CIO Council and Harvard University Information Technology. Its goal is to empower the Harvard community with advanced technology that drives progress in education, knowledge and discovery. This mission is rooted in these three key values: innovation, collaboration and human-centered service.

In 2022, the CIO Council began assessing progress on its 2018 strategic plan and developed a more agile, annual initiative-based approach. For fiscal year 2025, three key university-wide priority areas were identified:

• Asset management. This involves automating inventories of servers and workstations to identify unmanaged systems and formulating policies around IoT and personal devices.
• Generative AI. This area focuses on supporting secure and responsible experimentation with generative AI tools across schools. It involves consolidating procurement and training and fostering collaboration through an AI Community of Practice.
• Information security and data privacy. This area focuses on enhancing vulnerability management and fortifying systems to mitigate privacy issues and cyber-risks across campus.

9. University of South Florida System

Example: Information Technology Strategic Plan 2019-2023

The University of South Florida Information Technology Plan includes an executive summary, mission statement, vision statement, list of current services, guiding principles and strategic goals. The executive summary notes that the Office of Campus Computing typically has a much faster planning cycle than other disciplines due to rapid technological changes. It also states that the system's IT requests "continue to grow at unprecedented rates, and place significant stress on existing Campus Computing infrastructure."

The plan lays out estimated costs per year to meet Campus Computing's strategic goals. It is downloadable as a PDF.

10. Department of Homeland Security

Example: DHS Information Technology Strategic Plan 2019-2023

As the introduction notes, the IT department of the Department of Homeland Security plays a powerful role in supporting the agency's mission to keep the country safe and secure. The eight-page plan includes a mission statement, vision statement and seven guiding principles. The plan is built around four goals: culture, connectivity, cybersecurity and customers. Each goal is broken down into a list of objectives and their focus areas.

Kinza Yasar is a technical writer for WhatIs and has a background in computer networking.

Linda Tucci is an executive industry editor at Informa TechTarget. A technology writer for 20 years, she focuses on the CIO role, business transformation and AI technologies.