The coming weeks are a reality check for New Year plans. This is the moment when ambitious IT strategies for 2026—looking perfect in December PowerPoint decks—begin to collide with everyday constraints. Budgets no longer add up, teams are overloaded, and the management board starts asking familiar questions: “Why is this taking so long?” and “How much will it cost in the end?”
Sounds familiar? That’s perfectly normal. The issue usually isn’t the strategy itself, but how it’s translated into concrete tasks and projects. Because between the vision of “we will deploy AI across the entire organization” and reality lies a deep gap called “how do we actually do this?”
Below are five practical steps that will help you translate board-level goals into actionable tasks for technical teams—without burning the budget or triggering endless escalations.
Step 1: From Business Goals to Technical Requirements
The most common mistake? Starting with technology.
“We will deploy GenAI” sounds great—but without answering “why?”, it leads nowhere.
Start with business objectives. What does the company want to achieve in 2026?
Increase margins by 5%?
Reduce time-to-market by 30%?
Raise customer satisfaction to 90%?
Only once the business goal is clear can you define technical requirements.
Example:
→ Business goal: Reduce contact center handling time by 40%.
→ Technical requirement: Deploy an AI assistant that provides real-time response suggestions to agents.
Simple in theory. In practice, it requires real collaboration between IT and business—at a completely different level than before. Instead of “deliver the infrastructure”, the conversation must become “help me achieve this outcome.”
Step 2: Prioritization – Not Everything at Once
Every CIO’s dream: implement everything simultaneously—AI, cloud, cybersecurity, new ERP, OT modernization.
The wish list is long. The budget, unfortunately, is not.
That’s why prioritization is critical—but not based on who shouts the loudest. Use a simple matrix instead: business value vs. implementation complexity.
- High value, low complexity → start in Q1
- High value, high complexity → split into phases, start with an MVP
- Low value → postpone or remove altogether
Real-life example:
A large Polish manufacturing company planned a full MES rollout across all plants at once.
Budget: PLN 15 million
Timeline: 18 months
Risk: enormous
Instead, they launched a pilot in one plant, validated assumptions, adjusted the solution, and only then scaled it.
Result: PLN 4 million saved and six months shorter delivery time.
Step 3: Quick Wins – Show Value Fast
Management wants results. Preferably yesterday. That’s why Q1 should focus on quick wins—projects that deliver fast, measurable outcomes.
These don’t have to be massive transformations. They just need to prove value and build momentum.
Examples of quick wins:
→ RPA-based reporting automation: sales reports delivered in 2 hours instead of 3 days
→ AI assistant for IT helpdesk: 30% reduction in tickets through automated responses
→ Cloud cost optimization: shutting down unused resources (often 20–30% savings)
Quick wins aren’t just about numbers. They build trust between IT and business. If you deliver value quickly, it becomes much easier to secure buy-in for larger initiatives later.
Step 4: Communication – Speak Business, Not Technology
One of IT’s biggest challenges? Speaking a language the business doesn’t understand.
“We are migrating to a Kubernetes-based microservices architecture” may sound impressive—but for the CFO, it simply means “expensive and unclear.”
Translate technology into outcomes.
→ Instead of: “We’re deploying SIEM and SOAR.”
→ Say: “We’re reducing the risk of a cyberattack that could cost PLN 10 million in production downtime.”
→ Instead of: “We’re migrating databases to the cloud.”
→ Say: “We’re increasing IT flexibility and reducing infrastructure costs by 25%.”
Before every board presentation, ask yourself one question:
“Why does this matter to the business?”
If you can’t answer it in one sentence, you probably don’t fully understand it yet.
Step 5: Budget Control – Measure, Optimize, Adjust
An IT budget isn’t something you set in December and forget until year-end. It’s a living organism that requires constant monitoring.
This is especially true for cloud projects, where costs can spiral out of control quickly.
Best practices:
→ Monitor spending weekly, not quarterly
→ Set financial alerts—10% budget overrun should trigger action
→ Regularly reassess business relevance—priorities change
And remember: it’s better to stop a project that no longer delivers value than to continue it just because “we’ve already invested so much.” That’s the sunk-cost fallacy—and it’s expensive.
Summary: Strategy Is a Process, Not a Document
The best IT strategy isn’t the one approved by the board in December.
It’s the one that lives in daily operations—and evolves with business needs.
These five steps aren’t a magic formula. They’re a framework that helps bridge the gap between vision and execution—without drowning the budget or triggering endless escalations.
Because in the end, it’s all about one thing: delivering measurable business value.
Fast. Effectively. And in a way that can be clearly quantified.
Good luck in Q1.
