Build an IT Succession Plan

Future-proof your IT leadership team.

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Blueprint Contents:

1. Build an IT Succession Plan Deck – A step-by-step document that walks you through how to future-proof your IT team.

Protect your team and organization from losses associated with departure of people from key roles. This blueprint will help you build an IT succession plan to ensure critical knowledge doesn’t walk out the door and continuity of business when people in key roles leave.

  • Build an IT Succession Plan Storyboard

2. Critical Role Identifier – A tool to help you determine which roles are most critical to the success of your team.

The purpose of this tool is to help facilitate a conversation around critical roles.

  • Critical Role Identifier

3. Key Role Succession Planning Template – A tool that walks you through reviewing your talent, succession planning, and determining successor readiness.

This tool will help IT leaders work through key steps in succession development for each employee in the team, and present summaries of the findings for easy reference and defensibility.

  • Key Roles Succession Planning Tool

4. Role Profile Template – A template that helps you outline the minimum requirements for each critical role addressed in succession planning.

This template is a guide and the categories can be customized to your organization.

  • Role Profile Template

5. Individual Talent Profile Template – A template to assess an employee against the role profiles of critical roles.

This profile provides the basis for evidence-based comparison of talent in talent calibration sessions.

  • Individual Talent Profile Template

6. Role Transition Plan Template – A template to help you plan to implement knowledge transfer and alternative work arrangements.

As one person exits a role and a successor takes over, a clear checklist-based plan will help ensure a smooth transition.

  • Role Transition Plan Template
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Your Challenge

  • Pending retirements in key roles create workforce risks and potentially impact business continuity.
  • Fifty-six percent of organizations have not engaged in succession planning, so they haven’t identified at-risk key roles or successors for those roles.

Our Advice

Critical Insight

  • Just under 60% of organizations haven't tackled succession planning.
  • This means that three out of five organizations don’t know what skills they need for the future or what their key roles truly are. They also haven’t identified at-risk key roles or successors for those roles.
  • In addition, 74% of organizations have no formal process for facilitating knowledge transfer between individuals, so knowledge will be lost.

Impact and Result

  • Info-Tech's Key Roles Succession Planning Tool will help you assess key role incumbent risk factors as well as identify potential successors and their readiness. Pay particular attention to those employees in key roles that are nearing retirement, and flag them as high risk.
  • Plan for the transfer of critical knowledge held by key role incumbents. Managers and HR leaders see significant tacit knowledge gaps in younger workers; prioritize tacit knowledge in your transfer plan and leverage multiple transfer methods.
  • Explore alternative work arrangements to ensure sufficient time to prepare successors. A key role incumbent must be available to complete knowledge transfer.
  • Define formal transition plans for all employees in at-risk key roles and their successors by leveraging your workforce and succession planning outputs, knowledge transfer strategy, and selected alternative work arrangements.
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Member Testimonials

After each Info-Tech experience, we ask our members to quantify the real-time savings, monetary impact, and project improvements our research helped them achieve. See our top member experiences for this blueprint and what our clients have to say.

9.3/10


Overall Impact

$230,889


Average $ Saved

15


Average Days Saved

Client

Experience

Impact

$ Saved

Days Saved

Fernco Inc

Guided Implementation

9/10

$34,250

20

Worst: Learning how low on the maturity scale are our internal formal succession and development planning processes are as comparted to Info Tech ... Read More

Walla Walla University

Guided Implementation

9/10

$2,740

2

Minnkota Power

Guided Implementation

10/10

$6,850

3

State of New Mexico - New Mexico Department of Public Safety

Guided Implementation

10/10

$1.3M

2

My departure out of my agency is going to be a difficult transition for the acting bureau chief and the person selected for my position. The time w... Read More

Chief Industries, Inc.

Guided Implementation

8/10

N/A

N/A

Derivco

Guided Implementation

10/10

$31,499

50

Vancouver Police Department

Guided Implementation

9/10

$10,000

10

Seaboard Overseas and Trading Group

Guided Implementation

8/10

$12,399

4

Good overall guidance on approaching the topic. Presenter was very knowledgeable.

City Of Bakersfield

Guided Implementation

10/10

$30,549

10

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About Info-Tech

Info-Tech Research Group is the world's fastest-growing information technology research and advisory company, proudly serving over 30,000 IT professionals.

We produce unbiased and highly relevant research to help CIOs and IT leaders make strategic, timely, and well-informed decisions. We partner closely with IT teams to provide everything they need, from actionable tools to analyst guidance, ensuring they deliver measurable results for their organizations.

What Is a Blueprint?

A blueprint is designed to be a roadmap, containing a methodology and the tools and templates you need to solve your IT problems.

Each blueprint can be accompanied by a Guided Implementation that provides you access to our world-class analysts to help you get through the project.

Guided Implementations

This guided implementation is an eight call advisory process.

Guided Implementation #1 - Review Talent
Call #1 - Scope requirements, objectives, and your specific challenges.
Call #2 - Review business priorities and clarify criteria weighting.
Call #3 - Review key role criteria. Explain information collection process.
Call #4 - Review risk and readiness assessments.
Guided Implementation #2 - Plan Succession
Call #1 - Analyze gaps between key roles and successors for key considerations.
Call #2 - Give feedback and recommendations on critical knowledge risks.
Guided Implementation #3 - Transfer Knowledge
Call #1 - Review selected transfer methods.
Call #2 - Analyze role transition plans for flags.