The choice of which framework to use is in part driven by whatever business management and planners are comfortable with implementing. Their value is that they create a dictionary that translates from business-strategy speak into IT-strategy speak and back again. However the best framework in the world is of little use if IT and the business do not use it together.

Creating a complete contribution strategy. An all too common roadblock to creating a good IT strategy is the wrong management climate. Wrong means that businesspeople do not want to work with IT to jointly discover IT possibilities for their parts of the business.

If the CIO and IS lack credibility, IS's contribution will come to naught. The stronger the credibility of the CIO and IS, the more the enterprise will recognize IS's contribution to competitive advantage.

The quality of the CIO's relationships with business executives determines the conversations with those executives about how IT can contribute to competitive advantage. These relationships hinge on trust and credibility, both of which take time, follow-through and the right sort of competencies in the IT team.

IT governance now encompasses business strategic planning. IT governance is evolving to ensure that multi-level, multi-disciplinary teams pursue business-IT links.

Many enterprises have developed their IT governance model to oversee their IT delivery strategy. Principles are set for the IT organization, and decision rights are clarified for IT architecture, infrastructure, business applications and investments. Such a governance framework involves business executives in IT decision making, but not IT executives in business decision making.

IT executives need to be involved in business unit governance. That's a challenge for two reasons. First, business units often don't have a clearly defined governance model comparable to IT governance. Second, IT executives have not, for the most part, been involved in business unit decision making.

To get enterprise governance to the point where IT is involved in setting business strategy, CIOs need to work closely with their senior business peers to understand their strategy formulation process - and to agree when and in what forum IT should participate. Senior business leaders are generally amenable to this discussion if the CIO and IT have credibility in their delivery strategy.

One way of doing this is through the use of an IT strategy council. Such a council would include senior representatives from the major business units and be chaired by either an IT or other executive.

IT needs business-friendly competencies. Having the right number of people in IT is not the issue these days. Having the right sort of skills is. Many IT staffs are too technical. What's needed now are business consulting skills.

To create a contribution strategy, IT needs people who can work with the business to ferret out ideas to improve business performance and positioning. Contribution strategies are business-specific. So IT needs a great deal of insight into how the business they are working with actually functions - and how it could function better. Business acumen is especially needed in the innovation and enhancement areas. With such in-depth understanding, IT can create credible contribution strategies.

Besides business competencies, IT also needs staff with behavioural competencies that fit well with the business's desired behaviours. Creating and maintaining high-quality relationships require people with high emotional intelligence. That's a behavioural competency, and, although it may be more difficult to acquire than technical competencies, it is crucial to thinking and acting like the business.

Measure your success. Measuring the success of a contribution strategy is difficult. At the end of the day, who is to say whether these ideas were the product of a systematic contribution strategy or just a happy accident? To paraphrase the famously lucky golfer Gene Sarazen, it seems that the more effort an enterprise puts into its contribution strategy, the more happy accidents it gets.

An effective form of measurement is a monthly scorecard, which uses a tangible set of measures to report on progress against the plan to the IT steering committee. Another technique is to report against milestones and financial targets in the original plan.

These progress reports need to include soft measures, too. For example, success might measure whether IT is being engaged by the business or whether the business can now do things that it could only dream of three years before.

Toward a complete IT strategy. CIOs and IS planners know how to define IT strategies for delivering information technology and systems. However, an IT delivery strategy is not enough. When those same CIOs and planners point up the need for better business-technology strategy alignment, the IT strategy is incomplete. It lacks an IT contribution strategy.

Completing the IT strategy means communicating what IS will deliver, as well as its contribution to competitive advantage.

Without both, CIOs and IS planners will continue to fight for enterprise resources, attention and relevance with one arm tied behind their back, and conventional wisdom will continue to be proved wanting.

Andrew Rowsell-Jones is vice president and research director for Gartner's CIO Executive Programs