The addition he would make is a risk scorecard that is equally important as the business strategy scorecard, and he would advise companies to stress test their IT strategies.

This made me wonder how CIOs should be stress testing their IT strategies, and if they have people in place paying attention to market shifts that could impact the ability of IT to support changing business needs.

There are a lot of what-if scenarios that financial institutions failed to consider. For example, many banks didn’t have a what-if scenario in place for declining housing prices, or a flat-out housing market bust, and the impact that would have on their asset holdings, Kaplan said. It’s not that they didn’t see the signs that the housing market was heading south — they just didn’t have a plan in place to account for that scenario.

And the banks had plenty of models and software in place, but they didn’t have people dedicated to identifying what-if scenarios as the markets began to shift and customer needs changed.

“I don’t think it was a lack so much in software, but a lack of imagination. Maybe [the banks] didn’t want to think that the good times had a possibility of ending,” Kaplan said.

CIOs have seen their share of good times coming to a close, between this recession and the dot-com bubble bursting. But I don’t really hear much about CIOs stress testing IT strategies. What you mostly hear about is stress testing as it applies to security or network and application performance.

What if your outsourcing provider goes out of business? What if the business decides to discontinue a product line or introduce a new supply channel? What if you have to cut your staff in half — what happens then to your project queue? These are but a few what-if scenarios that could derail IT strategies.

Kaplan also shared his thoughts on how IT can help the business measure the value of IT investments and how CIOs can make IT more valuable to the business. A key way to elevate IT strategies with the business is to embed IT in a business product or service, akin to the FedEx tracking model, he said.

Read more in the first part of a two-part Q&A with Kaplan. And let us know about the what-if scenarios you’re preparing for. Email ctorode@techtarget.com.

Not surprisingly, the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression made its impression. Tactical decisions outweighed IT strategic planning for CIOs in 2009 — a lot more, for some.

The Doe Run Co.’s Sharon Gietl, for example, went from spending 40% to 60% of her time on strategy to devoting 80% to 90% on tactics in 2009. Gietl said her IT strategy can be summed up as “moving the business forward.” Last year, she was figuring out whom and what to cut to help keep the company afloat.

The salient fact in my follow-up interview with Gietl, however, was that everybody else at Doe Run was doing the same. Ron Washington, CIO at Ergon, a petroleum products company, told us he met the greater demands for operational duties by working longer hours, just like — you guessed it — everybody else on his team. CIOs did what they had to do help their companies survive 2009.

CIO goal: 80% on strategy?

In my survey follow-up, I also asked analysts and career experts if the shift to tactics in 2009 signals a step backward for the CIO career. The answer, for the most part, was no. Extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures. In normal times, if there is such a thing anymore, the ratio between tactics and strategy will depend on the maturity of the company, said consultant Bruce Barnes, offering an analogy to the automobile. Steering is up front, with the driver’s focus on the future destination and the many possible impediments to reaching it. The tactical application of the energy to get you there — making the wheels turn forward — is in the back of the car. The less mature or operationally efficient an organization, the more time the CIO will have to spend on that tactical drive train, and the slower the trip to reach his or her strategic goals, Barnes said.

Of course, the elephant in the room — the fraught part of the question — is whether there is a right balance between IT strategic planning and short-term tactical decisions for those CIOs determined to drive business value.

Barnes gave it a shot: “The CIO’s goal needs to be getting to the point where about 80% of his/her time is being spent steering and watching/planning the road ahead … as well as enjoying the ride.”

I’d like to hear what you consider the ideal balance between IT strategy and tactics in your job and why — and, oh yes, if you’re enjoying the ride.