Section 1
Three-Horizon Roadmap
Sustainable IT programmes fail when organisations try to do everything at once. A three-horizon roadmap sequences progress: quick wins build credibility, foundation work embeds sustainability into operations, transformation drives systemic change.
Three-Horizon Roadmap: Sequence progress without fragility
Why three horizons?
Trying to establish measurement, governance, procurement reform, and operational improvements simultaneously typically delivers none of them well. Early slippage destroys programme credibility. The three-horizon model allows sequencing that lets foundations set, early wins build momentum, and transformation become achievable because the operating model is already in place.
Section 2
Strategy Document Builder
Click each section to expand and see what a credible sustainable IT strategy document should cover. A strategy document has eight components, each serving a different purpose.
What it should cover:
- Emissions baseline: Scope 1, 2, and 3 coverage: data quality and gaps
- Current maturity level: where is the organisation on reporting/optimisation/avoidance?
- Existing capabilities: measurement systems, governance, tools, people
- Gaps: measurement gaps, governance gaps, operational practice gaps
- Baseline year and methodology for future comparison
What it should cover:
- Reduction targets: absolute or intensity-based, by scope
- Timeline: 2025, 2030, 2050, depending on corporate strategy
- Alignment: how do IT targets connect to corporate SBTi or net-zero commitments?
- Science basis: are targets aligned to climate science requirements?
- Interim checkpoints: 2025, 2030 milestones for tracking progress
What it should cover:
- Which impact areas to focus on: data centre, cloud, hardware, software engineering, procurement?
- Which levers: efficiency, avoidance, enablement, offsetting?
- Sequence: what comes first, what comes second, based on materiality and feasibility?
- Constraints: budget, skills, governance capacity. What limits the pace?
- Dependencies: what needs to happen first before other initiatives can succeed?
What it should cover:
- Ownership: who owns the strategy, who owns execution, who owns reporting?
- Decision forums: what governance forums exist, how often do they meet, what decisions do they own?
- Escalation paths: when do decisions go to the board, when to the CIO, when to the CMO?
- Cross-functional engagement: how does IT sustainability connect to procurement, facilities, operations, compliance?
- Reporting cadence: quarterly, annual. To whom, what metrics, what level of detail?
What it should cover:
- Financial requirements: capex, opex, people, external support needed
- Expected return: cost savings, risk reduction, strategic value. Over what timeframe?
- Payback period: when does the programme recover its investment cost?
- Sensitivity: how do results change if key assumptions shift?
- Comparison to status quo: what is the cost of not doing this?
What it should cover:
- Carbon metrics: absolute and intensity, by scope, with targets and tracking
- Operational metrics: waste reduction, energy efficiency, utilisation rates
- Governance metrics: execution rate, risk reduction, compliance status
- Business metrics: cost savings, revenue impact, talent metrics
- Reporting: internal dashboards, quarterly reports, external disclosure frameworks
What it should cover:
- Execution risk: can we deliver the programme at the pace and quality required?
- Data risk: can we maintain measurement quality and close gaps over time?
- Market and regulatory risk: how do we respond to regulatory changes or competitive moves?
- Stakeholder risk: how do we maintain support if early results are slower than expected?
- Mitigation: what contingencies do we have, what triggers escalation?
What it should cover:
- Corporate sustainability goals: net-zero targets, science-based targets, ESG commitments
- IT is contribution: which corporate targets have IT as a material contributor?
- Enabling role: where can IT enable other functions' sustainability goals?
- Stakeholder expectations: investor, customer, regulatory, employee expectations
- External reporting: CSRD, TCFD, SBTi, GRI. How does the strategy support compliance?
Section 3
OKR Framework
OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) translate strategic ambition into measurable operational progress. An Objective is what you want to achieve. Key Results are the specific, measurable outcomes that define success.
Example OKRs for sustainable IT: 3-year cycle
Key Results must be measurable and time-bound
Weak: "Improve cloud efficiency." Strong: "Reduce average cloud resource utilisation from 12% idle to 7% idle by end of Q4." Weak Key Results sound like good intentions. Strong Key Results have a baseline, a target, a deadline, and a method of measurement. This clarity is what separates an aspirational document from an operational roadmap.
Section 4
90-Day Sprint Plan
Quick wins in the first 90 days build credibility with stakeholders, generate momentum, and prove that the programme can deliver. The sprint plan identifies 2–3 highly visible, easily demonstrated improvements with dedicated teams and clear ownership.
Why 90 days?
90 days is long enough to achieve meaningful results, but short enough that momentum stays. 30 days is too fast for most real changes. 6 months is too long: stakeholder support can evaporate before you have proof. A quarter provides a natural rhythm, aligns with business planning cycles, and fits existing governance forums. Quick wins in Q1 build credibility for the three-year strategy that follows.
Section 5
Seven elements of a target operating model.
A strategy without an operating model is a slide deck. The operating model converts good intentions into a system that survives budget cycles, leadership changes, and the pressure of operational priorities. Seven elements are required.
Clear scope
What is in scope and what is not. Which parts of the estate, which supply chain categories, which reporting obligations. Scope creep kills programmes. Define the boundary and defend it.
Baseline view
Current state: footprint by category, confidence level by data source, known gaps. The baseline is the reference point for all future progress claims. Without it, improvement is assertion.
Priority domains
Where the greatest impact and leverage sit. Not everything matters equally. A materiality assessment identifies the domains that warrant the most attention and investment.
TOM with forums and owners
Governance forums, decision rights, named owners, escalation paths. The operating model must plug into existing governance, not create a parallel structure that is easy to ignore.
Phased roadmap
Sequenced delivery across three horizons. Quick wins first, foundation second, transformation third. Each phase with clear deliverables, owners, and success criteria.
Decision logic for trade-offs
How the programme resolves competing priorities: cost versus resilience, speed versus scrutiny, growth versus control. Without explicit trade-off logic, every conflict escalates or stalls.
Maturity view
Multi-dimensional maturity assessment across measurement, governance, operations, suppliers, and strategy. Provides an honest view of current capability and a target state to work toward.
Why seven, not three
Many programmes define scope, baseline, and roadmap but stop there. The missing elements are governance (Element 4), trade-off logic (Element 6), and maturity (Element 7). These determine whether the programme survives its first year. A roadmap without governance is a wish list. A programme without trade-off logic stalls at the first hard decision.
Section 6
Materiality as a strategy tool.
Materiality is often treated as a reporting concept. In GreenOps, it is a strategy tool. It determines where you focus attention, investment, and governance effort. Getting materiality right is the difference between a programme that tries to do everything and one that moves the needle.
The materiality discipline
For each domain in your estate (data centres, cloud, end-user devices, software, network, supply chain), assess two dimensions: the scale of the environmental impact and the degree of operational control or influence you have. Domains with high impact and high control are the priority. Domains with low impact and low control are not worth the governance overhead. This is not a reporting exercise. It is a resource allocation decision that determines where the programme creates genuine value.
Knowledge Check · Module 11 · Q1
In the three-horizon roadmap, what is the primary goal of Horizon 1 (Quick Wins)?
Select an answer to reveal the explanation.
✓ Correct: Option B
Horizon 1 is about building early credibility. Waste reduction projects (idle compute, storage cleanup, application retirement) are the most accessible quick wins because they create tangible cost savings alongside sustainability outcomes. This credibility is essential for securing stakeholder support and budget for the longer-term programme. It is not about achieving the full target. It is about proving the programme can deliver.
Knowledge Check · Module 11 · Q2
What is the key characteristic that distinguishes a strong Key Result from a weak one?
Select an answer to reveal the explanation.
✓ Correct: Option A
A weak Key Result reads like an intention: "Improve cloud efficiency." A strong one includes numbers, deadlines, and a measurable outcome: "Reduce idle cloud resources from 12% to 7% by end of Q4." This clarity is what converts a strategic ambition into an operational target that a team can own, execute against, and report progress on.
Knowledge Check · Module 11 · Q3
What is the primary reason for completing a 90-day sprint before moving to the full three-year programme?
Select an answer to reveal the explanation.
✓ Correct: Option C
The 90-day sprint is designed to create early wins that build credibility with the board, the business, and the team. Without visible early results, stakeholder support can erode: "we have been spending time and resources on this and have not seen any benefit." Quick wins on waste reduction generate cost savings alongside sustainability outcomes, which makes the programme easy to defend and allows you to secure support and resources for the longer term.
⏸ Pause & Reflect
Take 10–15 minutes. Write your answers down. Be specific.
Open discussion: What governance change is required to move from quarterly reporting to continuous improvement in sustainable IT?
Module 11: Key Takeaways
Three horizons (quick wins, foundation, transformation) prevents the programme from fragmenting. Start with credibility, build operating model, then drive transformation. Do not try all three at once.
A credible strategy document has eight components: current state, ambition, priorities, governance, investment, measurement, risks, and alignment. It is the shared reference point for execution.
Not every goal is an OKR. OKRs are specific, measurable, time-bound, and owned. They force clarity about what success actually looks like.
Quick wins in the first quarter generate cost savings, demonstrate feasibility, and build stakeholder support for the longer-term programme. Make them highly visible and easy to defend.
Strategy with no governance is aspiration. Governance with no strategy is process without purpose. You need both, integrated into existing decision-making forums.