Provides a framework which acts as an intelligent constraint to promote focused thinking. The reason strategy—any strategy—matters is that it allows you to focus resources, which are always finite. Strategy is really about choice-making…what to do and what not to do. As a general rule, respect “the box.” The goal is not to shingle the canvas with sticky notes, but to populate it with highly focused answers to framing questions. It fosters visual thinking and allows you to get a systems perspective of key strategic choices on a single sheet. Understanding how goals, assumptions, and action all fit together literally produces a “big picture.” That big picture is an important artifact of the very thinking used to produce it, because it delivers a standalone, at-a-glance view of a cloud strategy and the thinking used to produce it. It also allows you to play and experiment with choices in an iterative way. The Cloud Strategy Canvas, like similar business canvases, is completed using 3×3 sticky notes. With the exception of one section (Applications to Move), you do not write directly on the canvas, you write on the sticky notes, which are then placed on the canvas. This enables mess-less brainstorming and thought-editing.

When used as a team tool, it allows all voices to be heard, captured, and integrated into strategy development in real time and, again, in a very focused way.