Resources
Planning IT from demand to budget
Migration to an integrated process
The conventional IT planning process involves selecting and approving budgets for new business demands before appraising the architecture.
As the maturity of the architecture function grows, a hybrid process may be adopted, in which the initial demand request is passed through a preliminary architectural assessment in support of the project approval, and then referred back to the application architecture management function for detailed consideration once the project commences.
Ultimately, an integrated planning approach can be considered in which thorough appraisal of the technical issues is a constant facet of the process, see figure below.
Planning IT from demand to budget
alfabet’s solution planningIT supports an integrated process to meet the IT planning challenge from demand to budget. This modular, scalable solution comprises a Logical IT Inventory for transparency and focused modules that align IT investments with business objectives.
- The Logical IT Inventory captures the as-is landscape with sufficient detail to support any IT project or planning task.
- The Business Demand Management module documents demands and their technical and strategic alignment to define project proposals and track demands through the system.
- The Application Architecture Management module supports detailed analysis of as-is and to-be architectures to compare scenarios and business cases for defined projects, perform gap analysis, and prepare migration plans.
- The Enterprise Architecture Management module is used to define standards and guidelines, analyze and assess the application portfolio (redundancies, costs and usage levels), and consolidate target architectures.
- The Program Portfolio module is used to assign defined projects to programs and conduct bottom up and top-down analyses of budgets and programs.
- The Enterprise Strategy and Master Planning module is used to analyze and assess the application portfolio (redundancies, costs and usage levels), consolidate locally developed target architectures, and create an IT master plan.
- The Value Management module is used to document and align business and IT strategies and to define and assign KPIs, roles and project evaluation criteria.
- The Release Management module derives operational instructions for deployment and communication with CMDBs from approved solution plans.
- The Compliance Management module is used define a centralized framework and the relevant data to make compliance checks more efficient, perform and manage compliance evaluations, and audit for adherence to the control structure and correctness of the evaluated objects.
Streamlined data collection and navigation processes encourage widespread user communities to update content. Any member of the organization can access the system by clicking a web link, while simple screens and prompts facilitate error-proof data collection. The system also assigns update responsibilities to named individuals. An easy to use GUI supports power users and occasional visitors.
