Resources
IT Planning That Works
The IT Planning Dynamic Duo: Process and Information
In any large enterprise, changes in strategy and technology result in new demands and opportunities imposing constant volatility on the original plan to get from the current to the target architecture (and the milestones in between). It means, in fact, that the original plan no longer exists in the form it was: new demands beget new IT initiatives which will change at least the planned milestones if not the final target architecture. An IT organization must embrace this volatility and implement a steady, continuous process and information management to manage it – adapting and always moving towards the target architecture. Hence, IT Planning cannot be performed as an annual exercise if it is to be effective. It needs to be done continuously in a way that constantly delivers increasing and optimized business value. IT Planning is not about drawing static pictures of various architecture states and then frequently redrawing them to keep up with re-planning requirements. It’s about being on top of architecture change: capturing the state of each individual architecture element (operational, in development or planned), managing the changes to these states and ensuring that the changes are transparent to all stakeholders as they are being made.
This demonstrates the importance of process and information – and the necessity for their integration with each other. Whereas the documentation of the current architecture is important and can often show redundancies in which savings can be made, the “As-Is” situation is not really the problem. And whereas it’s important to have a plan on how to achieve the target architecture, this is also not really the problem. The problem is the coordination of the 20 – 200 transformational projects that are being planned at one time – as is the situation in any large enterprise. This is magnified by the desire to run various scenarios for each of these transformational projects during the course of planning, assessment and decision-making. How can the solution designer or project planner ensure that he or she’s not running the risk of adverse impact from another solution designer planning another project? Or planning a solution that will latently rear its ugly head in other solutions? Every designer, planner, business analyst and architect – in short, every decisionmaker - needs to be aware of every planned and executed change to the IT landscape.
This is IT Planning that works.
The IT Planning Framework
So what activities encompass IT Planning, what aspects of the enterprise are the focus of the activities and what processes integrate the activities into a collaborative process that will create an information base to support effective and consistent decisions for deploying and managing IT? There are four aspects of the enterprise that determine what IT will be implemented and thus need to be balanced across the planning process:
- strategy and demands
- enterprise architecture
- program portfolio
- cost and budgets
Demand and Strategy:
Demands and strategy provide direction for IT. By linking business goals with the IT that supports them, or is needed to support them, IT’s mandate becomes clear. Identifying and managing this relationship is critical for being able to make the right decisions on what changes need to be made to the IT landscape to drive business improvements.
Enterprise Architecture:
IT Planning has to be architecture-based because it is the enterprise architecture that delivers the building plans for IT – which artifacts will be used, what is their purpose and how they relate to each other. Enterprise Architecture is necessary for understanding the intrinsic dependency of the IT/business relationship, for example, the dependency between business capabilities and services. Additionally, the enterprise architecture is at a level of abstraction that is suitable for planning – too much detail, for example, at the level of project planning, only makes the planning process unnecessarily complex and slow. For this reason, operational IT management solutions such as a CMDB or BSM solution are unsuitable for planning as well.
Program Portfolio:
The Program Portfolio delivers the plan of action for IT. Key to the effectiveness of Program Portfolio Management is the seamless integration with Enterprise Architecture Management processes so that architectural risk is minimized and opportunities to migrate, enhance or retire current applications or other IT artefacts are not ignored.
Cost and Budgets:
Costs and Budgets provide the range in which IT change needs to be carried out. Cost Management needs to be conducted with an awareness of the enterprise architecture and project portfolio. In doing so, it allow enterprises to map their budget to value-producing IT components and transformational initiatives.
