* Proper strategic planning of IT initiatives
Last week, we talked about why you’d use an outsourcer to help you develop a strategic plan. We also talked about the need for a corporate strategic plan, upon which the technical decision maker can build his or her strategic plan for the IT enterprise.
Since the year is just starting and lots of shops are in their fiscal-year turnover cycle, this may be an ideal time to think about developing a solid strategic plan. Here are some tips to think about:
1. Think about your company’s published strategic plan and how your IT organization will map itself to those goals and objectives. This will be your focal point going forward, whether you outsource some or all of your strategic planning activities, or whether you decide to go it alone. If you’ve never worked with strategic planning before, outsourcing the work in a mentored environment is an ideal way to go. There are many organizations capable of facilitating your strategic planning work. A simple Google search will turn up pages of hits.
2. As an IT group, with or without a facilitator, you should develop a one- or two-sentence mission and vision statement. The mission describes what you are in business to accomplish, while the vision describes how you’re going to accomplish it. For example, your mission might say: “The IT organization at Acme Widgets exists to provide exemplary computing services to our end users.” And your IT vision might read: “We will do this by assuring that our end users have the computing services they require when they require them, regardless of the nature of those services.” (In this article, the vision statement is purposely broad. You might want to pare it down to fit the distinct elements you are most concerned about.)
3. Now the hard part: Developing goals and objectives. This part involves intense interaction with the business decision-makers responsible for setting the tone of the enterprise. Robust communications are the order of the day at goal- and objective-setting time. Drawing from the corporate strategic plan and input from the business managers, you want to know what your customers’ needs and desires are so you can map the IT enterprise’s organizational goals to those needs. (Note that some people do not differentiate between goals and objectives. But I like to think of a goal as a statement about what I’m going to do: “Assure that perimeter security is succinctly managed” might be a goal of mine, for example. In my mind, objectives imply some sort of success metric: “Perimeter security will be 100% free from exploit, intrusion or hacks”, for example.)
4. Once you have fleshed out the plan, it is time to visit your IT team to gain input and acceptance regarding the plan. Staff members will likely provide comments or input on the goals you have laid down. Making them feel like they are a part of the decision-making process, at least from an information input point of view, assists with the overall buy-in of the plan. Again, skilled facilitators can bring great value to you at this point in the planning cycle.
5. Out of all this information, the key initiatives that must be undertaken for your organization’s success will bob to the surface (at least for trained facilitators). The key is in elucidating those initiatives then prioritizing them. You do not have to think that all initiatives must be accomplished this year. Develop a roadmap that points to specific target months and years for a given initiative – something narrow enough that you have a target to shoot at, but broad enough to give you wiggle room in terms of your planning efforts. You can then determine if you will be able to meet the timeline requirements with the resources that you have. If not, either the timelines need to be revised, you will need more resources, or you can turn to an outsourcer to assist in implementing selected portions of the plan.
Once you have discovered and fleshed out your organization’s initiatives, it should be obvious where you need to solicit technical, managerial, organizational development or business outsourced assistance. Suppose, for example, you have identified an initiative called: “Create a Certification Authority and implement internal end-user Kerberos authentication compliance by July 30, 2005”, but no one on your team has the first clue how to do that. It’s clear that you’ll need to bring in outside help to assist. The point with strategic planning and the initiatives that flow from the process is that these are must-do projects, so you know and can explain that your outsourced dollars are being spent on the right things.
6. Finalize the plan (complete with key initiatives) and publish to all relevant stakeholders (including all staff members). By publishing the plan, you set a clear tone for your organization’s direction – you say what you are going to do and tacitly imply what you are not going to do.
All of this, of course, sounds easier than it actually is, especially if you are buried in an avalanche of projects and operations problems. However, by formulating a strategic plan and sticking to it, you will find that decisions are much easier to make because you have a yardstick by which to compare to the relevance of what your organization is doing with requests that come in. Prioritization, project management and budgeting become much easier when you have a roadmap by which you govern your organization.
