I was introduced to a great bunch of people a few months ago, and I finally made one of their meetings. 

Here’s the site for the AITP.  Toward the middle-top of the landing page, simply select “Chapters,” (or click Chapters – I’m so good to you!)  -  then select your state and city. 

In my case, I’m near Columbus, Ohio.  I spent close to three hours there this past Wednesday evening – and still wanted more.  There was a range of professional people:  From academia to private business; from senior management to tech types; and folks of all ages.  In taking full stock of technology’s delivery to business, with associated requirements and engagements, you couldn’t have asked for a more diverse, representative, and smart group. 

There is simply no substitute for getting out of your own myopic box – that is, your organization, your travails, your granular wins, losses, and pressures – in engaging with intelligent and knowledgeable people.  (And, I’m susceptible to “silo’ing” too).

We gain the benefit of hearing about all sorts of experiences, solutions, challenges…  methods for persevering; what works and what doesn’t.  And, there’s a fair measure of humor to be had… who can’t use that when lifting, sweating, and sometimes dancing in The Business-Technology Weave?   :^ )

Kudos to the chapter’s President, Cara, and all involved.  If you’re in the Columbus, Ohio area, stop in at the next meeting.  Drag along your boss, co-workers, a friend or two from another organization…  If you’re “IT,” get a business counterpart to come… and vice-versa for “business” people.

If we’re lucky, we’ll see each other there – I’ll look forward to it.  I would like to hear about your solutions… your overall challenges.

The Association of Information Technology Professionals – regardless of location, check out your local chapter. 

I think you’ll be very happy you did.

NP:  The London Howlin’ Wolf Sessions –  Chess LP; 1968 Thorens TD-125 turntable; Shure V15VxRM cartridge, signal chain to die for, Peerless drivers in ’65 Jensen cabs w/ original crossovers… those who know, know.   :^ )

Three Plan Types

IT’s general support to the Business-Technology Weave can be effectively planned and managed through three major plan types.  These are the high-level, across-the-board support plans – which acknowledge and mark the upcoming projects. 

We’ll refer to these IT-Business support plans as the Five-Year Plan, the One-Year Plan, and the Individual Action Plan.  You may wish to label these plans differently in your organization; you may need to look further into the future with a ten-year plan – or more.  But here we’ll use these generic names for ease.  Let’s take a brief look at each plan type, how it relates to the other plan types, and how together they help maintain your directed change, and adjustment to outside, impacting, change. 

The Five-Year Plan

The Five-Year Plan begins with the upcoming (next) calendar year, and extends through each of the upcoming five years.  The upcoming first year becomes the organization’s detailed One-Year Plan, upon the turn of that new year.  Therefore, the first year of the Five-Year Plan should contain everything you intend to do in the upcoming year.  Since the One-Year Plan is the near-term focus for what needs doing, it should be as detailed as necessary – it is executable in that it has been vetted and sanctioned, is budgeted, has been announced, and all preparatory steps have been taken for each element of the plan.  It matches the organization’s business expectations, needs, and overall business plan for the year.  Also, the One-Year Plan spawns all of the detailed project plans and individual action plans as necessary for the organization’s various managed projects and changes.  The organization’s overall project management benefits from the coordinated tracking on the Five and One-Year plans; supports, dependencies and competition for resources can be adjusted in maintaining optimal results.

The Plan’s Progression:  Years Two, Three, Four and Five are progressively less detailed, respectively, as you consider periods of time that are further out from “now.”  Looking out to Year Five, we can see that in a year’s time, its detail and plan moves into the Year Four slot; the former Year Four is now Year Three, and so on.  At each turn-of-year, a new Year Five is added to the back of the plan.  As each year of the Five-Year Plan marches toward you, it is massaged into better focus; adjusted according to changing business priorities or objectives; availability of resources; advancing technology; changing environment; and new methods and practices.  There is an ongoing maintenance for the organization’s alignment of business and technology.  Eventually, our original Year Five clicks forward, having evolved and focused according to needs, until it moves into position as the One-Year Plan.  In this manner, we find that a properly maintained Five-Year Plan can efficiently generate a comprehensive, executable, sanctioned, and aligned One Year Plan.  This means that an organization’s staff is fully informed and qualified to tackle the forthcoming changes, and changes align with business needs in fulfilling expectations accurately, comprehensively, and efficiently.  

At any given time, we can expect that Year-Two doesn’t have quite the focus or detail as Year-One – however, most major initiatives are known and a fair amount of detail is present.  The more distant years will have large bullet items without a lot of detail, because technology and business factors change, sometimes radically, over a period of years.  Your Years-Four and Five may even contain rather whimsical “wish-list” type of items, just to keep them on the radar.  Your organization may have potential mergers or acquisitions under consideration, which will require different technology and business practices – these considerations can call for placeholders on the plan, ensuring some exploratory discussion and gathering of pertinent information.  These efforts establish and define a ‘where we are,’ also project a ‘where we’re going,’ and ensure the start of a bona-fide, progressive, route for future actualization. 

The Plan’s Direction and Flexibility:  Planned items can go one of two ways:  Some things become certified as bona-fide objectives, and additional detail is accumulated and added to the plan.  Just as importantly, other things may be dropped due to a change in business priorities.  Likewise, other things may pop on as completely new items.  The flexibility of the plan means that you may “bump back” certain items over the course of a couple months, or even years – maintaining them as placeholders – perhaps until a return-on-investment threshold is reached.  Other things may “heat up” and slide forward. 

At the same time, the Five-Year Plan cannot simply be a receptacle for every crazy brainstorm or trendy practice that comes along.  It must represent a managed plan that adheres to the true needs of the organization, as best as you can determine them at any given time. 

The Five-Year Plan (or any long range plan) also does something else that’s very important:  it should not only expose dependencies, but should also show vulnerabilities and strengths.  For example, if your plan is to implement a new content management system in the course of the next few years, you may need to consider an upgrade to your hardware platform and infrastructure.  Your plan may have to accommodate new fileservers and workstations, for example.  You’ll have a significant training and support burden.  Once that decision is made, it may be evident that another project that was waiting for these upgrades can now move forward.  The preparation and timing for implementation of many things will coordinate nicely through the plan. 

Remember:  As the first year of the Five-Year Plan becomes the current year, that part becomes the new year’s One-Year Plan.  The Five-Year Plan adds a year at the end of its range, is populated as necessary over the course of time, and all years are updated and tuned accordingly.  A properly maintained Five-Year Plan not only means that you know where you are, and where you’re going, but also means that you’ll always have your One-Year Plan ready at the beginning of each year.  In fact, you’ll have one-year plans under development for each of the next five years.  That is managing change as a continuum.  Also keep in mind that you can project further if you feel you need to.  Just remember to match your time and effort to the likelihood that a particular plan objective will actually be undertaken.

Coming:  The One Year Plan, and the Individual Action Plan.

October 31^st:On this day in 1956 Brooklyn, NY ended streetcar service.

I was speaking about plans and projects with someone the other day.  As far as challenges go –  next to people – change and the associated planning is the most difficult element of The Weave.

Change is a continuum.  For the organization, something is continuously changing that affects it:  Change is happening within, and it is happening in the surrounding environment.  All change must be weighed and assessed for impact, and there must be a ready posture for doing this.  Too many organizations think of change as something mounted in a burst; “now we can rest.”  This is why so many organizations seem to take action at the back edge of the envelope:  change for them is constituted as an addressal of problems under pressure-filled and even desperate circumstances. 

When change is mounted under pressure, there is usually a failure to fully survey where you are.  It may seem obvious, but in planning a destination (that is, a project’s destination), with appropriate directions, you must know your point of origin:  the organization’s true station and status.   You must survey business process, your technical enablements, and your people.   If you don’t know where you are, the route to destination is a broken one – reaching the destination is painful, inefficient, and sometimes not even achieved.

The smart organization doesn’t disengage from change – nothing around the org stands still if it does.  Therefore, the management of change isn’t just some reaction to what is happening internally, or some engagement that is “forced” by outside change.  You must present a position of readiness, so that you have the “muscle” in place to exercise change.  You must be able to forecast, develop, and schedule.  This requirement for readiness presents itself to the individual, to groups, and to the organization in equal measure, as we’ll see. 

Today, we need to realize and acknowledge that even change changes.  How does change change?  Consider:  While we’re busy implementing a documented, sanctioned change, some of our assumptions, support products, fiscal supports, regulatory requirements, business practices, etc., haven’t done us the courtesy of standing still.  Further, various projects and their change can compete for common resources; they can shift in schedule and crash into one another; they can have interlocking dependencies and impacts that must be carefully coordinated.  Any time you make a course correction, an accommodation, an expansion in scope, etc., you are making a change to change. 

Circumstances such as these, and the quality of planning in your organization, yields one of two things:

1)     A house of cards, or

2)     A solid structure of mutually reinforcing initiatives and projects. 

Because things are shifting and evolving around us all the time, we need plans that have enough structure to guide us effectively, but that are not so rigid as to “straightjacket” us.  We don’t want to be implementing so-so or broken solutions today that looked great yesterday.  We don’t want the organization to be thrashing as it attempts to mount major changes without regard to prudent sequence, or that are even in direct competition with each other.

High Level Plans in Support to Detailed Plans

From a high level view, we need to plan support to the Business-Technology Weave.  High-level plans should identify, guide, assist, and facilitate that which you wish to accomplish.  They provide the general documentation and a calendar position for a collective of projects and initiatives, the sum total of which represent the organization’s forward thrust, and each of which have their own detailed, operational plans as separate documentation. 

Aligning an organization’s detailed plans, projects, and initiatives is similar to tuning a car:  you want all of your cylinders firing in proper sequence and timing.  When properly tuned, your car not only has maximum power in ‘getting to where you’re going,’ it is making the best possible use of resources (in the form of highest gas mileage, and with minimal wear to the engine).  Your organization’s individual operational plans are like cylinders – each contributing to the organization’s forward movement relative to time and circumstances.  You must ensure that each of these plans “fires” in proper sequence, so as to assist the next plan – or at the very least not impinge upon its “firing.”  You must get the collective of projects and initiatives making a concerted best-use of resources.

At the same time, any higher-level plan must have some flexibility in order to make allowance for an adjustment in schedule or direction.  Yet, they can’t be so ill defined as to provide no structure at all.  And, we have to preserve order:  an order in change, and the order of the organization.  How do we effectively manage this trick?

IT’s Onus

If you’ve followed The Weave over time, you know that we’ve discussed the importance of communication between Business and IT.  And we know that it’s wise today for Business to make known its planning and direction for early participation and contribution by the organization’s technical investment.  Certainly Business must facilitate IT’s understanding of required support to business initiatives, evolving technology needs, and changing environmental factors (such as security, expansion, new regulatory requirement, etc.).  But realize that whether this happens effectively or not, IT still exists for, and at the pleasure of, Business.  The onus is on IT to support, align with, and enhance Business’ plans for business.  IT must dig where and as necessary.

There is plenty of chance to do that, so recognize your opportunities:  There will be the obvious occasion for plans’ creation and adjustment within specific, formal, plan meetings – but also formally and informally in the course of budget meetings, staff meetings, board meetings, etc.  The exercise of snapping them into focus happens largely in the BIT forum (The Business Implementation Team), and in specific IT plan meetings:  but anywhere that there’s a discussion of futures planning contributes to the overall opportunity to assess change, and to effect the “gel” of a plan. 

Further, in a changing world, there is the onus on IT to “hear” and garner everything, as a weigh on a scale of possible change requirements.

Coming:  Part II – Three Plan Types.

NP:  Bessie Smith, on original 78rpm.