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Cio.com provides insight into IT strategic planning with "8 IT strategic planning pitfalls" which we should consider and avoid in our IT planning:

• The Doorstop Plan: "This is not War and Peace. Aim for 15 pages, says Gartner VP Dave Aron, who saw one IT plan weigh in at 250 pages. Consider PowerPoint instead of Word as your medium of choice, says Cullen. It fosters brevity. And limit it to 25 slides."
• The Shelfware Plan: "There’s nothing as worthless as what Aron calls the ‘write once, read never’ plan. ‘The strategic plan needs to be a living thing,’ says IT consultant Laurie Orlov. To avoid seeing your plan become shelfware, keep the people who helped create it involved, have it handy and refer to it often. ‘One CIO I know starts every meeting with a strategy moment: He asks, how will our business win and how does this meeting help?’ says Aron."
• Don’t Wait ‘Til Next Year: "Strategic plans ‘require regular revalidation and refreshment,’ says Orlov. Michael Hites, CIO of New Mexico State University, updates his three times a year."
• The Devil Really Is in All Those Details: "Details don’t belong in the strategic plan. It should be a stake in the ground, says Orlov.
• Carved in Stone and Just as Heavy: "You don’t want to go the ‘we-agreed-to-that-and-we’ll-never-change-it’ route," says Orlov. Expect the unexpected. ‘What if the company suddenly makes an acquisition or there’s a leadership change?’ Cullen asks. Want to really elevate your plan? Include scenario or contingency planning."
• The English As a Second Language Trap: "Too many IT strategic plans are written in jargon. You’re setting a direction for IT to support the business. Do so in business terms…. Throw out the IT lingo. Connect your goals to key business drivers."
• One Size Doesn’t Fit All: "…Create customized versions of your plan to address the differing needs of the plan’s audiences—the executive team, the IT department, business unit heads and vendors/partners. At the very least, create a customized introduction or executive summary. The goal, says Cullen, is to have one strategy and several ways of presenting it."
• Shooting for the Stars: "Keep it real. ‘Don’t be too ambitious in your first plan,’ advises Cullen. ‘Don’t try to change everything.’ When it doubt, underpromise and overdeliver."

 

Do you have any tips from your experience that you can add to this list?

 

Technorati Tags: IT Strategy, IT, Planning, Strategy, Leadership, Management, Architecture, Mistakes

Andy Blumenthal describes the following these six goals that need to be addressed in an IT Strategy:

1. Information — delivering the right information to the right people at the right time; providing for information management, including information sharing, information assurance, privacy, accessibility, and records management.
2. Technology — developing and maintaining a sound, secure, reliable, cost-effective IT infrastructure that enables mission execution.
3. Process — supplying world-class service to customers, by providing defined, repeatable, and measurable processes for systems development life cycle, configuration management, change control, and problem resolution; also, facilitating business process improvement and reengineering.
4. People — ensuring the education, training, certification, and personal and professional development of IT staff.
5. Governance — managing IT though structured governance processes including capital planning and investment control, enterprise architecture, IT planning, and portfolio management.
6. Stewardship — administering resources including IT assets, finance, and human capital for the design, development, maintenance, and operation of IT solutions.

I do agree that these six goals provide the foundation for a sound IT strategic plan. Theses goals should then be supported by a set of SMART Strategic Objectives and a set of Actions that management is held accountable to execute.

 

Technorati Tags: IT, Strategy, Leadership, EA, Management, Planning, Objectives, Goals

The book "The Art of Systems Architecting" discusses the importance of heuristics as an architectural tool. The authors define a heuristic as follows:

"Heuristics are guides along the way - channel markings, direction signs, alerts, warnings, and anchorages - tools in the larger sense"

The word heuristic has it’s origin in the Greek word ‘heuriskein‘ which means "to find a way" or "to guide" in the sense of guiding a boat through treacherous waters. I liked this definition of a heuristic from Steve Pavlina:

"An heuristic is a rule for exploring a search space that can help you get close to an optimal solution when you cannot explore the entire search space."

Dave Snowden, discussing heuristics, provides the following insight:

"Heuristics are common sense sayings that make us think about things."

Heuristics are especially useful in decision-making, in providing guidance, and in solving ill-structured problems. There are primarily two types of heuristics:

• Descriptive heuristics: these describe a situation or context but do not provide any guidance on how to resolve it.
• Prescriptive heuristics: these provide guidance about what to do about a specific situation.

Carefully selected heuristics are great tools that architects can use to guide their journey into the unknown, they a great way to consciously apply the wisdom, insights, the lessons learned and gleaned from personal experiences and from the experiences of others. Heuristics are most useful when they are used as a set. Some example  heuristics are:

• The beginning is the most important part of the work - Plato, 4th Century B.C.
• Build and maintain options al long as possible in the design and implementation of complex systems. You will need them.
• In order to understand anything you must not try to understand everything.
• Politics, not technology, sets the limits of what technology is allowed to achieve.

Deliberately and consciously selecting a set of heuristics at the start of a project is a great way to reuse the wisdom gained from past experiences. A team discussion on the most appropriate heuristics that should be "top of mind" and used as a set of guides, shared by the team, to guide their journey. Heuristics are especially important given the increasing level of complexity and uncertainty in architecting large systems.

In book "The Art of Systems Architecting" the authors provide the following rules to consider when applying heuristics:

• If it works, then it’s useful.
• Knowing when and how to use a heuristic is as important as knowing the what and why.
• Heuristics work best when applied early to reduce the solution space.
• Strive for balance - too much of a good thing or complete elimination of a bad thing may make things worse not better.
• Practice, practice, practice.
• Heuristics aren’t reality either.

To conclude:

“Heuristics are an essential complement to analytics, particularly in situations where analysis alone cannot provide either insights, or guidelines.”

How much have you learned as an architect? Have you codified some of your lessons learned into succinct expressions or heuristics to guide future architecture efforts?

 

Technorati Tags: Heuristics, Principles, Architecture, Rules, Guidance

Photo by stilllearninghowtofly - W W Tribe Psychiatrist

 

Nothing happens until we plan and a good plans have goals and objectives. Setting goals and objectives correctly goes a long way towards the achievement of them. Before we dive into how to go about setting SMART objectives, it’s important to be aware of the difference between goals and objectives.

• Goals relate to our aspirations, purpose and vision. For example, I have a goal of becoming financially independent, this is a goal.
• Objectives is the battle plan, the stepping stones on the path towards the achievement of my goal.

 

Thus, a goal may consist of one or many objectives need to fulfilled to achieve the goal. For example, to become financially independent I would need to 1) get out of debt, 2) improve my savings and perhaps 3) start a business.

A well known method for setting meaningful objectives is through the use of the S.M.A.R.T. approach. Although the SMART approach seems to be well understood amongst managers, but I’ve found poorly practiced. S.M.A.R.T refers to the acronym that describes the key characteristics of meaningful objectives, these are:

• Specific (concrete, detailed, well defined)
• Measurable (numbers, quantity, comparison)
• Achievable (feasible, actionable)
• Realistic (considering resources)
• Time-Bound (a defined time line)

Lets look at each these characteristics in more detail…

Specific

Specific means that the objective is concrete, detailed, focused and well defined. Specific means that it’s results and action-orientated. Objective must be clear, emphasize action and describe the required outcome. Objectives need to communicate what you would like to see happen in concrete terms. To help set specific objectives it helps to ask:

• WHAT am I going to do? This are best written using strong, action verbs such as conduct, develop, build, plan, execute, etc. This helps your objective to be action-orientated and focuses on what’s most important.
• WHY is this important for me to do?
• WHO is going to do what? Who else need to be involved?
• WHEN do I want this to be completed?
• HOW am I going to do this?

“The successful man is the average man, focused.” - Unknown

Diagnostic Questions

• What exactly are we going to do, with or for whom?
• What strategies will be used?
• Is the objective well understood?
• Is the objective described with action verbs?
• Is it clear who is involved?
• Is it clear where this will happen?
• Is it clear what needs to happen?
• Is the outcome clear?
• Will this objective lead to the desired results?

Achievable

Objectives need to be achievable, if the objective is too far in the future, you’ll find it difficult to keep motivated and to strive to attain it. Objectives, unlike your aspirations and visions, need to be achievable to keep you motivated. I do feel that objectives need to stretch you, but not so far that you become frustrated and lose motivation.

Diagnostic Questions

• Can we get it done in the proposed timeframe?
• Do I understand the limitations and constraints?
• Can we do this with the resources we have?
• Has anyone else done this successfully?
• Is this possible?

Realistic

Objectives that are achievable, may not be realistic….. however, realistic does not mean easy. Realistic means that you have the resources to get it done. The achievement of an objective requires resources, such as, skills, money, equipment, etc. to the task required to achieve the objective. Whilst keeping objectives realistic, ensure that they stretch you. Most objectives are achievable but, may require a change in your priorities to make them happen.

Diagnostic Questions

• Do you have the resources available to achieve this objective?
• Do I need to revisit priorities in my life to make this happen?
• Is it possible to achieve this objective?

Measurable

If the objective is measurable, it means that the measurement source is identified and we are able to track the actions as we progress towards the objective. Measurement is the standard used for comparison. For example, what financially independence means to me, may be totally different compared to what is means for you. As it’s so often said if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it! It’s important to have measures that will encourage and motivate you on the way as you see the change occurring, this may require interim measures. Measurements go along way to help us to know when we have achieved our objective.

Diagnostic Questions

• How will I know that the change has occurred?
• Can these measurements be obtained?

Time-Bound

Time-bound means setting a deadlines for the achievement of the objective. Deadlines need to be both achievable and realistic. If you don’t set a time you will reduce the motivation and urgency required to execute the tasks. Time frames create the necessary urgency and prompts action.

Diagnostic Questions

• When will this objective be accomplished?
• Is there a stated deadline?

“There’s a difference between interest and commitment. When you’re interested in doing something, you do it only when circumstance permit. When you’re committed to something, you accept no excuses, only results.” - Unknown

Technorati Tags: Goal-setting, Leadership, Management, Objectives, Goals, Planning, Strategy, Business

A post “Why Most People Are Wrong About What’s Strategy?” from the blog Innovation Playground, provides some interesting insights from a McKinsey interview with Prof Richard Rumelt of UCLA’s Anderson:

• Most corporate strategic plans have little to do with strategy. They are simply three-year or five-year rolling resource budgets and some sort of market share projection. Calling this strategic planning creates false expectations that the exercise will somehow produce a coherent strategy.
• Plans are essential management tools….. plan coordinates the deployment of resources—but it’s not strategy. These resource budgets simply cannot deliver what senior managers want: a pathway to substantially higher performance.
• There are only two ways to get that. One, you can invent your way to success. Unfortunately, you can’t count on that. The second path is to exploit some change in your environment—in technology, consumer tastes, laws, resource prices, or competitive behavior—and ride that change with quickness and skill. This second path is how most successful companies make it. Changes, however, don’t come along in nice annual packages, so the need for strategy work is episodic, not necessarily annual.
• Many people think the solution to the strategic-planning problem is to inject more strategy into the annual process. But I disagree. I think the annual rolling resource budget should be separate from strategy work. So my basic recommendation is to do two things: avoid the label “strategic plan”—call those budgets “long-term resource plans”—and start a separate, non-annual, opportunity-driven process for strategy work.
• Any strategy starts with identifying change. Here’s an example. Right now, the advent of 3G cellular technology makes it possible to deliver streaming video over mobile phones. Cell phone makers, cellular carriers, and media companies all need to develop strategies for exploiting this change. Even though these changes have long-term consequences, companies need to take a position now. By “take a position” I mean invest in resources that will be made more valuable by the changes that are happening.
• Strategic thinking helps us take positions in a world that is confusing and uncertain. You can’t get rid of ambiguity and uncertainty—they are the flip side of opportunity. If you want certainty and clarity, wait for others to take a position and see how they do. Then you’ll know what works, but it will be too late to profit from the knowledge.
• So how does a company take a good position? One big factor is a predatory posture focused on going after changes. I saw an interesting pattern. Most executives easily explained how companies became market leaders: some sort of window of opportunity opened, and the leader was the company that was the first to successfully jump through that window. Not exactly the first mover but the first to get it right. But when I asked these same executives about their own strategies, I heard a lot about doorknob polishing. They were doing 360-degree feedback, forming alliances, outsourcing, cutting costs, and so on. None of them even mentioned taking a good position quickly when the industry changes.

“Key takeaway, strategy is about the big opportunity and how well you are prepared for it.”

Technorati Tags: Strategy, Leadership, Management, Change, Trends

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