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12
TIPS FOR SUCCESSFUL IT STRATEGIC PLANS
How do
you get more results from your information technology (IT) investments?
The ultimate answer, of course, is to harness your IT portfolio and
actions to the mission and business priorities of your agency. Smart IT
strategic planning can transform enterprise business needs into
results. Such an accomplishment is no slam-dunk, however.
The
rules of strategic planning for information technology (IT) are
straightforward like in the game of golf. Yet almost everyone has a
devil of a time when attempting to achieve above-average success in
either. In the Federal sector, strategic planning is primarily in the
domain of the Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA), and it is
an important element of the performance budgeting process for IT.
A
strategic plan must be documented on paper, but the paperwork is not
the heart and soul of strategic planning. The reality is that it must
be alive in the consciousness and vision of all involved-from the
agency head and CIO to all of the IT troops, users, and other
stakeholders. Everyone must know the destination and why they are
headed there, and that living, actionable set of ideas is the real
strategic plan.
Execution
of the IT strategic planning makes a profound difference. Having sound
project management processes and portfolio management methods have
limited impact if not carried out within the framework of an effective
strategic plan. Indeed, as Harwell
Thrasher says, "It is not enough to just do projects well, you have
to be sure that you're focusing on the most important projects for your
business. The right project done adequately is better than the wrong
project done well."
So, make
sure that portfolios, projects, investments, and IT operations line up
with a mission-driven information technology strategic plan. Here are
our observations about critical success factors,
based on many years of working with numerous, diverse Federal agencies.
1.
Align IT with the
Enterprise
IT
exists to enable agency mission and programs, and to support the
accompanying business and performance requirements. IT often provides
breakthrough opportunities for accomplishing business requirements
better, faster, and/or cheaper. Conversely, opportunities for
restructuring and streamlining agency programs and business functions
often provide the basis for rethinking IT strategy, goals, and
priorities.
Your
alignment should involve matching IT spending with the IT Strategic
Plan, annual performance plan and performance budget, and
business-driven enterprise architecture. Performance objectives and
measures should support metrics for enterprise-wide performance
measures as reported by annual performance reports and Program
Assessment Rating Tool (PART) assessments.
We have
found that alignment of IT with agency-wide performance measures is far
from automatic and generally involves discussions with the agency's
executive team and performance management staff. In some cases, the
agency will need to add or refine IT measures. In other cases, IT
performance measures will be subsets-supporting metrics that are
logically traceable to agency goals. The effort is worthwhile because
it helps to define the value of IT spending, a critical step in
defining the capital programming process and tracking the results of
Exhibit 300 capital investments for IT.
2.
Establish and Maintain Executive Sponsorship
Your IT
Strategic Plan is an orphan unless it is sponsored, embraced, and used
in decision making by agency leadership. Involve your enterprise
executive team before you launch the strategic planning process, get
their input, establish a charter, keep them informed, ask them to
comment on drafts, and help them use the plan to achieve program and
business performance results.
We have
found that the day-to-day manager of the strategic planning process
should have direct and continuing access to the CIO or Deputy CIO.
Further, the manager needs resources (staff and presentation materials)
to support the CIO when conducting ongoing discussions with the agency
executive team.
3.
Assess Needs and Opportunities
Input
should come from all directions, sometimes known as a 360-degree
assessment. Strategic planning should take into consideration
opportunities, problems, and constraints. This involves keeping your
eyes and ears open, because the most useful input comes from unexpected
sources-perhaps personnel in a field office, user feedback, suggestions
from the public, practices in other agencies, and technological change.
Of course, it should include IT stakeholders as well.
We have
found that it is possible to build stakeholder participation into the
routine, ongoing IT management support activities at modest additional
cost. Given that almost everyone these days has too much work,
stakeholders will appreciate your integrating discussions about the IT
strategic plan into existing, scheduled meetings for users, project
managers, integrated project teams, and others.
4.
Commitment to Change and Action
The
primary purpose of a strategic plan is to define and execute change.
Achieving change requires the organizational equivalent of a political
machine. You need a platform, a leader who serves as spokesperson, and
a well-organized cadre of committed personnel who are willing to
"stump" for support from all stakeholders. The planks in your
"platform" will be your strategic goals for improvement.
Contractors
such as the P2C2 Group support these activities, and our observation is
that the change management process works well when there is a
committed, ongoing partnership between the government IT strategic
planning manager, the agency IT executive staff, and the contractor.
Put another way, commitment is not something that can be outsourced …
only supported by a contractor.
5.
Involve Stakeholders
Most
people will be bored with strategic planning until they see what's in
it for them. The place to begin will be listening. We
have organized and moderated workshops where it is truly astounding to
see what happens when the agency actually listens. People speak up;
they have ideas. They tell you about problems and have suggestions for
solutions. Give them a glimmer of hope that you will actually take
their input into account and translate it into a long-term pathway to
action, and they can become downright enthusiastic. As critical aspect
of the planning process is to keep this enthusiasm alive, and this is
accomplished by keeping them informed-regular follow-up communication,
demonstrations of solutions that acknowledge their input, and progress
reports of execution.
We
recommend using the services of a group facilitator, at least on a
part-time basis. A professional facilitator is able to guide
discussions-sometimes heated or off track-toward workable solutions
that are actionable and marketable to the entire agency. Since a
facilitator is not an "authority figure," people are more likely to
speak up. At the same time, the facilitator can be neutral, achieving
more listening and movement to consensus than is possible for most of
us who have an established investment in the plan.
6.
Connect with Real IT
The real
proof that an IT strategy is actionable is to apply it to real IT
during the strategic planning process. One of the approaches that has
worked best for the P2C2 Team is to develop the IT strategic plan
concurrently with one or more major IT modernization initiatives. The
IT initiatives provide real-world grist for the strategic plan, and the
IT investments benefit from a strategic approach that links functional
requirements to an enterprise-wide vision of performance. Inevitably,
pairing strategic planning with developing specific IT solutions leads
to refinements and revisions to the IT strategic plan: The plan becomes
more practical and tailored to real agency business needs and
constraints.
7.
Evolve
Be
flexible, because your initial strategic goals and planning drafts will
seldom be your final IT strategic plan. When you brief your agency
executive team and your stakeholders, they most certainly will-and
should--challenge your initial strategic perspective. And someone you
forgot to involve will point out a fatal omission or an unrealistic
strategic objective, or they will tell you why your timetable for
execution won't work. Do listen carefully, because their input may be
on the mark. Being flexible and adjusting your draft goals and plan
will gain at least two benefits: You will have a better plan, and you
will gain broader buy-in from the people requesting changes.
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