By Martin Owen, Managing Partner, Strategy, CORSO

Executive Summary
How does an organisation embrace market- and business-driven change?
Some organisations turn to their enterprise architecture (EA) or IT architectures
for answers. Others use programme boards to evaluate options based on
lightweight business cases that lack a broader context. In most cases, IT is a
follower, not a leader, in the strategic planning and transition process. Whats
needed is a systematic, fexible approach for strategic planning for IT. An
approach that helps the organisation unite the business and architecture
view into a central platform and leverage existing tools and the Web to share
information and decision-making across IT, EA and the business.
The Strategic Planning Platform (SPP) framework is the next evolution in IT
management. It is designed to systematically manage change across an
organisation. It draws upon new trends in Web technology to facilitate a more
decentralised approach to analyzing and prioritizing market changes and
business demands. The framework helps organisations understand how they
operate today to manage future change. By embracing EA, IT and business
into the change process, an organisation can elevate decision-making to a
strategic level. IT becomes a full partner in the process.
IT projects, such as a technology refresh, service-oriented architecture (SOA)
planning, IT governance and business planning all ofer natural entry points
for adopting strategic planning within IT. As new market demands arise, new
ideas for products, services or efciencies can be embraced. Most importantly,
IT moves from the hot seat into the drivers seat for change.
Strategic Planning for IT: Creating
a Framework to
Embrace Organisational Change
(C) Corso Ltd 2011
Version 1 Oct 2011
An Integrated view of Planning
Most organisations operate at a fast pace of
change. Businesses are constantly evaluating
market demands and enacting change to drive
growth and develop a competitive edge. These
market demands come from a broad number of
sources, and include economic changes, market
trends, regulations, technology improvements
and resource management. Knowing where the
demands originated, whether they are important
and if they are worth acting on can be difcult.
How does an organisation successfully embrace
change? Many organisations turn to the
blueprints or roadmaps generated by their
EA, IT architectures and or business process
architectures for answers. They evaluate how
a new technology, such as SOA or enterprise-
resource planning (ERP), fts into the broader
architecture. They manage their technology
portfolio by looking at their IT infrastructure
needs.
Organisations often form programme
management boards to evaluate initiatives
and their costs. In reality, these evaluations are
based on lightweight business cases without
the broader context. Organisations dont have a
comprehensive understanding of what systems,
processes and resources they have, what they
are being used for, how much they cost and
the efects of regulations. Projects are delivered
and viewed on a project-by-project basis
without regard to the bigger picture. Enterprise,
technology and process-related decisions are
made within the fux of change and without
access to the real knowledge contained within the
organisation or in the market place. IT is often in
the hot seat of this type of decision-making.
Challenges of IT Planning
IT planning takes place in reaction to and
anticipation of these market demands and
initiatives. There may be a need for a new CRM
or accounting system, or new application for
manufacturing or product development. While IT
planning should be part of a broader enterprise
architecture or market analysis, IT involvement
in technology investments are often done close
to the end of the strategic planning process and
without proper access to enterprise or market
data.
The following questions illustrate the competing
demands found within the typical IT environment:
How can we manage the prioritisation
of business, architectural-and project-driven
initiatives? Stakeholders place a large number of
both tactical and strategic requirements on IT. IT is
required to ofer diferent technology investment
options, but is often constrained by a competition
for resources.
How do we balance enterprise
architectures role with IT portfolio
management? An EA provides a high-level view
of the risks and benefts of a project and the
alignment to future goals. It can illustrate the
project complexities and the impact of change.
Future state architectures and transition plans can
be used to defne investment portfolio content.
At the same time, portfolio management provides
a detailed perspective of development and
implementation. Balancing these often competing
viewpoints can be tricky.
How well are application lifecycles being
managed? Application management requires
a product/service/asset view over time. Well-
managed application lifecycles demand a process
of continuous releases, especially when time
to market is key. The higher-level view required
by portfolio management provides a broader
perspective of how all assets work together.
Balancing application lifecycle demands against
a broader portfolio framework can present an
inherent confict about priorities and a struggle
for resources.
How do we manage the numerous and often conficting governance requirements across
the delivery process? As many organisations move to small-team agile development, coordinating the
various application development projects becomes more difcult. Managing the development process
using waterfall methods can shorten schedules but can also increase the chance of errors and a disconnect
with broader portfolio and enterprise goals.
How do we address diferent lifecycles and tribes in the organization? Lifecycles such as EA,
business process management and solution delivery are all necessary but are not harmonised across the
enterprise. The connection among these lifecycles is important to the efective delivery of initiatives and
understanding the impact of change.
The enterprise view, down through portfolio management, application lifecycle management and agile
development represent competing IT viewpoints that can come together using strategic IT planning.
Strategic Planning for IT
An integrated view of planning advocates a broader view. In essence, it adds a strategic aspect to IT
planning, as show in Figure 1. A Strategic Planning Platform (SPP) provides a framework or methodology
for addressing organisational change. An SPP framework ofers a central foundation for an organisation to
address change and market demand. It helps organisations understand how they operate today so they
can manage the impact of change for the future.

Figure 1
Integrated View of Planning
Two viewpoints, business and architecture, must be considered in organisational planning. The business
view looks at the current economic client, market conditions and regulations. What demands are there?
Does the idea align to the business strategy? How do we meet new regulatory requirements? How does a
new idea ft with what we do today?
The architecture view evaluates change as it fts into the current and future states of the organisation. Is
the new initiative on the EA roadmap? Does it support organisation directions in terms of technology,
processes, resources and people? Does it evaluate architecture alternatives and provide advice and
guidance?
The business and architecture views are essentially diferent lenses onto the same issues. They recognise
that the current state capabilities constrain our ambitions while future state capabilities can underpin
future business success.
As Figure 1 illustrates, new ideas are generated from market demand and continually enter the
organisation. IT plays a vital role in reacting to the change demands. The organisation can view the idea
as a simple business proposition: Invest X and get Y return. But this simple approach fails to capture the
new capabilities that the company will gain as a result and the risk (both technological and organisational)
being taken as a result of changes to the existing architecture. It also underlines the drawback of relying
on future state architectures. An organisation cant aford to invest only in those things that will drive
toward a desired future state. It must also be agile enough to respond quickly to short-term opportunities
and pressing operational needs as they arise. Balancing those competing viewpoints often puts the
squeeze on IT.
In the integrated planning process, as shown in Figure 1, each project goes through a sequential process--
Plan, Execute, Measure, Adjust and Prioritise. This process encompasses both the architecture view (via the
EA) and the business view (via the current environment).
Within this cycle of change sits the project portfolio, a set of IT investments that enable an organisation
to transition from where it is today to a future state and adapt to market demands. This means striking
the balance between performing a simple economic review of each project on a case-by-case basis and
investing in strategic assets and capabilities for the long term. Being able to describe how a project assists
with the transformation of capabilities is as signifcant as being able to describe how a project contributes
to future business results. Similarly, the ability to understand how future results are underpinned by EA,
and which projects deliver these capabilities is important.
Thus, project portfolio management needs to be able to develop transition plan options that take into
account imposed constraints of risk, cost, resources and time as the organisation moves from current to
future states. While there might be a desired end-state, the project portfolio may be defned in such a way
as to move toward it using a series of smaller steps that deliver incremental value along the way. In this
way, the organisation can operate within acceptable limits of risk.
IT system delivery and support occurs once the project is proven to clearly support business results and
desired capabilities. At that point, the idea has been translated into an actionable deliverable and the
impact on the business is clearly understood throughout the organisation.
Balancing Competing Internal Demands
In most organisations, EA, IT and business/operations work in silos. Each area has its own technology.
Enterprise architects favour EA software, such as IBM Rational System Architect, which delivers
enterprise architecture and business process management capabilities. Project management embraces IT
development platforms such as IBM Rational Team, Concert , which focuses on software development
and implementation processes. Business people turn to business intelligence software or customer
relationship management (CRM) systems, such as Siebel and Salesforce.
While these tools ofer strong benefts within their vertical markets, none deliver a big enough picture for
strategic IT decisions. Most EA and software development tools lack the ability to capture the business
Figure 2
Strategic Planning Platform
As shown in Figure 2, a high-level strategic planning platform encompasses the three distinct areas,
Capability, Market and Delivery. Each area has its own goals, yet the sharing of knowledge facilitates the
efciency and efectiveness of an organisation.
Capability. This encapsulates the organisations birds-eye view of itself, often captured in its EA. Data
is captured and analysed; technology, including applications and systems, is studied to ensure changes
align with corporate goals. Processes are analysed. Risk is carefully managed. An EA and other strategic
planning tools are used to massage data from an enterprise viewpoint. It ofers a high-level business view
of the current and future states of the organisation and a blueprint for how things evolve over time.
Market. This area includes the business, operations and everything related to the customer,
competition, market and products and services. CxO direction and infuence contribute strongly to
market initiatives. External factors such as customers, competitors, trends, regulations, marketing and the
economic climate play a big role in driving change. Data is held in CRM systems and business intelligence
software. The Web and social media are increasingly being used to garner market feedback from external
stakeholders.
Delivery. To deliver its products and services, any organisation needs delivery vehicles. This
includes the IT infrastructure, such as software applications, systems and networks, and the people that
view where products, services, revenue, risk appetite, competition and sales goals are the vocabulary. EA
lacks transition planning capabilities. Business intelligence and CRM software are designed to manage
market information and its results, but are not robust enough to embrace the complexity of change on IT.
Whats needed is an approach or framework to handle and prioritise the demands on the organisation and
feed them into the EA to become part of the organisational blueprint. A strategic IT planning framework
ofers a way to systematically manage change while embracing the major areas of an organisation: EA,
project portfolio management, business, marketing, senior management and subject matter experts.
develop and support them. Multiple projects
are being juggled at a time. Delivery is focused
on leveraging resources, skills, scheduling and
project management. Responsibilities can range
from proprietary software development to system
integration/consolidation to of-the-shelf system
deployments.
What happens when you marry the three areas
together? You now have a platform or foundation
that facilitates interesting decisions and plans
for change. When these three areas work in
sync, the organisation can beneft immensely
by integrating the customer, IT and strategic
viewpoints into one platform.
A strategic planning platform is both a method
and framework that uses existing technology
to fll the gaps and gives an organisation the
ability to ask questions and deliver answers. On
a practical level, this includes identifying the
systems being used by each of the three areas
and using new technologies to provide universal
access to data to respond to market demands.
With that information, management can
determine the impact of any new idea, small or
large, on the company and its systems.
This is not to say that the information available
in this platform must be in a single repository, in
fact, having all this information in one repository
is inconceivable from a management perspective.
Instead, architectural initiatives such as IBMs Jazz
architecture, which is based on open services for
lifecycle collaboration (OSLC), are a perfect vehicle
for a federated view of the information.
The SPP process starts with knowing what
you have. Building an inventory starts with
understanding and connecting the correct
sources of information. Harvesting that
information into the platform for correlation is key
to making the platform successful.
The harvesting and correlation of information
from all three sources requires a descriptive meta-
model description of the information including
the connections between the sources. We also
need to have a standard graphical representation
to communicate the information and a repeatable
mechanism for keeping information up to date.
ArchiMate, an open and independent enterprise
architecture modelling language that supports
the description, analysis and visualization of
architecture across business domains, ofers
a frst step in this area. (However, it should be
noted Archimate and similar software need more
work to be able to represent strategic planning
information.).
On a strategic level, most organisations
use modelling software to enable multiple
development, architecture, intelligence and sales
tools to easily share information. EA tools such as
IBM Rational System Architect, solution delivery
management tools such as IBM Rational Team
Concert and portfolio management tools such
as IBM Rational Focal Point can also be used
to share information and allow the three silos to
analyze new ideas, compare options and plan for
the transition mandated by the change. Business
intelligence and other tools provide access to a
deeper level of information.
Using an SPP framework, anyone can ask
questions about any part of any project and get
accurate answers. Is a project is running over cost?
Is a new initiative tied to certain customers? How
will a certain change impact those customers? Is
Project X delivering something that is not useful
in terms of the architectural view?
For example, if a company is preparing to retire a
system, IT can immediately see how it will impact
top customers. By reviewing the capabilities
as outlined in the architecture and the list of
top customers, the organisation can easily fnd
out which customers are dependent on that
technology. IT managers can clearly understand
who is afected, the impact on other projects and
transition requirements. IT can work with sales to
minimize the impact of the change on afected
customers.
Process for Managing Change
The three perspectives of strategic planning
for IT ofer diferent stakeholder viewpoints.
The framework allows for a logical, but agile
evaluation of new ideas and gives IT, marketing
and EA an equal voice in handling change.
Intelligence is about getting the right answer back
based on the correlation of this information. A
well-defned and implemented strategic planning
platform can provide a process for evaluating and
adapting to market demands across the business,
EA and IT:
1. Analyze current position. What capabilities
(applications, data, processes and compliance)
do we have? How efective are they? How can we
improve them?
2. Compare future strategies. What are the
benefts? What is the likelihood of success? How
much investment is required?
3. Govern the transition. Can we work within the
constraints? How do optimize the roadmap? How
do we delegate? How do we track the results?
How do we demonstrate value?
When the three areas are truly integrated, the
organisation gains real traction in responding to
change. The SPP delivers traditional information
costs, long term risks--but with a much broader
analysis that helps the organisation respond
more quickly. The SPP is about getting the right
information to the right people at the right
time. IT ofers a process and platform that can
facilitate the analysis of the impact of change.
Just as important, the SPP gives the programme
management board and EA team a process and a
platform for communication. Instead of focusing
on just applications, programme management
can play a vital role in transition planning of all of
IT.
EA has not been able to scale to accommodate
the demands of constant change and properly
address transition planning. This platform makes
up for where EA has fallen short. While EA
examines where the organisation is today, where
it wants to be tomorrow and outlines a path to
get there, a strategic planning framework can
translate change to an actionable level that can
be analyzed, monitored and executed. A strategic
planning framework gives EA a purpose.
Evolving to a Strategic Planning
Framework
The SPP ofers not only strategic benefts by
improving the data available to make decisions; it
also benefts the organisation as a whole. Because
it is based on the underlying technologies, the
platform is fuid and supports the ability to
bring team, department and division level data
to a wider context. The IT group can use the
framework to:
Harvest. Capture an inventory of
the organisation to clearly see capabilities,
applications and resources. Correlating this
information into a central platform gives greater
knowledge and insight.
Business Intelligence. Bring data from
CRM and business intelligence systems into the
IT planning process. This information is vital to
making decisions within a much broader context.
Prioritise. Understand the demands on
resources across the organisation, not just in
one area. A large number of both tactical and
strategic requirements are placed on IT by various
stakeholders. Project prioritisation becomes more
manageable and predictable.
Survey. Capture information from
external and internal stakeholders in a neutral
environment using mobile, web and social media.
This structured approach to information capture
then becomes an integrated part of the eco-
system of the organization instead of a stand-
alone initiative captured on a desktop.
Option Comparison. Visually see the
impact of diferent options across the enterprise.
Every initiative requires resources to be successful
and understanding the tradeofs is important for
long-term growth.
Corso Ltd. Althorpe Enterprise Hub, Althorpe Street, Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, UK. CV31 2GB
+44 (0)1926 333222 www.corso.co.uk
About Corso
Corso provide a range of innovative products and
services in support of Strategic Planning for IT. We
provide guidance and best practice in demand
management, enterprise architecture and IT
planning. Corso ofers a range of consulting
services designed to help an organization deliver
value from their Enterprise Architecture, Strategic
Planning or Business Process project.
Corso are an IBM partner and provide tools
and services in conjunction with IBM Rational
products.
About Martin Owen
Martin is the managing partner for strategy
at Corso. Prior to Corso, Martin led the
product management team at IBM Rational for
Enterprise Architecture and Asset Management.
He has formerly held roles as Vice-President,
Enterprise Architecture at Telelogic, an IBM
Company and Consulting Director for Popkin
Software.
Martin was one of the original authors of the
Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN),
now the defacto standard for business process
modeling.
Transition Planning. Develop concrete plans for implementing new project initiatives. These
plans clearly outline the responsibilities and impact across the company and enable IT to better plan its
investments and resources.
Viewpoints. Consider both the business and architecture views. Recognizing both viewpoints is
essential to truly understanding the impact of any change on an organisation. By looking at the whole
picture, the constraints to success can be acknowledged and addressed ahead of time.
Next Evolution of IT Management
A strategic planning framework is the next evolution in IT management. IT projects, such as SOA planning,
IT governance and business planning all ofer natural entry points for adopting strategic planning within
IT. As the organisation examines the viability of these projects, the IT team, as part of the Delivery function,
can be involved in the strategic planning and decision-making process. IT can ask questions about the
impact on resources, other projects and scheduling and better understand and explain impact of change.
By using the strategic planning triangle--Capability, Market and Deliveryand evaluation process, smarter
decisions can be made about adopting and prioritizing market and business demands for products,
services or efciencies. In turn, the initiatives can be fed into the EA to become part of the organisational
blueprint. The SPP framework ofers a way to systematically manage change by embracing the needs of
all the major stakeholders in an organisation: EA, programme management, business and subject matter
experts. By making this information centrally available using on available tools, an organisation gains the
ability to take its frst step toward embracing change.