Demand Supply Planning

Industry is awash in planning processes intended to provide "roadmaps" and "blueprints” for "setting future directions” and "implementing mission statements," etc. Typically, these corporate strategic planning processes often fail to explicitly account for IT activities and strategies, either on the front end as drivers for new business strategies or on the back end as enablers of strategic intentions. In Right Decisions, Right Results, the point of high-level strategic planning is to translate the company’s business strategic intentions into actionable IT strategies, and thereby create the actions and produce the desired business results. The Demand and Supply Planning practice starts with high-level business intentions and creates strategies and action plans to drive the IT activities needed to address them.

What does a Strategic Demand/Supply Plan Look Like ?

To properly establish the IT strategic plan requires a clear definition of the business strategies, as expressed through its strategic intentions, and the relationship between those strategies and what we expect IT to do about them.

Like all such planning descriptions, this should be looked at as a template. Every company is different, and every organizational / political setting is different. Numerous issues such as participants, process, timing, and planning responsibility come into play in approaching the planning process. Nevertheless, the basic concepts are central to addressing the business / IT planning disconnect.

The ideal planning process deals with these elements:

Inputs

The business Strategic Intentions
Portfolios and their strategic management
Performance Management and Measurement

Results

The Strategic Agenda for the Use of Technology
The IT (organizational) Strategic Plan
Strategic IT Requirements

Connections

Direct connection to the processes for developing projects
Direct connection to the business and ITs annual planning
Direct connection to the company’s and IT Annual Budgets

The results are the basic table of contents of a company’s strategic plan for information technology. The first, the Strategic Agenda for the Use of IT, defines the strategic intentions of the company and management for applying IT in carrying out the company strategy and goals This is the first part of the Strategic IT Plan. It expresses the “demand” for IT -- the requirements for technology applications, and the intentions of management to apply IT in their organizations. The second is the IT organization Strategic Plan, which describes the IT organization organizational strategies and plans for fulfilling the requirements for IT. It expresses the “supply” for IT, including organization, development, and delivery. .

Portfolios and their Strategic Management, is the critical connecting element among all the pieces. As we introduced in Chapter Four, four basic portfolios define IT organization resources and responsibilities. The application portfolio defines existing and future IT applications. The infrastructure portfolio defines the elements of the supporting technologies. The services portfolio defines IT organization’s interactions with internal company customers and external customers. The management portfolio defines how IT organization manages itself and its portfolios. The planning processes address each portfolio.