business plan

The purpose of this tool is to forecast the expenditures required to complete IT's strategic initiatives, to encourage IT to think about how the activities of the IT department will be financed and how those financial resources will be used during the period covered by the statement.

This tool helps to answer the following question:   

• How much money (i.e. budget) does IT require?
• Where will the money be spent?

Once the IT strategic plan has been developed, it’s essential to meet with the enterprise’s executive to communicate the plan and obtain final approval. This is one of the final steps in completing the strategic plan prior to actual execution. The goal of this template is to create an agenda for that important meeting.

Understanding IT's current workload is an essential element of planning the strategy for the upcoming year. This tool focuses on identifying any and all commitments currently on IT’s plate. The objective of this tool is to create a consolidated record of all current IT projects and to rank and prioritize projects according to continued applicability, importance and alignment with changing business goals. 

Everyone seems to be selling Business Intelligence (BI) products and services these days – from generalist software vendors to IT consulting firms. Business and IT decision makers need to maintain a clear distinction between true BI and gratuitous data. This research note provides that delineation by addressing the following key areas:

Event-driven intelligence is the most useful aspect of Business
Intelligence. It is relevant, reactive, and the best tool available for making informed decisions when timing is critical and budgets are tight.
 

In this template, you will copy and paste a variety of information from tools completed earlier in the IT Strategy and Planning module of the OptimizeIT program. Follow the instructions as directed in grey text throughout this template. Generally, you will be required to paste text from the Microsoft Word tools. If Excel tools are mentioned, provide a link of the network path where your audience can view a copy of the spreadsheet file(s).

Some tips and advice to keep in mind when building your Strategic Plan are as follows:

Use the template below to summarize the project options available to the enterprise for fulfilling the IT Strategic Plan. The top initiatives identified in the “Analysis of Available of Options” template should be summarized here in a report and presented to executive management for review and approval/rejection.

A scope statement is one of the most critical communications in a project. A proper scope statement makes it clear exactly what will, and what will not, be involved in a given project. Setting scope helps determine the money, time, and people required to complete the project. It also serves as an effective tool for measuring whether a project has hit its intended targets. A project that involves the creation of an IT strategic plan should be treated no differently than any other project, thus a scope statement is requisite.

Use this guide to create your own customized Strategic Maintenance Plan with the objective to sustain your IT Strategy by continuously examining, evaluating and prioritizing investments of IT resources.