Guide to IT Planning: Answering the what, why, who, and how

Guide to IT Planning: Answering the what, why, who, and how

Introduction

IT planning is often a neglected process in businesses because they do not understand the importance it holds for business growth. That is why when businesses suffer losses or face some delays, they never think of inadequate IT planning as one of the possible reasons.

However, a Guide to IT Planning is an important factor that can drive business outcomes if done properly; if not, it may lead to inefficient processes that result in high costs or delays.

Organizations do not make the Guide to IT Planning a strategic exercise that is to be done once or twice a year. If they experience any problem in any IT application, system, services, or software, they just upgrade, change, or replace it. However, this is not sustainable or beneficial for the organization in the end. An IT plan is much more than just a short-term solution in case of a technology-related crisis.

A personalized approach in the Guide to IT Planning to make your the process smoother and clearer

Guide to IT Planning : What is IT planning?

IT planning is the process of planning for the investment and use of IT systems, applications, and services. The basic premise behind IT Planning is defining and predicting the acquisition and usage of IT hardware and software in the business processes to achieve the broad, strategic objectives of the enterprise. The CIOs and CTOs along with other senior management of the organization are involved in the IT planning to ensure the IT assets work properly and ensure business continuity, lower costs, and save time.

Guide to IT Planning : Why do IT Planning?

A Guide to IT Planning is important because of the following reasons:

IT keeps the operations of an organization running and ensures collaboration and communication between different teams and amongst team members; to avoid any failures or breakdowns in these, IT Planning is important

IT Planning gives a structure to the business’s attempt to strategize, control, and manage the usage of IT in their operations and processes so that the impact results in reduced costs, higher productivity, and more value

IT planning is a way to guarantee the acquisition or development of IT assets or solutions, implementation of these solutions, up-gradation of them when required, and using the solutions for various business processes to deliver desired results

IT Planning requires an understanding of your organization’s IT strengths and weaknesses, and based on this, you plan the IT initiatives that make your organization more mature, more ready to tackle the risks, and makes your business strategy sustainable and achievable

IT Planning includes the effective organization of IT assets in the business; creating a set of instructions, guidance, and best practices for their use; deciding the human resources and capabilities required to manage them, and establishing standards of measuring performance to check if the expectations are met

With an IT plan, you get an idea about the opportunities that emerging technologies and innovations in IT can bring to your processes, and also you anticipate the challenges and uncertainties that new IT initiatives bring along so that you can have contingency plans in place

Planning of IT helps you in making decisions for the business operations, designing and developing the business strategy, building up a collaborative environment between various functions with IT departments, and earning the trust and credibility of multiple stakeholders

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Guide to IT Planning : How we do IT Planning

The process of planning for IT requires several steps according to the Guide to IT Planning. Still, it is a crucial component for every business, as a properly planned IT plan saves your time in execution and also results in higher ROI.

The IT plan must have all the necessary components such as a mission statement, assessment of the company business plan, SWOT analysis of its IT assets, understanding of the gaps, budgeting and scheduling, finalization of the IT plan, and finally, execution.

The process should start with a discussion and interaction with all the possible stakeholders of an IT plan - means the ones who will be involved in the planning, implementation, and usage of the IT plan. Stakeholders must be fully involved in every step of the IT planning process.

You can conduct focus group discussions, interviews or disseminate employee surveys to collect information about stakeholders’ views on the current IT assets.

In this phase, it is crucial to research the current IT trends in your industry of operations, new emerging technologies and IT initiatives, and best practices that make IT operations effective in an enterprise.

After the collection of all this information, the next step is assessment. This phase will help in understanding what the organization’s existing IT capabilities are and what the gaps are. A gap analysis will assist in knowing what improvements are required in the organization’s IT assets to improve efficiency. These improvements may include up-gradation, replacement, or change, which also depends on the funding for the project.

Now, you can document all this information in a proper template for presentation to the top management. It must include all the possible scenarios and possibilities of strategic IT initiatives and the stakeholders’ comments on them. For each of the possibilities, the timelines, costing, and human resource requirements must be mentioned clearly. You must write a detailed plan with priorities set for each IT initiative along with the outcomes and funding requirements.

The last step is to present the IT plan to the top management for the necessary authorization. Obtaining the approval of top management is crucial since it gives access to the required resources and funding. The approval leads to confidence among the involved stakeholders, and they understand the significance of the IT plan. The IT plan may require some changes here and there, which must be incorporated, and the plan must be finalized.

Although the Guide to IT Planning completes at this stage, the on paper and execution is the next step; however, the IT plan may require changes during the execution stage. These changes erupt because of the changes in the economic landscape, industry scenario, emergence of new technologies and innovations, uncertain conditions such as a financial crisis or funding issues. You must ensure to keep track of all these changes and incorporate them in the IT plan for effective outcomes in the end.

Challenges of IT Planning

IT plan has a clear definition; still, you may face many challenges that may upset the process, increase the costs, or lead to undesired outcomes. Therefore, you must be wary of the possible challenges and make yourself ready with possible solutions to avoid delays or high expenses.

Questionable leadership

There might be a possibility that the company does not have a good leader for the IT department to conduct the IT planning. This is a big challenge for any company since it would be difficult for the top management to realize the source of the problem.

Confusion in priorities

There might be many changes or upgrades required in the IT infrastructure and assets in the queue. However, it is the responsibility of the CIO or the person responsible for IT planning to prioritize them based on the importance they hold for generating business outcomes and budgets. IT plan may suffer if the CIO is confused about what IT initiative to prioritize and what can be done later.

Lack of support from top management

It is crucial to obtain the top management’s support for the IT plan. They must also be involved at every step to show their interest and commitment to bringing IT transformation to the company. The support from top management leads to motivation among employees who start believing in the IT plan and contribute to its planning and execution wholeheartedly.

A disagreement between stakeholders on IT initiatives

Stakeholders’ views on the current IT capabilities and requirements of improvements are important to develop the IT plan. These stakeholders are the ones who will be planning, implementing, and using the IT plan. If there is no agreement amongst them regarding the bottlenecks, possible solutions, and priorities, it becomes difficult to formulate the IT plan.

No definition of key performance indicators

Once the priorities of IT initiatives are set, the CIOs must define the KPIs for each to review the performance. Such an evaluation of the outcomes is vital to understand if the particular IT initiative is successful or not and what the bottlenecks were in its success. If there are no KPIs defined, it becomes difficult to comprehend the outcomes of IT initiatives, and thereby, the success of the IT plan is doubtful.

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Conclusion

Now, we understand what IT planning is, what its components are, how it is done, and the challenges faced in the IT planning process. With all this information, you are all set to engage in IT planning for your organization.

If not, you can still hire IT consultants that can take up the IT planning for your organization or guide you in each of these steps to make a strong, sustainable, and effective IT plan. However, you must be very careful with the selection of the right IT consultant that can help you make a realistic and realizable IT plan.

Our IT planning services

Technovisors is an IT planning expert. We are a leading IT strategy consulting services provider in Ahmedabad that helps you with IT Planning, scoping, budgeting, and implementing to reach your business goals. We assist you in making strategic decisions for your IT initiatives, including prioritization, resource allocation, time provision, and budgeting. We have the relevant technical skills, insights into industry trends, and experience with multiple industry verticals to guide you to make a sustainable IT plan.

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About the Author

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Pathik Shah

(CISA, FCA, CS, DISA (ICAI), FAFP (ICAI))

Pathik is a multi-disciplinary professional with more than 22 years of experience in compliance, risk management, accounting, system audits, IT consultancy, and digital marketing. He has extensive knowledge of Anti-Money Laundering rules and regulations, and he helps companies comply with legal requirements. Pathik also helps companies generate value from their IT investments.

Why Excel is Not the Right Tool for Requirements Handling?

Why Excel is Not the Right Tool for Requirements Handling?

Introduction

Every product development or project management process requires a well-structured and well-defined list of key requirements. Project requirements serve as the basis for carrying out the next steps that lead to the final product creation or project completion. Therefore, businesses must pay full attention to jotting down project Requirements Handling and employ effective methods to manage them well during the project execution phases.

Businesses use various tools for listing down requirements such as Word, Excel, and customized requirements management tools, the most common being Excel. Excel has advantages of managing requirements such as being cost-effective, easy and convenient to use, and requires no specific training. However, it must not be the most preferred tool for writing system or project requirements, as there are numerous disadvantages of using Excel. Here, in this article, we shall explore the reasons why you should not use Excel for requirements handling.

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Disadvantages of using Excel for requirements handling

Sharing and updating Excel is difficult

If a project has too many people working on it, it becomes difficult to share a single, updated Excel file between multiple people and teams. With so many people working on the sheet at the same time, updating it regularly, and making changes, people get confused as to the final, updated sheet that has all the updates on requirements.

Possibilities of error are high

There are higher possibilities of the existence of errors in Excel. The error may be of any kind, ranging from a text or formula error to inconsistency in format. Moreover, it becomes difficult to spot the error when so many people are working on it and making multiple versions with their changes.

Higher possibilities of Excel spreadsheet being lost or being shared externally

You may lose the data on requirements you have saved in Excel if something bad happens to your laptop or desktop computer. This may result in all your or your employees’ efforts turning to zero. Furthermore, it is also easier to send the Excel sheet to anyone via an Email, specifically an unhappy employee who may just send it to his/her personal email id or any competitor’s contacts, thereby compromising the security of your project requirements.

Existence of several versions of requirements

If the Excel sheet is shared among many people working on the project, after a time, it will be confusing to find out the master file that contains all the updates and changes. Often, project managers face such situations when they have no answers to questions like:

Who made the changes?

What changes each one made?

Why were those changes made?

Is there any relation between different points of data?

This happens because when people start updating, they start with the original file, but simultaneous changes by different employees lead to many versions of the same original Excel sheet. This situation arises when employees forget to upload the changes and edits in a single, central repository file, leading to a messy requirements datasheet.

Data visualization and reporting are another cause of worry

You can surely create charts and graphs in Excel; however, the problem lies in the presentation of multiple charts and graphs. Assembling these charts and graphs and making them visually appealing takes time and effort. Reporting Excel data is also a difficult exercise, which you need to master to harness its benefits. Furthermore, there are no specific metrics to measure the information, which is very essential for any project.

Users start focusing more on understanding Excel than project work

Working on Excel is a manual task. One needs to be knowledgeable about using it, play around with it to harness the actual benefits, and practice regularly. On the other hand, requirements gathering, sharing, collaboration, and using them for carrying out project processes is the actual need.

With more of your project efforts going into practicing Excel, the actual skills and efforts of employees are wasted, which could have been put to better use for the project execution and success. Poor use of resources leads to waste of money and time, thereby resulting in project inefficiencies and management ineffectiveness.

Collaboration and communication become unmanageable

It is difficult for employees to collaborate and communicate over an Excel sheet. The key problem lies in tracking the multiple edits made by multiple people and tracing who did what. Even continuous manual monitoring becomes next to impossible since tracking changes in an Excel sheet is difficult. This also affects project accountability and may lead to blame-game, creating conflicting situations and destroying the team productivity.

No possibility of customization as per the industry requirements

When you deal with different projects with different requirements in different industries, you yearn for a customized way of representing the requirements. However, this is not possible with Excel. A general way of representation of requirements does not work well for all industries where the projects are complex. Complex projects involving a lot of people, functions, and tasks need multi-directional planning, for which Excel does not prove to be sufficient.

Increased stress and frustrations for employees

Working with Excel – a limited functionality application - is not an easy task. You have to be extra careful in making entries, which may drain you completely. This extra carefulness requires you to spend time ensuring the spreadsheet’s completeness, a well-structured representation, and making it updated, accurate, timely, and transparent to all employees involved in the project. All of these can lead to highly stressful situations and frustrations, thereby demotivating the employees. Stress results in more mistakes or delays in handling requirements, which may harm the project execution.

Conclusion

You should understand the significance of requirements management for a project’s successful execution. And to handle the project requirements smartly, you need a smart requirements handling tool to improve your efficiency and effectiveness. With all the above-mentioned drawbacks, Excel is not the right tool. You must look for something that makes your data accessible, manageable, transparent, traceable, and reusable.

Who are we?

Technovisors is an Ahmedabad-based IT consulting, digital marketing, and data analytics firm. We play a significant role in simplifying the IT solutions for your business requirements. Our IT consulting services ensure that your IT issues are resolved, and the business solutions that you implement help you achieve your business goals. We understand that the project requirements are a key part of successful project execution, and therefore, assist you with requirements management based on your technology and business needs.

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FAQs

No. We customize our services based on our client’s requirements and business types. It differs from industry to industry and project to project.
Yes, we can help you with everything to make a project successful, including requirements management, selection of vendor, implementation, and post-implementation review for separate pricing.

How Bad Project Requirements Break the Project?

How Bad Project Requirements Break the Project?

Introduction

What is the worst thing that can happen to a business project? Time delays? Budget overshoot? Incompetent human resources? Wrong leadership? Yes, these are the various possibilities that can lead to project failure, among many others. However, a key factor contributing to the failure of numerous projects across the world is ‘bad project requirements.’

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What are bad project requirements?

Project requirements are bad when:

They are not clear, comprehensive, and complete

They do not define the specific goals that the project intends to achieve

They do not define the requirement of human resources in terms of skills, efforts, and time

They do not define the business processes required to achieve the expected outcomes

Such bad requirements may lead to reworks, delays, high costs, and dissatisfied clients. On the other hand, good project requirements lead to more clarity on what needs to be achieved and how it will be achieved. They define the roles and responsibilities of every person involved in the project, key outcomes expected from the project, and the time and budget available for the project. Specifically, good project requirements make the project less confusing and more results-driven, thereby having higher possibilities of client satisfaction.

You may feel that gathering requirements is an easy task. However, that is not the case. It requires you to understand what questions to ask, whom to ask, and how to synthesize the information from those responses to create a list of requirements. If not done correctly, it may lead to bad project requirements, which may hamper the project completely.

How Bad Project Requirements Affect Your Project and Cause Delays?

Bad quality of project requirements leads to the following effects on the project, which may result in project failure:

You are not able to plan the project properly

The key requirement for the success of any project is a proper plan. If the project plan does not exist or is incomplete, the execution becomes a chaotic process, leading to failure. Therefore, proper planning for the project is essential, which comes from a properly written, detailed list of bad project requirements.

Once the requirements are set, you can make a full-proof plan with details on:

All stakeholders

Goals to achieve

Deliverables at the end

Roles and responsibilities of every project person

Budget

Timelines

Communication plan

Metrics to measure performance

It takes a toll on the project scope, resulting in wrong scheduling and budgeting

With incomplete or unclear project requirements, it becomes difficult to document the goals properly. The people involved in the project remain confused about the goals to achieve, deliverables expected by the client, and the overall impact of those deliverables on the client’s business. All this confusion leads to unnecessary, irrelevant work that does not add to the outcome or project movement is multidirectional with no single, definite goal to achieve. This can, in the end, lead to a waste of effort, time, and money.

You forget to make plans for possible risks to the project and solutions for those

Once you mention all the project requirements comprehensively and clearly, you also become aware of how to fulfill those requirements and the various risks that may affect the path of fulfillment. These risks are nothing but the possibility of something going wrong with the key components of a project plan. Something on the lines of escalation of costs, delays in tasks and activities, governance issues, problems in processes and procedures, and occurrence of uncertain events.

Being aware of all these possible risks to your project helps you to be better prepared for facing them. Furthermore, with awareness of possible risks, you gather knowledge about the plans to mitigate or manage those risks, so that project outcomes are not affected negatively. You also identify the trigger points for each risk and make a backup plan in case of serious harm to project execution. Therefore, you must give due importance to mentioning the project requirements in detail to avoid facing these risks.

It becomes difficult to bring all the participants on a common platform

Listing all the project requirements is a parallel process of aligning the thoughts of all participants involved in the project. While listing the project requirements, you talk to every participant, get their views, and comprehend their understanding of the project goals and expectations. In summary, you conduct thorough research to get hold of the thoughts of every participant.

While listing down the requirements, you summarize these thoughts and list down the important ones. In this process, you will be required to discuss with them the priorities of the project and make them agree on the list of requirements. This is how with a good list of project requirements, you can bring all the participants on a common platform of objectives and expectations from the project.

You have to deal with the chaotic communication and relationships

If you do not state the project requirements clearly in detail, it affects the communication between the various teams involved in the project execution. It also affects the relationships between stakeholders, which may, in turn, hamper the project. Thus, avoid the ambiguity in stating project requirements to save the project process from getting confusing and messy.

With clear, comprehensive project requirements, every participant is aware of who is doing what, who will report to whom, and what outcomes the team will generate. In a way, the team dynamics become stronger because of the clear sharing of roles and responsibilities, and hence, communication between project participants improves—better communication results in improved relationships between participants, which affect the project processes positively.

Conclusion

You must be very careful while stating project requirements, as it is an essential ingredient of a successful project. Any vague, incomplete, and loose list of project requirements will affect the project planning, scoping, scheduling, and relationships between stakeholders negatively. Therefore, to avoid project delays and inaccuracies, implement the right solutions for requirements management that can facilitate project execution. You can hire a good professional services firm that can help you deal with requirements management.

Who are Technovisors?

We are a leading provider of IT consulting, data analytics, and digital marketing services. We help our clients with the evaluation of their needs, cost/benefit analysis of possible solutions, smooth implementation of the project, and selection of the right vendor. Technovisors expertise lies in full guidance to you to complete the project successfully without any glitches.

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FAQs

No. We customize our services based on our client’s requirements and business types. It differs from industry to industry and project to project.
Yes, we can help you with everything to make a project successful, including requirements management, selection of vendor, implementation, and post-implementation review for separate pricing.

Why is requirements management important for the successful execution of a project?

Why is requirements management important for the successful execution of a project?

Introduction

The scope of the project, start date, end date, desired outcomes, human resources, technology functionalities, budget, expected challenges, metrics for measurement, and many other factors define a project. These are called project requirements. If project requirements are defined clearly before starting the project, successful execution is possible. Without a clear mention of project requirements and strong requirements management, the direction of the project becomes uncertain, which leads to a disaster.

Therefore, it is extremely critical to plan for the project requirements. While it is not an easy process, requirements management is the base that will generate the expected deliverables, satisfying all the involved stakeholders. Yes, we all know how the market is dynamic, goals change, innovations happen, and competitive strategies are in play; still, you need to figure out all the project requirements and manage them well to ensure project success.

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Why is Project Requirements Management essential?

Project requirements management is necessary to have a clear view of the project expectations. It helps you with the following:

A clear, defined scope and objectives

With the help of project requirements, you can have a clear idea of what the project size will be and what basic activities it would involve. This will enable you to prepare yourself and your team for the days to come and arrange for the required resources.

Clear project requirements also give a defined shape to the objectives of the project. The initial draft project requirements lead to a definition of the goals and objectives, which further lead to clear, detailed requirements.

A deeper understanding of project outcomes

When you have the project requirements ready and you know the objectives, you get a better picture of the expected outcomes. You generate valuable outcomes, making them quantifiable and hence, comparable with the defined objectives. You and your employees involved in the project will understand what outcomes they need to achieve and what activities will lead to the expected performance, thereby adding value to the project.

Better management of resources

With a clear definition and management of requirements, you will find it easier to manage the resources. These resources include human efforts, skills, time duration, technology, and finances that make the execution of the project possible. When you clearly define the project requirements, you can define the workflow, processes, and procedures for the completion of defined tasks.

With that, you can allocate the right people to complete each step, determine the time taken for each task, and calculate the costs for every phase of the project. You will also get to know what technologies you require or what specific skills are needed to ensure the delivery of the right outcomes. The right allocation, conduct, and management of all these resources are made possible by requirements management.

A smoother execution

Once the project requirements are defined clearly, it becomes clear to everyone what needs to be done and how to achieve the desired results. With more clarity, it becomes easier to execute the project. Situations may change, which may change the requirements; however, the overall idea of requirements gives a clear path for the movement of the project over its execution period.

Higher commitment from employees

With a clear set of requirements, all the human resources involved in the project are clear of the expectations from them. They are aware of what to do, what to achieve, what not to do, what skills to use, and many more. Such clarity in the definition of required efforts and the process of converting those efforts to desired outcomes is what motivates them to perform better. It keeps them going – keep them working towards achieving the desired goals. If you handle requirements management well, you can expect your employees to commit to the project wholeheartedly.

A better communication structure

When you define the project requirements in a clear, defined way, you put a framework of roles and responsibilities of each person and technology for the project’s success. This gives a defined structure to the reporting and communication required for the project. And, we all know that good project communication is a necessary ingredient for its successful completion.

Lesser complications and conflicts

With so many processes going on in a project simultaneously, it becomes complicated sometimes. However, you can reduce these complications with good project requirements management. If you define the requirements clearly, with a clear objective and a clear performance measurement indicator for each, the complications reduce, and project direction becomes simpler.

With a clear definition of requirements, every stakeholder involved is aware of and accepts the project scope and expectations. Furthermore, clients are also careful about not suggesting unnecessary changes to the requirements, and even if they do, they are aware of the impact on the project time and budget. This reduces the chances of conflict internally within the team and externally with the client.

Reduced possibilities of risk

A comprehensive and clear list of project requirements gives a view of what will happen to the project. All the stakeholders have general knowledge of the expected results. They know what might be the possible challenges, and therefore, they prepare themselves for those obstacles. This reduces the chances of errors or risks, which may fail the project in the end. Therefore, requirements management is crucial to reduce the probabilities of errors and risks and have a strong risk management plan for the project.

Final Thoughts

Therefore, you must understand how critical project requirements management is for any project’s success. Without well-defined project requirements, there are possibilities of delays, rework, inaccuracies, conflicts, and ambiguities. To avoid these problems, make it a habit to define project requirements and document them in an organized manner to reduce the likelihood of failure.

Therefore, you must understand how critical project requirements management is for any project’s success. Without well-defined project requirements, there are possibilities of delays, rework, inaccuracies, conflicts, and ambiguities. To avoid these problems, make it a habit to define project requirements and document them in an organized manner to reduce the likelihood of failure.

What is the role of Technovisors in requirements management?

We are an Ahmedabad-based leading IT consulting, Data Analytics, and Digital Marketing Services provider. We are experts in developing project requirements, documenting them, executing them successfully, and measuring them to help you achieve the desired results. We provide customized services to every client by understanding their business, the purpose of the project, and clarity on the deliverables and results. Our team of business analysts and IT advisors ensure that your project requirements are complete, error-free, and clear so that your project execution is smoother and faster.

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FAQs

No. We customize our services based on our client’s requirements and business types. It differs from
industry to industry and project to project.

It is difficult to say it in general since every project is unique in its own sense. However, more detailed project requirements give a clear idea to every stakeholder involved in the execution of the project and hence, lend more credibility to it. Furthermore, more details lead to a clear definition of other aspects of the project, such as timelines, costs, human efforts required, technologies needed, and many others.