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Strategic IT Planning: A Holistic Approach to Projects

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When you’re planning an IT project — whether it’s a technology upgrade, new installation, a move toward virtualization, or really anything that will affect your environment or how it’s accessed — it’s important to consider how your plans for the area at hand will affect other facets of your IT infrastructure and business processes.

Business benefits provided by a particular engagement may be able to be expanded into others, if you have a clear idea of how the pieces fit together. Or conversely, not understanding how one area may affect another could have an inadvertent negative impact.

For example, if you’re thinking about implementing a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), you need to contemplate many components beyond the appropriate end client, VDI vendor, and protocols to support. Consider how your VDI plans impact both LAN and WAN bandwidth requirements, and server redundancy to name just a few.

As a result, you'll need to engage the network team, server team, and datacenter team. This approach will ensure that all players are on the same page, and that any bandwidth- or server-upgrade projects take VDI into account.

Strategy Vs. Tactics

This is why it’s so important to engage every IT project holistically, and to take an approach that is:

• Brand agnostic
• Solution specific
• Analytical

For example, if you’re thinking about moving part of your workforce to virtualized desktops, don’t go into it thinking, “we’ll need 30 HP t5540 thin clients and VMware View Manager.” This is a very tactical approach. Rather, I suggest that you take a step back and think about the project strategically. Ask yourself questions such as:

• What is the business case for virtualization?
• Are we rolling it out to the right people?
• Will the solution be scalable, in case this works well and should be rolled out to additional departments?
• Do we have the right end-user machines in place? Should we consider tablets, iPads or netbooks to enable more mobility?
• Will our server support the virtualization?
• Do we have the proper software licensing structure in place?
• What will our bandwidth requirements be?
• What protocols should we support?
• How will virtualization run over our WAN, and what will the end-user experience be?

By looking at each project strategically and holistically, you’re able to find the best, most appropriate solution.

How can this be done? Often, starting with an assessment of the area, as well as related areas within your IT environment, will ensure that you understand your entire infrastructure and how it could be affected by any proposed change. This information will allow you to adress not only the issue at hand, but also set yourself up for success in other areas.

Why Now?

IT has always been complex, however as solutions continue to overlap, and all aspects of a business are touched by multiple pieces of your IT infrastructure, the traditional, siloed approach to IT is becoming less sufficient. To succeed in today’s environments, teams need to work together more closely.

For example, Cisco recently restructured its IT Network and Data Services team out of traditional silos (i.e. platform, storage network, etc.) into strategic groups that work together, and approach the environment holistically (architecture, design, implementation and operations).

Why the change? According to John Manville, Cisco’s vice president of IT, working individually the teams were developing “sub-optimal system level designs… networking optimally designed for just the network, and the platform group designed optimally for platforms. But as an end-to-end system, it wasn’t optimally designed.”

Now, depending upon your organization’s size and complexity, it may be difficult to completely restructure your IT team. However, applying this mentality to your environment — and to every IT project — you can ensure solutions that set up your complete environment for success, and support both short- and long-term business goals.

In short, you’ll end up with a better solution that applies to all your needs.

Fixing a Leak Instead of Plugging a Hole

You know in old cartoons when a boat springs a leak, and the character plugs it only to have the pressure build up so the boat bursts in another place, so he plugs that, and the process continues until he is completely stretched out and plugging multiple holes with every extremity?

If you approach projects tactically, your IT team may find itself in a similar situation (figuratively, at least). Taking the strategic, holistic approach enables you to solve the pressure problem, instead of plugging the holes.

Your Thoughts?

Have you ever approached a project strategically and found unexpected insight that changed your anticipated solution? Please share your experience in the comments below.

Darin Haines is Group President of MCPc's Advanced Technology Group - Delivery Division and has over 16 years of experience in leading the technology function in mid-sized and enterprise-level organizations. Connect with Darin on LinkedIn.

Photo credit: Anil Jadhav

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