Requirements Management & Analysis

Control Your IT Demand!

The Information Planning Revival

Submitted by Hans Lodder on Fri, 18/04/2008 - 08:16

Alone this week I have been called three times whether I would be interested to execute and/or participate in an information planning. For a moment I thought I was back in the last century. In all cases, the company wanted to derive a blue print of their business information architecture to be ready in time for next years.

So I asked myself the question: What am I missing? Why want all these companies to perform an information planning? And mind you, all of them belong to the Fortune Top 100 companies.

Why Now?

I think the reason is that most have benefited from the period round 2001, have downscaled a few years later, and now are growing again. So they want to be prepared, and have an information architecture suited for their growth strategy.

Why an Information Planning?

Now that is a very good question! The only thing I can think of is that the current managers were young around 1980-1990. In in that time frame an information planning was state-of-the-art, and sometimes even top-of-the-art. And I think that now they are in charge, they fall back to the tools they associates with a good way of working.
And sure, as a former James Martin Associates (JMA) management consultant, I have had my share of those. JMA is the inventor of Information Engineering (IE). information planning is a part of IE.

Better Tools than an information planning?

Better is not the word. It depends on the context. Personally, I would use a very scaled down version of information planning. My requirements:

  • Strongly coupled to the business plan, and not a standalone exercise.
  • Duration 2 months, and not the 3 years of a 'normal' information planning.
  • Top-down, and besides interviews workshops as the approach to seek and get commitment, and not a 'world in a world'.

This form of information planning is new compared to the old days. And of course, Project Portfolio Management (PPM) should be an important part of the information planning analysis stream.

And, does your company also has a Information Planning revival?

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