Information Services Strategic Planning (ISSP)
This is a planning process that bridges the aspirations of the company business plan with the more mundane reality of what can be delivered with limited resources by a bunch of technical people.
There is often much frustration and angst between business users and IT departments. Much of the time this is due to lack of planning and engagement between the two. The IT department lacks the skills to do business planning and the business people lack the technical understanding to ask the right questions.
Over the past few years we have developed a streamlined process to link the business plan with an ISSP that engages key stakeholders and sets out a 1 to 3 year map of programmes and themes to address the issues.
Programme Management and Governance
A programme is a set of projects linked by a common goal or objective. Project management is relatively well understood (although not perfect it is more a science than an art). The programme itself needs good governance in order to meet the needs of the business.
Good project management will save you contingency (commonly 30%) if well managed. However, doing the wrong project or doing a project out of sequence can cost much more than any savings made within each project. How may projects have been quietly canned when people realise they are not quite what was required or the scope was not well understood?