Realisation of effective business-IT alignment with master planning

Consulting Services Realisation of effective business-IT alignment with master planning The IT Master Plan can be described as the tactical plan to achieve IT- business alignment starting from the IT planning baseline. It is defined as a number of incremental steps or milestones bridging from the as-is landscape to the target landscape defined in the IT strategy. Each incremental step is associated with prospective realization time periods and approval statuses. A master plan is derived from a central inventory and feeds back into the inventory when changes occur. It is completely synchronized with the data representing the IT landscape at any point in time, not a picture one puts in a drawer. In other words the master plan is a highly condensed representation of the strategic plan, and is an easy to comprehend, single point of reference, hence an excellent medium for discussion at decision boards. It reveals enterprise-wide redundancies and gaps in business support and enables checks to be made on complexity and heterogeneity of elements in the IT landscape such as interfaces. Considerable overlaps, synergies and consolidation potential often become evident. Based on these analyses concrete optimisation measures can be decided upon and incorporated into the to-be architecture in line with future strategic plans. Additionally, the master plan is very suitable for planning roll-outs of applications along organizational or business structures and to communicate such plans. © alfabet AG, 2007 1 Task In order to build an IT-master plan from which analysis is gleaned to create the to-be architecture, the following steps are necessary: 1. Gather and represent source data such as processes, organisational units / market products. 2. Capture the application landscape and its association to business. 3. Analyse the as-is landscape and derive the to-be landscape. 4. Plan the transformation from as-is to to-be landscape (master plan) alfabet offers the following consulting services to carry out these tasks: Gather and represent source data Prepare and conduct workshops and interviews to gather, analyse and consolidate the source data Provide a structured, visual representation of the source data Capture and represent the as-is landscape Capture and visually represent the applications and their associations to the business, information and technical architecture Capture and visually represent the business support provided by the applications Evaluate the as-is landscape Analyse and derive the to-be landscape Discovery of problem zones based on the analysis of application landscape, redundancies, process support and costs Prioritisation of action items based on the problem zones as the basis for further decision making and planning Derive an efficient and optimally supported to-be landscape Develop the master plan Identify gaps between the as-is and to-be landscape Plan activities to reach the to-be landscape Benefits Transparency of core business processes supported by IT Identification of IT redundancies in current business support, applications as well as the identification of areas of inadequate IT support Actionable master plan to communicate planned changes in the IT landscape and increase in effectiveness of strategic planning © alfabet AG, 2007 2