Itm 433

How do we know we have made 'good' IT planning decisions?"

Today I will be answering the question, “How do we know we have made a ‘good’ IT planning decision?” First I would like to talk about the processes involved in IT planning. Review current IT situation (if there is one), Define your IT objectives, Develop a plan, Document the plan, Implement the plan, and then finally evaluate the results. I will go over each one of these steps individually to explain what should happen during each phase.

The first two steps can actually go hand in hand, due to the fact that step one might not actually exist for some and for those that due have current IT equipment in place you need to see if what you have in place can meet your objective. During this phase of planning you should look at what requirements are necessary for you to complete your objectives and see if the current IT equipment you have can meet that objective. Most likely you will find some equipment you can still use and others that either needs to be upgraded or replaced. You need to ensure that you document what pieces you are going to keep and/or what pieces you are going to get rid of. Once you have done that, you now need to define your IT objective.

Defining your IT objective means you need to take into consideration how many users you are going to have, do you have plans and/or room to grow, how much data you are going to process, how much memory you need, how many servers you need, etc. To sum this all up you need to make sure you have the necessary equipment to complete the objectives. You also need to make sure you have enough equipment to grow in case you plan on expanding in the future. And then most importantly you need to make sure you have the budget to pay for all of this. We’ll go more in to depth with this in the next phase of the planning process, develop a plan.

Developing a plan is the next phase I will be covering in the IT planning process. During this part of the...