Methodology:: Planning

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1 General
2 Planning
3 Downloads
4 Your Comments

General

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Status: Draft release

Purpose

Purpose of this Diagrams Set is to collect planning related Diagrams.

Scope

There are Planning related diagrams in the section above. The Planning Diagrams are served as a reminder tools for the Planning processes.

Glossary and Abbreviations

IT - Information Technologies
IS - Information Systems

Planning

There is a lot of books and articles related to planning which repeats same information again and again. Here some rare diagrams are placed to pay attention to or to use as a tool.

Planning:: Planning at Startup

Figure 1 shows processes which should be started at the startup of the project. Roles should be defined and documented as well.

Fig.1: Planning:: Planning at a Startup

Planning:: Planning at Startup:: Steering committee meetings

Steering committee meetings are used as a forum for creating a common understanding of the project progress. This in turn lays the foundation for coordinating the work within development and across the different functional areas.

Planning:: Planning at Startup:: Requirements clarification

Requirements clarification is as follows:

Splitting compound requirements into several requirements
Adding definitions of terms (glossary) and using them consistently
Using a common sentence structure and the teem "shall"
Adding details
Quantifying statements when possible
Defining attributes for each requirement, e.g., assigning a requirement to a software component, classifying its priority, estimating its efforts, or associating it with another requirement it depends on

Only two roles (persons) are working on the Product Requirements refining and clarification cycle: Customer (or Customer Proxy) and Project Manager. All the team working to produce the Schedule.

Planning: Plan Components

Figure 2 shows Plan Components and their relationship.

Fig.2: Planning:: Plan Components

As a first step, Situation Analysis - Description of where we are today, internal, and external, business, and Information Systems (IS) should be done.
Secondly, you have to create Strategy Foundation - Description of where we want to be, business, and IS.
After the Gap Analysis you will will be able to create Strategy Implementation: plans how we are going to get there from an IS point of view.

Planning:: Information Technologies Hierarchy

It is important keep in mind Information Technology Hierarchy shown on Figure 3 for the period of the planning of new system.

Fig.3: Planning:: Information Technologies Hierarchy

During the process of the System Development it is necessary to bear in mind that hardware platform should be decided on the later Stage, when all higher level planning is done. Time line on the Fig. 3 goes from top to bottom (e.g. before Application Software Stage will be decided it is necessary to have good understanding of the Business Transactions it should serve).

Width of the pyramid at the given Stage level is proportional to the amount of the people involved in the Stage (e.g. to make proper Strategic Planning team should be not more than 3-5 people, and on the later stages more people should be involved).

Downloads

Diagrams from the above Diagram Set could be downloaded in Zip format here:

planning_dia.zip

Diagrams are created in Dia format. For Unix/Linux users it is a standard diagrammer software. Windows users can obtain legal GPL-ed copy of DIA from http://dia-installer.de/index_en.html