Technology for your Mission

At NPower PA we provide a Strategic Technology Planning service. Organizations pay us to work with them to create a large document and ancillary reference materials that outlines a 3 year planning horizon for technology within their organization. This document is designed to interface with, but does not replace, a traditional strategic plan.

So, the obvious question to ask is, where does technology end and the rest of the organization begin. This is a particularly difficult question for me to answer since I don’t really believe that there is a difference between technology use and the organization as a whole. What that said, I am being paid to help them plan their technology use, so concessions must be made.

Obviously computers, servers, and networking equipment are related to technology. I think most will agree that the IT support structure also is. What about the processes that determine how people use technology? Databases that directly determine how work is done in the office? Budgeting procedures? Staffing? Training? The way they communicate? Technology touches every aspect of an organization, making it difficult to talk about in a clear way.

At NPower PA we use the “house.” This somewhat ridiculous diagram breaks technology down into discrete components that can be discussed separately. We can then color-code the parts of the house to show the health of the organization at a glance. Sort of like kindergarten, but it has proven surprisingly effective. To the right you can see the parts that I am using now. They seem to change with every project depending on the organization’s needs.

The “pillars” of the house are the most substantive portions of the document. They cover all the hardware, operating systems, databases, websites, and communication processes and software packages used by an organization. The rest covers policies and procedures within the organization, including BCP, planning, budgeting, support, training, etc. I’ve found this to be the easiest way to explain the impact of technology within an organization, but I’m sure I’ll be tweaking it far down the road.

The hardest part is figuring out how the client thinks about technology. Previous iterations seperated workstations from servers or combined databases and operating systems. This kind of document needs to be client-centric, not IT centric.