12Tactical Planning: Deploying Strategy
I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.
—Dwight D. Eisenhower
Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.
—Sun Tzu, The Art of War
While we must acknowledge emergence in design and system development, a little planning can avoid much waste.
—James O. Coplien
Strategy, as covered in Chapter 11, “IT Strategic Contribution,” defines the high-level guidance on what a business and IT need to do to achieve the organization's long-term goals and aspirations. However, the strategic actions only give us direction; they are not immediately actionable. To understand exactly what solutions we will invest in and the most appropriate way of operating, we need to understand the tactics required to deliver on the strategic direction. Tactical planning is the process that turns strategic intent into IT initiatives that in turn can be distilled into programs and projects to be executed at the operational level. You can think of tactical planning as the bridge between high-level strategic action and low-level operational execution.
In this chapter, we will begin with a consideration of what is fundamental to tactical planning. That is, we will consider the need for a strong technical vision, how planning horizons are affected by our unique business context, and the need to constantly adapt and refine plans in relation to the changing business environment. ...