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Activity: Overall Business Strategy for Sustainability
Objective
The Overall Business Strategy for Sustainability activity establishes the overall set of Strategic Business Requirements that then translate into a set of High Level Sustainability Requirements. This is one of the key activities of FISDev; the output of this activity forms the basis for the scoping the overall programme, including strategic functionality, overall business goals and how success will be measured. During the interview process users should be ready to answer questions like:
- What are the most important metrics they need to do their job?
- How do they measure their success?
- What business requirements have changed recently?
Whereas a more detailed set of interview questions are asked in the following activity, this activity is very high-level and focused only on business questions.
Major Deliverables
- High Level Business Requirements document, including
- Strategic Vision
- Strategic CSFs
- Strategic KPIs
- Strategic Success Measures
- Strategic Change Drivers
- High Level Sustainability Requirements
Tasks
Define Strategic Business Vision
Objective:
The business vision defines what an organisation wishes to achieve over a specified timeframe. It describes what the organisation would like to be (future state), not necessarily what it is like today (current state). Business vision includes the objectives, priorities and value disciplines that identify the major areas in which the organisation must consistently perform well in order to achieve its business vision. The business vision and direction usually includes:
- A future state goal
- Competitive forces
- Differentiators and positioning
- Major customers, buying incentives and sales cycles
- Major suppliers and incentives
- Major competitors, substitutes and discriminators
- Industry and historical supply chains
- Success factors
This task consists of a series of interviews with senior business executives. The interviews are scripted around capturing the information listed above with questions focused around the specific business environment. Interviewees tend to be the most senior project sponsors; this information is captured in more detail from a number of project representatives in follow-on tasks.
Input:
If the organisation has not articulated its business vision, documents that may assist in comprehending its vision include:
- Current and future business visioning documents
- Business strategies and plans
- Business issues driving the need for change
- Current market plans
- Marketing collateral
- Annual reports
- 10K report (Dun and Bradstreet)
- Request for Proposal (RFP)
- Organizational charts
Other key input:
- Interview notes on program direction from sponsor
- Interview notes on program direction from key stakeholders
- Interview notes on current-state of project activity
- Program Charter
Output:
- Strategic Business Vision
Define Strategic Critical Success Factors (CSFs)
Objective:
CSFs are Business Issues or Opportunities that impact a organisation’s ability to grow or sustain their business model, market advantage, revenue, profit. For each CSF there must be at least one KPI and a Strategic Target for which success is measured. Examples would include:
- Reduce Operational Cost
- Meet a specific Regulatory Requirement
- Improve System Efficiency
CSFs can be summarized as "we must do these things well to be successful".
Input:
Same as input for Define Strategic Business Vision, also include:
- Strategic Business Vision
Output:
- Strategic Critical Success Factors
Define Strategic Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
Objective
In this task, we capture the pieces of the business to track, measure and manage its performance and address business drivers. KPIs are quantitative measures; at least one KPI is required per CSF. KPIs are specific to each business and to an industry. To help determine the best sustainability indicators look to the sustainability related critical success factors but also look outward at what peer companies are reporting on their sustainability/CSR reports, industry standards, what are the best of the best companies reporting on in sustainability and any legal requirements.
- Strategic Business Vision
- Strategic Critical Success Factors
Output:
- Strategic Key Performance Indicators
Define Strategic Success Targets
Objective:
For objectives and disciplines to be achievable, they must be quantifiable. We also must be able to measure the success in achieving our goals against a specific timeline. These success measures may be at either at a departmental level to organisation-wide. Information should be captured in a quantitative fashion (e.g. cost savings in dollars, number of reduced staff) with a time dimension.
Input:
Same as input for Define Strategic Business Vision, also include:
- Strategic Business Vision
- Strategic Critical Success Factors
- Strategic Key Performance Indicators
Output:
- Strategic Success Targets
Define Strategic Change Drivers
Objective:
Change drivers are the organisation’s motivations for achieving its business vision or the areas of difficulty the organisation is currently experiencing. The implications of change will affect one or more areas across the Enterprise View of the organisation and should be summarised in these terms whenever possible. Change drivers may include:
- Laws and regulations
- Technological developments
- Loss of market share or key clients
- Emerging market opportunities
- New employment patterns
- New organisational structures
- Global environmental issues
- Need to reduce cost
- New competitors
Input:
If the organization has not articulated its business vision, documents that may assist in comprehending its vision include:
- Current and future business visioning documents
- Business strategies and plans
- Business issues driving the need for change
- Competitor and/or Market analysis
- Current market plans
- Marketing collateral
- Annual Report
- Corporate Responsbility/Sustainability Report
- 10K report (Dun and Bradstreet)
- Request for Proposal (RFP)
- Organizational charts
Other key input:
- Interview notes on program direction from sponsor
- Interview notes on program direction from key stakeholders
- Interview notes on current-state of project activity
- Program Charter
- Strategic Business Vision
Output:
Define High-Level Sustainability Requirements
Objective
At this point, the outputs of the prior tasks are used to develop a list of High-Level Requirements that constitute the needs and constraints that must be satisfied to achieve the business objectives. The documentation within this task begins to frame the scope of the desired solution and what the overall sustainable model will look like.
Input:
- Strategic Business Vision
- Strategic Critical Success Factors
- Strategic Key Performance Indicators
- Strategic Success Targets
- Strategic Change Drivers
Output:
- High Level Sustainability Requirements
Core Supporting Assets
Yellow Flags
- Discussions are too detailed (i.e. discussions are at the attribute level)
- Too much focus on infrastructure, not enough focus on business and sustainability requirements
Key Resource Requirement
Potential Changes to this Activity
It is possible that a few more tasks may be added to this activity so that it can have complete coverage for areas such as data migration, content management and information access and delivery. Alternatively, this activity may be left in its current form and add an additional activity be added that covers knowledge and content. Potential new tasks include:
Define Strategic Data Interface Requirements
Strategic Data Interface Requirements relate to the major data elements that will need to be moved between systems in the event of a migration. This task is required when the scope of the project only involves automated integration and does not focus on collection CSFs and KPIs. This task may not be required as the scope is fairly well-covered in other tasks.
Define Strategic Content Publication Requirements
Content Publication refers to the information to be shown to the user audience. It can include KPIs and CSFs, but also includes any information to be shown to a wider audience. It is basically covers all forms of content that a user will see, at a very high level.
Define Strategic Knowledge Development Goals
Knowledge Development Goals are the thought capital capabilities that should be improved within an organisation. It should include measures on what is most important for users to learn and how they learn best.
