Workplan
Within the Digital and ICT planning framework, this guideline describes how to identify and assess the performance of an organisation’s current investment in digital and ICT related initiatives.
Identifying an agency’s current investment in digital and ICT related initiatives will ensure the organisation has greater visibility of digital and ICT related initiatives and their performance in terms of cost, risk, schedule, quality, and the degree to which benefits are being delivered.
A current work plan can provide significant value by highlighting duplicate, low-priority and poorly performing initiatives consuming resources that could be re-directed to more strategically aligned initiatives.
Audience
A practitioner in the context of this guideline can include one or more of the following roles:
- Digital and ICT strategic planners
- Agency and service strategic planners
- Investment or portfolio specialists
- Benefits specialists
- Business analysts.
Practitioners must work with the portfolio manager as a function of the business (see PRINCE2 project methodology), and the business to capture existing programs and projects that include significant digital or ICT investment components.
The information required to identify the current digital and ICT related programs and projects may be readily available within an agency’s existing information sources including:
- annual ICT profile information submitted to the Queensland Government Chief Information Office as part of the Queensland Government ICT profiling standard (government log in required)
- portfolio dashboards and portfolio reports
- program and project registers available from the program and project management offices or program and project delivery areas of the agency
- operational plans
- performance reports that show the current status of significant initiatives
- capital plans.
Where the information in not readily available or is old or incomplete, practitioners may need to survey the organisation or conduct interviews with senior representatives from the business.
Using the ICT Profiling standard
The Queensland Government ICT profiling standard outlines attributes to be considered when capturing information related to digital and ICT initiatives.
These attributes include, but are not limited to:
- initiative name
- unique program or project identifier
- investment objectives
- initiative type
- program name
- Initiative stage
- actual start date
- original planned end date
- planned end date
- percentage complete
- assurance level
- Cabinet Budget Review Committee (CBRC) funding amount
- actual cost to date
- planned expenditure current financial year
- original total estimated expenditure
- revised total estimated expenditure
- ongoing expenditure per annum
- primary driver
- priority
- Cranfield classification (refer to the following section regarding categorisation)
- benefits
- model of service delivery (e.g. as-a-service).
Visit ICT profiling templates for a workplan template to help you get started.
The Management of Portfolios Methodology (MOP) recommends the categorisation of initiatives to help the investment be more easily understood and analysed. Examples of categorisation may include alignment against the current strategic objectives of the agency lines of service delivery, or model of service delivery for example as-a-service or developed in-house.
Cranfield classification
The categorisation technique developed by Cranfield university categorises initiatives according to the potential strategic contribution they could deliver in accordance with four strategic investment categories. The table below outlines what defines each category.
The Cranfield categorisation is effective because it highlights the level of investment that is largely operational or ‘keeping the lights on’, versus strategic investment that has the potential to deliver new capability for the organisation.
| Category | Description |
|---|---|
| Strategic | Investment in initiatives which are critical to sustaining future business strategy. For example, these may represent investment in replacing key operational systems, expanding the capability currently delivered or offering completely new capability for the agency. |
| High potential | Investment in initiatives which may become more important in achieving future success. For example, initiatives that are pilots or innovation opportunities may be represented in this category. |
| Key operational | Investment in initiatives on which the agency currently depends for success. For example, these would represent the initiatives, systems, infrastructure and services that currently support the front-line services of the agency. |
| Support | Investment in initiatives which are valuable but not critical to success. For example, these may include many of the investments that support the corporate and administration functions of the agency, or foundational infrastructure. |
The Management of Portfolios Methodology (MOP) recommends collating the program and project information into an interim report for executive management that provides a clear view on the contents of the portfolio, any apparent overlaps and duplication, and the associated costs, dependencies, resource requirements, forecast benefits and strategic contributions.
An alternative for planning purposes might be to prepare a presentation for executive management that may also form part of the introduction to later ICT planning workshops in the digital and ICT planning framework’s Vision and Strategy workstreams.