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2006 IEEE SF Bay Area Region AGM2006 IEEE SF Bay Area Region AGM
30 September 200630 September 2006
Strategic Planning forStrategic Planning for
DummiesDummies
Dr. Carlos F. CamargoDr. Carlos F. Camargo
Research Fellow & Director of Educational ResearchResearch Fellow & Director of Educational Research
Ohana Foundation for Technical DevelopmentOhana Foundation for Technical Development
IEEE Caucus Member--East Bay ChapterIEEE Caucus Member--East Bay Chapter
IEEE Computer Society, Transnational Committee, InstructionalIEEE Computer Society, Transnational Committee, Instructional
Technology, andTechnology, and
Communications CaucusCommunications Caucus

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Leah Jamieson,
2006 VP-Publication Services and Products
We are in a time of change.
The future of the IEEE will depend
on our ability to combine our great
strengths with forward-looking
approaches in member services,
new technologies, and products.

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The way I understand and
interpret
We are in a time of
challenge.
The future of the IEEE will
depend on our strategic
planning based on the
analysis of our strengths,
weaknesses, opportunities,
and threats.

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What Is Strategic
Planning?
• A process for determining
• Where you are
• Where you intend to be
• How you’re going to get there

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Why Do It?
• To control the things you can control and
deal with the things you can’t
• One way for your organization to add
superior value to your customers
• It’s your responsibility as a manager
• If you don’t do it, someone else will

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The Generic Process
Define
current state
Analyze
trends
Define
future state
Analyze
gap
Develop
plan

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Getting Prepared
•Make it a group project – invite everyone
to participate
•Make decisions by consensus, not
majority rule
•If possible, get a neutral facilitator

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Getting Prepared (continued)
• Question everything, “assume nothing”
– be prepared to put yourself out of
business
• As manager, you set the tone – be careful
about what you say and do, discuss the
“undiscussable”

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Getting Prepared (continued)
• Look ? years out
• Allow enough time (? months minimum)
• Plan series of ?-day meetings with
several weeks between each session

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Defining the Current State
•Business definition
•Customer analysis
•Competitor analysis
•Strengths/Weaknesses/Opportunities/
Threats (SWOT) analysis

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Business Definition
A single paragraph that answers the
following questions:
• What is your offering?
• Who buys and consumes it?
• What do they get out of it?

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Customer Analysis
•Who are they (who makes buying
decision)?
•What are their key goals, objectives, and
strategies?
•How are they organized?
•What are their critical success factors?
•How do they value for technical
information?

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Customer Analysis
• In your team, discuss what you would
like to learn about your customers
• External – what are the job? what do they
like or not like?
• Internal – how can we help them? what are
their expectations?
• How much money do you want to spend?
• What skills levels do they have?

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Competitor Analysis
• Who are they? (think broadly)
• What are their capabilities?
• How do we compare?
• What are our sources of competitive advantage
(what do we do differently or better)?
• What are our strengths, weaknesses, opportunities,
and threats? (SWOT analysis)

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Competitor Analysis
(continued)
• In your teams, discuss who you believe
to be your major competitors:
• engineers and programmers
• marketing, testing and QA, field service
• customer service, training, HR, IS depts
• outsourcing, independent contractors
• accountants, other tech pubs departments
• project leaders, product managers
QA: Quality Assurance, HR: Human Resource, IS: Information Source

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SWOT Analysis
Strengths Weaknesses
Opportunities Threats
Knowledge of products
Good to excellent quality
Good operating and managing
processes
Solid technical background
Perceived as experts in Web
design
No multimedia experience
Don’t have relationships with
decision-makers
Weak strategic thinking and
business skills
Perceived by some as slow and
expensive
Customers need to get more
value from information
Leverage Web expertise to
create multimedia
Strong demand for
information and knowledge of
solutions
Continued trend toward outsourcing
New generation of IT tools makes it easier
for developers to think they can do work
themselves
Customers do not value our information

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SWOT Analysis (continued)
• In your teams, list four major strengths
and four major weaknesses.

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Analyze Trends
• External forces that drive businesses:
• Economics
• Resources and environment
• International factors
• Social change
• Technology
• Politics

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Products of Trends
Analysis
• List of trends (brainstorm)
• Certainty vs. impact matrix
• Short list of most significant trends

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Degree of Certainty Vs.
Impact
Must
plan for
Minimum
resources
if any
Maintain
flexibility
in plan
Forget it
High Low
High
Low
Degree of
certainty
Impact on business

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Defining the Future State
• What it takes to win
• Vision

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What It Takes to Win
Given the most significant trends we identified:
• How can we gain power relative to others in
the industry?
• Which customers should we serve?
• Which customer values should we address?
• Which competitors should we focus on?

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Vision
A shared mental picture of how we would
like the business to be...
“If you can’t see it, you can’t become it.”

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Qualities of a Vision
• Comes from the mind and heart – asks
too much of us
• We alone can make these statements –
people recognize them as ours
• Radical and compelling – dramatizes
wishes, hopes, and aspirations
• Conscious image that is the cause of our
current behavior

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Creating a Vision
• Could be a set of statements, a picture,
or both
• Should be developed and must be
understood and shared by the entire
organization
• Should focus on customers, end-users,
and other stakeholders

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Analyzing the Gap
You know where you are (current state)
You know where you intend to be (future
state/vision)
So how do you get there?

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Developing a Roadmap
• What needs to be in place at milestones
between now and the target date (~five
years from now)?

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Developing a Roadmap
(continued)
• Develop a set of goals, objectives,
strategies, and tactics with timelines
and responsibilities
or
• Develop a milestone chart populated
with events, activities, and metrics

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Developing a Roadmap
(continued)
• Review work of teams with entire group
• Formalize roadmap in a document
distributed/available to everyone

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List of Obstacles
• In your team, develop a short list of
obstacles
• For each obstacles, develop at least one
possible solution

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Promoting Your Vision and
Plan
Publicize and promote vision/plan with
critical stakeholders:
• Your organization
• Your management

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Promoting Your Vision and
Plan
• Discuss ways in which you can obtain
recognition for your vision and plan.

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Do’s and Don’t in
Planning

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Why Plan?
 Avoid wasting effort:
It is easy to spend large amounts of time on activities that in
retrospect prove to be irrelevant to the success of the project.
Planning helps you to achieve the maximum effect from a given
effort.
 Take into account all factors, and focus on the critical ones:
This ensures that you are aware of the implications of what you
want to do, and that you are prepared for all reasonable
eventualities.
 Be aware of all changes that will need to be made:
If you know these, then you can assess in advance the likelihood
of being able to make those changes, and take action to ensure
that they will be successful.
 Gather the resources needed:
This ensures that the project will not fail or suffer for lack of a
critical resource.
 Carry out the task in the most efficient way possible
So that you conserve your own resources, avoid wasting
ecological resources, make a fair profit and are seen as an
effective, useful person.

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Why Do People Avoid Planning?
(Organizational problem)
 Poor reward structures
Where an organization often failing to reward success. This
often results in a situation where it is better for an individual
to do nothing than risk trying to achieve something, fail and be
punished.
 Fire-fighting
An organization can be so deeply embroiled in crisis
management that it simply does not have the time to plan.
 The 'get stuck in' culture
An organization may oppose planning as a waste of time.
Managers are so experienced in a job that they do not
appreciate that they are planning. The approach cripples
inexperienced staff by denying them the benefits of planning,
and puts load on experienced managers.
 Opposition to Time & Expense of Planning
Time spent on planning is an investment. Some organizations
are culturally opposed to spending resources.

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Why Do People Avoid Planning?
(Individual problem)
Laziness
Lack of Commitment and Resistance to Change
Fear of Failure
Experience
Poor Experience of Planning

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The Planning Cycle
Planning is best thought of as
a cycle, not a straight-through
process: once a plan has been
devised it should be evaluated.
This evaluation may be cost or
number based, or may use
other analytical tools. This
analysis may show that the
plan specified may cause
unwanted consequences, may
cost too much, or may simply
not work.

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Elements of a Good Plan
Have a clear statement of the current situation
Have a clear aim
Reflect the resources available
Detail the tasks to be carried out, whose
responsibility they are, their priorities and
deadlines.
Explain control mechanisms that will alert the
manager to difficulties in achieving the plan.
Plan for contingencies, so that a rapid and
effective response may be made to crises,
perhaps at a time when you are at a low ebb or
are confused following a set-back.

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To Make a Plan Effective, You have to:
 Involve people affected by the plan to gain their support
 Explain why the plan is being carried out
 Sell & resell the benefits to everyone involved
 Ensure that the required resources are available and
remain available
 As far as possible keep to existing ways of doing things.
This avoids unnecessary disruption.
 Build in milestones and review progress. This helps to keep
a sense of movement in the plan, and allows achievement
to be rewarded
 Use KISS (Keep It Simple and Straightforward)
 Keep the plan flexible
 Consider transitional arrangements - how will you keep
things going while you implement the plan?

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Thank you for your attention!