Zero based IT planning

One of the worst things that can happen to organisations is
unprecedented or unplanned growth. Worst thing? Growth? Yes. You read it right.
Unplanned growth is one of the worst things that can happen to any organization.

Why? Because systems and processes that were meant for a
smaller or different scale of operations may just not stretch smoothly enough.
Because the large number of new employees who come into the organization. Given
that most organizations of the size we are talking of are today have significant
investments in IT to automate their business processes, the strain on the IT
systems could perhaps be the most damaging.

Krishna Kumar, Editor

The Indian economy is today one of the fastest growing in
the whole world and Indian companies are posting growth like they have never
seen before. All the experts that one comes across predict that this trend will
sustain. Which is why, it is time for you to pause and take stock whether your
IT systems are capable of accommodating and scaling up to the new business
realities.

And when you look at it, there are many different levels
that you need to consider. There may be platform issues that could limit your
ability to scale. There may be tehnology and lifecycle issues. There will be
infrastructure issues and there will definitely be old applications that have
become a patchwork quilt of add-ons and workarounds.

It is the rare enterprise that will throw out everything
and recreate the entire IT system from scratch, albiet over time. So, what you
would end up  doing would be to add further to the complex patchwork that
you already have in place, further weakening the setup and moving it even more
closer to the breaking point.

What I would instead suggest is that you take a break, take
a deep breath and (preferably on a blank stack of paper) sketch out what your IT
infrastructure should actually be like and what it would take in terms of
resources to build it.

The people over at finance call it zero based budgeting. In
zero based budgeting, you do not look at the incremental figures, particularly
expenditure over the previous year, but look at it from ground up, seeking
justifications for every expense from scratch. Something like assuming that the
business is being built afresh and then finding out what is it going to take to
do it.

It is not every organization that does zero based
budgeting. Nor do they do it every year. Why? Because, zero based budgeting, I
am told, is an involved and time consuming activity, which requires a completely
different mindset, altogether different from that required for day to day
operations or regular budget making.

My submission is that your IT infrastructure, however large
or small may it be, can also benefit from some zero based planning; some fresh
thinking from the ground up.

Like the finance people do, you also do not have to do it
every year. But every once in a while, it is important to get a different
perspective of the same thing. If nothing else, you get a fresh perspective to
what you need and where you need it. And that is important when you have to
provide the infrastructure for double digit growth percentages for the business.

Good Luck.