Guides: The Foundations

Foundations establish the context for understanding, using, and applying the IT Planning and Management Guides consistently in different situations.

Included are:

• Organization of the Guides - Describes the structure of the IT Planning and Management Guides and their interrelationships.

• Key Principles and Concepts - Describes the essential elements of the guides and associated resources.  Principles and Concepts explain the reasons that certain approaches are suggested.

  • Enterprise Focus
  • Open-System, Standards-Based Development
  • Component-Based, Distributed Computing Environment
  • Planning for Change
  • Architecture-Influenced Decisions
• Application Guidelines -There is no single path to success in developing a system. Each situation has its own unique challenges. Application Guidelines help you use the IT Planning and Management Guides in your environment.
  • Interpreting the concepts and principles
  • Customizing the roles
  • Customizing the artifacts
  • Customizing the activities
    

Organization of the IT Planning and Management Guides

The IT Planning and Management Guides are composed of a set of hyperlinked documents. Each document describes critical IT management or engineering activities that should be mastered. The individual guides and their relationships are shown in the diagram. Each guide can be applied separately, or used with the other guides as the basis of a life-cycle process. Together, the guides will assist the IT Division in improving the capability of the technology used by the HS Agency. The guides are designed to incorporate key principles essential to survival in a changing IT world.

• The Guide for the Strategic IT Planning and Management describes the key activities involved in developing a HS IT Strategic Plan. This plan allows the HS IT Division to effectively respond to the needs of the HS Agency, within its dynamic business and technological environments.
• The Guide to Develop and Maintain the Technical Architecture describes the key activities that establish the HS Agency Technical Architecture. This is an HS Agency-wide blueprint and accompanying technical guidelines to manage integration and interoperability of the HS Agency IT. This architecture guides the technical management and engineering practices to fabricate, deploy, and operate IT within the HS Agency.
• The Guide for Planning and Managing the Technical Evolution describes the key activities that create and maintain an IT Evolution Plan for HS IT projects. This integrated plan defines and coordinates IT projects that fabricate, deploy, and operate the IT within the HS Agency.
• The Guide for Technology Fabrication Projects describes the key activities for constructing needed technology solutions. These projects may create new solutions or modify and adapt existing solutions to meet HS Agency-specific requirements. A project may custom develop or use off-the-shelf solutions. Projects also include maintenance activities and migrate existing IT assets, when necessary. Project management decisions are coordinated across projects by the IT Evolution Plan. Technical decisions are coordinated through the HS Agency Technical Architecture.
• The Guide for Technology Deployment describes the key activities for performing the orderly transition of the fabricated solutions to use. Deployment activities include the installation and configuration of the applications on new or existing technology platforms, as well as the movement of operational data to a new technology base. Like the fabrication projects, these activities are coordinated through the appropriate portion of the IT Evolution Plan and the HS Agency Technical Architecture.
• The Guide for Technical Operations describes the key activities that are necessary to keep deployed applications and platforms operating efficiently. These activities include: gathering information on the state of the existing IT; administering to the operational needs of the technology (e.g., data, user, security, application); and collecting and analyzing data on defects, performance, use, and improvement opportunities. This information can guide further strategic management, Technical Architecture, planning and management decisions. Like the fabrication projects, the activities are coordinated through the appropriate portion of the IT Evolution Plan and the HS Agency Technical Architecture.

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IT Planning and Management Guides Web Structure
Each Guide is organized as a virtual document, a set of web pages, as shown in the diagram. Each guide is based on a process framework - a set of interconnected activities, roles, and artifacts. Each guide corresponds to a highest-level function.

• Activities - Key development or management tasks that must be accomplished. They are decomposed to describe appropriate levels of work. The lowest level contains a description of the fundamental activities to be performed, the individuals or groups that perform them, and the artifacts to be used and produced. The number of levels needed to decompose processes to an elementary level varies,
• Artifacts - General categories of information and specific work products that individuals performing activities in the guides use or produce. Their definitions are consolidated on the Consolidated Artifact Definitions page,
• Roles - Individuals or groups that have responsibility for participating in the activities described in the guides. Role definitions are consolidated on the Consolidated Role Definitions page.

Each guide addresses a different function within the overall IT life cycle. When necessary, additional guidance and background information are provided within each guide. This helps the user of the guide understand the guide-specific principles or concepts, and complements the overarching foundations that apply across the guides.

The guides describe what needs to be done, who does it, and what they use or produce. The guides build background knowledge, as necessary, to perform the key activities described in each guide. To perform activities, resources are made available. These resources represent how - a way to acquire further knowledge or useful tools, methods, templates, examples, and other items to perform the activities described in the guides. Resources can be used across the guides or be specific to a guide. Resources are meant to be shared across the States, organized according to the process framework in the guides. This approach provides the ability to share lessons learned and leverage experiences. Resources are virtual documents; they can reside anywhere on the Web, such as a State's Web server.

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Migration and Long-Lived Systems: The Key Principles

Achieving the ability to continually meet business needs means mastering the ability to migrate.

In the IT world, migration is the movement of an application system to a new environment, motivated by a need to serve the business of the Enterprise more effectively. Migration helps protect the current investment in critical data and functionality and establishes a path for growth. When carefully managed, migration provides an opportunity for the Enterprise to better position itself for the future, not just to react to a crisis of obsolescence.

An Enterprise can accomplish a migration in one or more steps. The size and number of steps depend on the amount of change the Enterprise's business and automated systems must undergo and the need to rest and recover along the way. As in nature, this movement is never-ending. Migration is adaptive maintenance, sometimes chosen as a path of last resort when there is a large gap between what the business needs and what IT can deliver. This happens when maintenance actions to remove defects (corrective maintenance) or improve performance (perfective maintenance) are no longer effective in meeting business needs.

To facilitate the decisions that need to be made, the IT Planning and Management Guides are based on a process framework. This framework is intended to allow the HS Agency to achieve two objectives:

• Reinvigorate and extend the useful life span of existing AIS's. This allows the HS Agency to retain the business value of existing IT investments and recast them into more flexible and adaptable structures.
• Establish a basis upon which to address the larger, more compelling challenge: co-evolution. The new and existing IT applications and supporting infrastructure change in harmony with the rapidly changing business and technology environments, a constant mix of the old with the new.

To address these objectives, the  framework includes the following five principles:

• Enterprise Focus
• Open-System, Standards-Based Development
• Component-Based, Distributed Computing Environment
• Planning for Change
• Architecture-Influenced Decisions
  

Application of the IT Planning and Management Guides

The IT Planning and Management Guides establish a framework for an integrated IT planning and delivery process for a typical State HS Agency (see figure below). The framework describes the essential activities, artifacts, and roles that are necessary to evolve automated systems that are in service for a long time. Because each State's situation is unique, the framework can be adjusted to fit each context in which it is applied. The organization of information contained in the guides can be found under Organization of the IT Planning and Management Guides.

Evolving the capability of the existing systems is an iterative and continuous process, where HS Agency technical infrastructure and supported applications co-evolve with HS Agency needs. The strategic management, architecture definition, and IT planning areas focus on HS Agency-wide management and technical decision making, coordination, and control practices. The technology fabrication and deployment areas address the creation and fielding of specific technology solutions within the context established by the first three process areas. Technical operations considers those practices that allow for effective operation of the IT infrastructure and applications.

Usage Model

The model figure depicts the overall approach to apply and improve the process framework. The process descriptions and resources that make up the IT Planning and Management Guides, along with other NHSITRC assets (e.g., promising practices and State System Profiles) are used to define a state-specific process. The state-specific process will address each State's unique environment, technology, organization, and other factors. The State-specific (i.e., customized) descriptions become the basis for training and use within each State. State-specific work products and job aids, as well as lessons learned from both the customization and use of the framework-derived processes, can be fed back into the IT Planning and Management Guide resources.  This feedback is used to improve the framework and add additional resources to be further shared among the States.

Customization

The guides are not meant to replace well-established management and engineering practices, but rather to augment them. Care is necessary to integrate the approach from the guides with existing HS Agency culture and conventions. Consider the following for each context in which the IT Planning and Management Guides are applied:

• Interpreting the concepts and principles
• Customizing the roles
• Customizing the artifacts
• Customizing the activities
  

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