Prepared for– Province of Ont., Ministry of Transport

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Executive Summary

Key elements of the strategy and implementation plan are summarized in this section. Please refer to the balance of the document fordetails.

Summary of recommended Strategy

The objectiveis to maintain or exceed the current level of service delivery while modernizing the legacy infrastructure. The focus of this strategy is optimization of the existing level of technology investment through a clearly defined prioritization and ongoing review process.

Developthe base prioritization and review approach and obtain support for itscore principles.
The initiation phase will produce an approved set of principles and ongoing review/governance process for balancing new development, maintenance, support and legacy system modernization within budget and time constraints. A baseline consideration for the strategy is improving time to market and continually reducing ongoing unit costs. The core principles of the strategy will define how to best balance new initiatives, support and maintenance practices withrenewal of existing infrastructure and applications.

Implement prioritizationand ongoing review practices within the context of the ongoing work.
The prioritization process with be implemented as day to day operations continue. The ongoing validation will include amalgamation of the individual project or program initiative results. The results will support decisions to modify ongoing activities, update the strategy or stay the course.

Evaluate the strategy with lessons learned and framework for the future.
When the strategic objectives have been achieved the focus is on recommendations for the future (next strategic plan) together with ensuring the processes and documentation needed to maintain the achievements is complete and readily available.

Background and Assumptions

Thecore information provided in the assignment instructions is summarized here together with additional assumptions and constraints which are used as the foundation for this strategy proposal.

CurrentState

The Road User Safety Application Solutions branch is charged with creating a systems environment which is modern, flexible and adaptable to produce and deliver RUS information products and services with a significant reduction in time to market.

  • Legacy applications have reached end of life (PL/1, Cobol, Assembler code – aging mainframes).
  • Business is seeking solutions to streamline business operations with technology.
  • Focus on approved application development, maintenance and production support requires 100% of resources.
  • Legacy system capacity issues are impacting the ability to meet growing business requirements.

Strategy Proposal

This proposal presents the medium to long term plan of action to achieve the optimalbalancebetween tacticaland strategicdevelopment, in conjunction with ongoing production support demands. (Tactical development is what’s needed to support the business now while strategic supports the longer term objectives.)

Common Principles

  • This is a “living strategy” that needs to be updated and modified over time as circumstances change and/or additional information becomes known.
  • Governance and change management processes need to be defined in advance and operational throughout the execution of the strategic plan.
  • The vehicles for strategy execution will be managed as programs/projects and other separate initiatives .
  • Existing practices like enterprise architecture standards, project management governance and software development lifecycle processes will form the baseline methodology for work completed under the strategic plan.

Recommended Approach

The ultimate goal is to optimize the technology investment for infrastructure and applications supporting the Road User Safety (RUS) line of business within Ministry of Transport, Ontario (MTO). Simply put, the strategy will answer the questions:

  • What applications to build, now and future?
  • How to build them?
  • What tools and technologies to use along the way?

The recommended plan is structured in three phases. A number of the planned activities are concurrent and some of the activities continue across phases. The phased approach requires formal “gating” at regular intervals. This will assist the governing executivein making adjustments to the strategy based on the measured results at a point in time.

Note: The project and program components of the strategy will have internal phase gates and decisions from these checkpoints will form input to (and could effect change in) the overall application development strategy.

1) Initiation Phase

The main outcome of this phase is a defined process for prioritization and tracking all initiatives which will impact the RUS infrastructure and/or application suite together with visible support of these principles.

Core inputs

  • An inventory of current projects being managed by the information technology department and their status including budgets and benefits both realized and projected.
  • Road User Safety Application Solutions Branch (RUSASB) development process and resource strengths and weaknesses (i.e., current and near term capability).
  • Existing governance organization including roles and responsibilities, effectiveness and opportunities.
  • Consideration of legal and statutory limitations as they pertain to automation plans.
  • Catalogue of new IT projects requested but not currently underway including benefits both realized and projected.
  • Mainframe and legacy systems current state including development, support and infrastructure currency impacts. Information on options such as component re-uses/ re-writes versus full replacement or combination of these.
  • Budget and timeline expectations expressed as a minimum and maximum range (e.g., within existing budgets over 4 to 6 years).

Methodology

First, define and document the strategic goal in more detail. This will include clear metrics and directional statements which can easily be used to determine initiative prioritization. The prime purpose of technology investment optimization is to apply funding where the results are most likely to achieve the end goal of the development strategy. This cannot be achieved unless the end goal and associated measure are well understood.

Use the defined goal and measures to develop a set of principles for initiative prioritization. The core inputs are key considerations used in development of the principles as current and future states as they exist today. If the goals are too idealistic and not perceived as achievable the likelihood of success is low. The principles need to be clearly developed to enable all stakeholders in the process easily apply them (i.e., business and technology owners of proposed or existing initiatives).

Create a prioritization and review process. The Ministry’s annual and ongoing budgeting practices and the “gating” process with the standard project methodology are key constraints that must be taken into account.

Test the effectiveness by completing an initial prioritization on the current state. The gap is an indication of both incremental costs versus the existing approach as well as time frame.

Timing and Critical Success Factor

At the foundation of the strategy is the belief that, at the very least, the modernization of legacy applications and infrastructure can be accomplished within existing budgets while meeting new business, support and maintenance demands (duration is believed to be the mostflexible). Critical to the success of the strategy is buy-in to this concept by all impacted stakeholders.

This stage will require 6 to 9 months with a dedicated team of approximately 4 to 6. A large number of stakeholders throughout RSUASB and other areas will also need to be involved for input and validation. A defined set of principles which have been tested against current state and associated process to achieve them is the critical deliverable from this phase of the strategy. Executive level buy-in is a key indicator.

Note: Timeline will be impacted by availability or state of key inputs to the phase and the amount of work associated with developing or upgrading them.

2) Planning and Execution Phase

The main output of this phase is a clear understanding throughout all impacted areas (business and technology) of the prioritization and review process. The process will be operational and initial review and prioritization completed and associated action plans defined and underway.

 Core inputs

  • Strategic objective and associated principles.
  • Governance and prioritization process including organizational roles and responsibilities.
  • Ongoing status of current project and proposed initiatives.

Methodology

Develop and implement an ongoing communication plan for maintaining a high level of awareness of the strategies progress including selected initiatives and future considerations.

Concurrently implement the process for initial and ongoing prioritization. Ongoing validation of the strategies progress will occur through amalgamation of the individual project or program initiative results. The results can be used both to modify ongoing activities based on the original strategic objectives or as input for review and updating of the overall strategy.

Timing and Critical Success Factor

This stage will require 4 to 6 years with a dedicated governance team. All stakeholders with an interest in road user safety applications will be impacted to some extent throughout this phase. The progress against the defined set of principles is measured through amalgamation of the individual initiative results. Success is determined by progress toward the defined objective (or updated strategic objective based on impact of environmental changes).

3) Evaluation Phase

The main outputs of this phase are lessons learned and creation of a repository for living documentation and processes developed during the initiation, planning and execution phases of the strategy. .

 Core inputs

  • Results obtain by execution of the strategic plan.
  • Key challenges, obstacles and risks and how they were overcome together with success. stories (methods that worked well).
  • Process documentation for ongoing practices.

Methodology

When the objectives have been achieved, conduct and document a review of the activities with a focus on opportunities for future improvement.

Create or re-purpose existing document repositories for all of the strategies “living” documentation.

Timing and Critical Success Factor

This stage will require 4 to 6 weeks. All key participants in developing and implementing the strategy participate. The closing focus is on recommendations for the future together with ensuring the process and documentation needed to maintain the ongoing practices is complete and readily available.

Implementation Plan

This section captures the major milestone activities for the plan of action to achieve legacy system modernization while meeting the ongoing business demands for new automation together with support and maintenance needs. Timing estimates are “order of magnitude” based on knowledge of similar situations. The estimates are very much dependent on the current state of legacy system modernization. These estimates are based on a core team size of approximately 6. The work described in this plan requires a very small percent of the overall funding for development and it’s recommended the costs be rolled into the existing budgets without affecting an incremental increase. Theseestimates and recommended funding approach should be updated at the end of phase 1 and annually during phase 2. The incremental accuracy will increase from “order of magnitude” to a baseline 10% accuracy expectation after 1 year of strategy execution.

Phase 1 (While listed sequentially some activities are concurrent. Overall duration of phase is estimated at 6 to 9 months.)

  1. Define, team, governance and detailed approach for the phase- 3 - 6 weeks
  2. Gather information inputs to the phase. ( In some cases the- 4 - 8 weeks
    information will not be readily available or at the level of detail needed)
  3. Develop the initial draft of strategic principles, prioritization and - 12 to 16 weeks
    review process (includes documenting missing info from step 2)
  4. Conduct reviews, update documentation, obtain approvals- 4 to 6 weeks

Phase 2 (While listed sequentially some activities are concurrent. Overall duration of phase is estimated at 3 to 5 years.)

  1. Develop and execute a communication plan for informing all- 4 to 8 weeks
    impacted parties of the prioritization and ongoing validation
    (governance) process
  2. Complete initial prioritization and begin ongoing review process- 1 to 4 years
  3. Make decisions and act on results of initiatives approved under - 1 to 4 years
    based on the process developed within the strategic plan
  4. Report on the strategies results, including updates to the strategic- Annually
    plan based on results and other events including rationale

Phase 3 (While listed sequentially some activities are concurrent. Overall duration of phase is estimated at 1 to 3 months.)

  1. Capture and communicate the closing results of the strategy -4 to 6 weeks
  2. Review existing “living” processes and documentation for -6 to 8 weeks
    completeness and availability
  3. Compile/communicate lessons learned during strategy-4 weeks
    execution

Appendix A: Document History

Date / Revision / Name of Person Making Change / Description of Changes
November, 30th, 2007 / 1.0 / Document Owner / Final version

Document Owner

The primary contact for questions regarding this document is:

Stephen Kerr, Director IT, , 416-490-7885.

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