We’ve all heard the definition of insanity: doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting a different result.

Within that context, the way many teams handle technology planning and funding is, well, let’s just say a little less than sensible. Historically, these efforts have been grounded in a project-focused philosophy. Consequently, over and over again, the same pattern is repeated:

Teams across business units make massive investments in time and money to establish a strategic long-term plan, say for an entire fiscal year. Then, not long after the plan is final, it will invariably change. Projects will come and go long before the plan is ever close to being completed, and each change will introduce the same cumbersome process of getting estimates, working through approvals, and obtaining budget.

The insanity must stop. Now, technology funding and planning need to go through a fundamental shift. Now, it’s about funding the products and the teams that are delivering value. Now is the time to move to people-centric funding.

Here are a few foundational aspects of this approach:

• Teams are given persistent, long-term funding.
• Teams are organized around products and value streams, rather than in the siloed departments of the past.
• Teams work toward common, business-level objectives.

There are three key principles that enable teams to successfully deploy people-centric planning: governing innovation, aligning technology with the business, and empowering teams. In this post, I’ll take a closer look at empowering teams.

The problem

Historically, decision making in most enterprises has largely been top-down in nature. The problem is that this centralized approach tends to be slow and inefficient. Under the control of rigid corporate governance policies and processes, teams can’t do what’s needed when it’s needed. Particularly in today’s environment, it is impossible for a single central authority, whether that’s a leader, leadership team, or center of excellence to react quickly enough for every different group they’re responsible for.

The people-centric planning approach

To improve efficiency, not to mention speed and agility, organizations need to decentralize authority. Leaders need to have good people in place and have visibility into what they are doing while enabling them to make decisions in a timely fashion. Fundamentally, leaders need to trust that these people are best equipped to know the right thing to do.

When organizations employ people-centric planning, they move away from doing one-time funding of individual projects. Instead, organizations continuously fund the teams creating the products and services that deliver value. When teams have persistent funding, people have the autonomy to figure out what needs to be done and do it. People can be empowered to adapt quickly and intelligently—without having to go back to a central authority.

There’s still accountability, however. Common, value-stream-level metrics guide teams in prioritization and tracking progress. The idea is that, as long as the team continues to deliver value, they’ll continue to be funded. Leaders make portfolio-level decisions at the beginning of the fiscal year. Leaders may decide to reduce or eliminate funding for a team that’s no longer delivering value, based on the metrics defined. They also decisively wind down products that no longer provide the value needed.

Fundamentally, leaders empower teams, provide persistent funding, and track the value they deliver. That’s all the governance required.

Conclusion

Too much has changed in recent years to be employing an approach to technology funding that’s been around for decades. By employing people-centric planning approaches, your organization can eliminate the waste, inefficiency, and inflexibility of old-school approaches. Instead, you can establish alignment around key business metrics, empower teams, and streamline governance.

To learn more, please visit our People-Centric Planning page.

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