Republic of Kosovo Government Ministry of Economic Development

5.1.Operational Plan

Operational plans have proven to be an effective tool for managing the implementation of complex strategies. Consequently, the working group decided to elaborate a detailed operational plan which will serve as the key management instrument for implementing the Kosovo IT Strategy.

The operational plan plays a key role in strategy implementation for the following reasons:

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  Defining tasks, activities, responsibilities, resources and timing
  
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  Providing a key instrument for stakeholder coordination and collaboration
  
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  Facilitating collaborative strategy implementation in order to achieve joint goals (“roadmap”)
  
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  Facilitating Project management and controlling
  
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  Allowing for effective budget and resource management
  
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  Providing the basis for monitoring and evaluation
  

The operational plan for the Kosovo IT Strategy has been structured according to the 9 strategic pillars and the corresponding tasks outlined in chapter 4. As indicated in the following chart, each task has been operationalized into individual work packages (WPs), consisting of several activities that need to be implemented.

Figure : Structure of operational plan

For each of the tasks or work packages (WPs), results, acceptance criteria, responsibilities, budgets and activities have been defined in the form of a so-called WP description. Taking into account the agile approach of the Kosovo IT Strategy, the working group also defined user stories for each task to ensure customer/target group orientation and to specify the intended impacts. Similar to agile software development, the user story captures the “who”, “what” and “why” for each task in a simple and concise way.

The following chart provides an example of such a WP description and its structural elements:

Figure : Description and structure of work packages

The operational plan and its integrated portfolio structure, consisting of strategic pillars and corresponding tasks or work packages, provide the following advantages:

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  Breaking down the scope of the IT strategy implementation into manageable WPs and activities
  
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  Making the whole strategy implementation process manageable and measurable
  
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  Using tasks/WPs as planning, management and controlling units
  
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  Allowing for a structured planning and implementation on a collaborative basis
  
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  Enabling agility and flexible adaptation of support measures/tasks to changing market conditions and priorities without having to change the whole strategy
  
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  Enabling parallel implementation of tasks
  
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  Promoting continuous improvement of the strategy implementation process (plan, do, check, act)
  
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  Facilitating effective communication and coordination
  

Figure : Key elements of the operational plan of the Kosovo IT Strategy

Furthermore, the structure of the operational plan has also been integrated into the SharePoint of the Kosovo IT Strategy (see chapter 5.8) in order to support a smooth and effective implementation.

In summary, one could state that the operational plan is the core instrument and roadmap for the implementation of the Kosovo IT Strategy.

In the following section we will present the operational plan for the implementation of the Kosovo IT Strategy according to the strategic pillars and the above-mentioned structure.