(This FAQ first appeared on the Strategy Forum as a questions submitted by Allen Nehr, Blade Aire Inc.)

Allen: "In the current Strategy Roundtable, I would like get feedback on the master plan duration and the sub plan duration time frames for the strategic planning cycle."

Joe: "Thank you for your query regarding the Organization Plan Period capability of Strategy Roundtable.

Strategy Roundtable's Organization Plan Period is a basic construct which frames the building of your organization’s strategic plan. Every piece of data stored in a Strategy Roundtable database (the product ships with 2 databases and in the Enterprise version you can add new ones), with the exception of the organizational hierarchy (the business unit tree), is linked to the current (selected) plan period. As a result, all project related data entered must be contained within (bound by) the Organization Plan Period.

When you add a new plan period (via Master Tables/Maintain Organization Plan Periods) and then select the new plan period, you will be dealing with a completely blank strategic plan - except for the business units themselves. This capability makes it possible to set up "rolling" 3-5 year (or whatever timeframe you would like to use) planning periods each time you go through an annual planning cycle. The only problem with this is that you may want to keep a large portion of the data from the last rolling period. A “Roll-over Plan Components” maintenance function is under consideration for a future release of the software.

The alternative to this scenario is to work with what is essentially always your current, up-to-date 3-5 year plan, and just modify the end date as you enter a new planning cycle. Since the budget graphs and reports are date bound, you can select project budget data sliced by any planning period you like.

This alternative may be preferable as the reality is that changes to your organization’s situation (CSFs and SWOTs), Goals and Objectives are often not extensive, and only changes would need to be re-analyzed with each planning cycle. At the same time, new projects will be proposed, approved or rejected, made active and eventually completed (or cancelled)."

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