3.2: Plan of Attack

Plan of Attack – From Confusion to Clarity

You’ve just received a high-stakes memo from C-Bay’s Director of IT. Now what?

You are not given a script or checklist. You are being asked to lead, analyze, and act. The challenge before you is complex and ambiguous, and the stakes are high: this decision will shape the physical and technological backbone of C-Bay for years to come.

This section will help you develop a Plan of Attack—a flexible yet structured strategy to organize your thinking, assign roles, and begin building real, professional-grade deliverables.

Step 1: Clarify the Challenge

Before diving into research or drafting presentations, align your team around a shared understanding of the task.

Start by asking these framing questions together:

• What exactly are we being asked to do?
  • (Restate the problem in your own words to ensure clarity.)
• What do we need to know to do it well?
  • (What requirements, constraints, and stakeholder priorities must we uncover?)
• What don’t we know yet?
  • (What assumptions are we making that could be dangerous?)
• Where should we start? What comes first?
• Who will lead the work? How will we meet and communicate?
  • (Choose a rotating Project Manager, assign roles, and set up your team process.)

Step 2: Define Your Evaluation Criteria

You cannot choose the right location if you haven’t defined what “right” means. Together, create a transparent and weighted evaluation framework to compare candidate locations.

Sample evaluation categories might include:

• Facility Capacity (room for growth, number of staff/servers supported)
• Lease Costs or Acquisition Pricing
• Time to Occupancy (build-out, readiness)
• Data Center Capabilities (cooling, redundancy, uptime)
• Location Attributes (proximity to transit, talent pools, risk zones)
• Compliance (ability to meet regulatory/data requirements)
• IT Infrastructure Support (fiber, redundancy, service availability)

Resource – Use This Template:
  [CBay_Decision_Matrix_Template_With_Example.xlsx]
  This Excel tool lets you organize and weight evaluation criteria, and assign scores to each candidate location. Customize it to match your team’s priorities.

Step 3: Analyze the Requirements

Go back to Sukhjit’s memo. Highlight everything that qualifies as a requirement, constraint, or assumption. Pay attention to:

Required staff size (170+ employees)

• Server footprint (200 backup servers)
• Growth expectations (multi-year planning horizon)
• Budget sensitivity (financial modeling requested, but cost is not the only factor)
• Timeline constraints (executive briefing is due by Friday)

Group your findings into these buckets:

Category	Examples
Hard Requirements	Number of seats, server capacity, uptime
Soft Preferences	Proximity to HQ, aesthetics, brand
Unstated Assumptions	Access to power redundancy, fiber
Missing Info	Budget caps, lease terms, environmental concerns

You’ll likely need to make reasonable assumptions. Just make sure they are stated and justified.

Step 4: Assign Roles and Create Your Team Work Plan

You are functioning as a project team. Organize yourselves accordingly.

Role	Responsibility
Project Manager	Keeps the team on track, manages timeline, communicates with “executive”
Facilities Lead	Researches and compares candidate buildings
IT Lead	Focuses on server space, power, cooling, and security needs
Finance Lead	Prepares rough cost estimates and budget model
Presenter	Coordinates final presentation (can be a shared role)

[CBay_Work_Planning_Guide_With_Example.xlsx] and [CBay_WBS_Starter_Grid_With_Example.xlsx] – Use this to sketch out your team’s work breakdown structure and start forming a basic project timeline.

Step 5: Build the Project Charter

A well-written Project Charter is your first professional artifact. It summarizes your mission, scope, key risks, constraints, and success metrics. It will serve as your internal contract and stakeholder communication tool.

Resource – Use This Starter Template:
  [CBay_Project_Charter_Template_With_Example.docx] – Pre-filled with headers, formatting, and best practices. Replace the example content with your own based on the C-Bay scenario.

Include in your Charter:

• Background and Business Case
• Project Objectives
• Scope and Exclusions
• Assumptions and Constraints
• Stakeholders
• Success Criteria
• Risks

Step 6: Design Your Executive Briefing

Your audience—senior leaders at C-Bay—expects professional polish. This is not just a classroom presentation. You’re presenting a high-stakes recommendation to people whose credibility depends on yours.

Use these two guides as just-in-time learning tools:

[CBay_Executive_Communication_Guide.docx]
  Teaches you how to start with your conclusion, present only the essentials, and use your backup analysis as needed.

 [CBay_Slide_Design_Playbook.docx]
  Gives you layout, font, color, and design guidelines for professional-grade visuals that support—not smother—your message.

Best Practices for Teams

• Keep all your evidence. Every assumption or decision should be traceable to a source (memo, file, interview, market research).
• Revise often. Your first draft is never your final draft—especially for your Charter or Presentation.
• Support each other. Teams that split up work and never reconvene often collapse under pressure. Schedule working sessions.
• Challenge each other’s ideas—respectfully. Your job isn’t to agree, it’s to make the best possible decision.

You're now ready to begin assembling your deliverables and leading your first project milestone. Don’t seek perfection—seek clarity, ownership, and momentum.