The 3 Concentric Views: Strategic, Operational & Tactical

This series of patterns patterns for thinking and visualizing reality.

Principle of the pattern

The same reality can often be seen differently depending on the perspective you you observe it from. This is true for a landscape, a scene, as illustrated (more or less successfully) by the recent movie Vantage Point. In the movie, various characters see the same scene, the assassination of the president of the United States, from their own perspective. It is only by looking at the various perspectives of the story that the truth about what happened can be pieced together.

This is also true for a business activity or business process. A strategic outlook, an operational review, and a tactical analysis will all provide useful insights. However, combining and comparing these perspectives provides far much more insight.

although the vision will be different, each aspect will tend to affect the other two.

For instance, looking at a particular interaction or business activity on these three different time scales will likely uncover different types of activities, owners, challenges, benefits… maybe different tools are used as well.

Applications of the pattern

The 3 Concentric Views pattern is useful when trying to reconcile the views of different groups contributing to the same business process, but with different degrees of involvement and time concern. Whether the 3 Concentric Views or the Prism is more appropriate depends on the nature of the difference of perspectives. If the perspectives differ on some groups being involved with the tactics, some more concerned about the long-term . In most cases, it is well combined with the Prism pattern, which shows the various angles of process.

Example

A good example of this pattern is the Strategic, Operational, Tactical views of the Product Development Lifecycle:

At a strategic level, Senior leadership is essentially concerned with…
At an operational level, Middle management, both on the business and IT side, is essentially concerned about getting things clarified and done. The main concerns are the scope and the end-user validation.
At the tactical level, the most important concern is getting things done. It includes making sure specifications are precise, accurate, understood and that the test cases are comprehensive and prioritized.

To address each of these challenges, the main players of each of these leagues will employ different tools. Their success or failures will be seen on a different horizon.

Template for your own use

You can download and reuse these templates freely. Please, keep the copyrights and links in the document, if you share them. This way, if people like these templates too, they will know where to find these documents too. Share the love

The templates exist in 2 visual forms: 3-views-in-one, and 1-view-per-page. I also saved them in 3 different file formats, so that you can use them whatever the platform and tool you may use.

The 1-view-per-page template is convenient for use in the early stage of a brainstorm session or workshop. Just print a copy of the relevant view to each participant, and let them consider their own perspective for a while.

The 3-views-in-one template is convenient for use in a the later stage of a brainstorm session or workshop. You can print a copy per participant or team, and let them consider all perspectives for a while. Or you can fill it and leave it as a give-away.

AcrobatPDF templates: 1-view-per-page. 3-views-in-one.

Powerpoint templates: 1-view-per-page. 3-views-in-one.

OpenOffice templates: 1-view-per-page. 3-views-in-one.

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