IBM's BSP

IBM's Business Systems Planning (BSP) methodology is a 
description of the general process that may be used by
an enterprise to plan for the development of future 
information systems.  The output from the BSP is a 
Master Systems Plan (MSP) that includes:

* a list of all sytems projects to be developed
* a timetable for the development of those systems
* a budget for the development of the systems

Some concepts inherent to BSP include:

1.  The planning team:  Often chaired by a Systems Analyst
who acts as a liaison between upper management, the users, 
and the technical analysts in the IT department.
 
2.  Top down planning:  Getting the commitment from the
top of the orginaization and starting the planning process
with the written objectives of the firm.  This may
be a challenging first step for a Systems Analyst with little
formal authority, but with the responsibility of conducting 
the BSP.

3.  Bottom up development:  The development of systems 
starts at the operational level where repetitive, objective
data processing is an essential element of the ongoing
production of the firm.

See also: Chapter 1 of the original BSP manual