Building Plans

Plans in Catio let you organize recommendations into actionable implementation roadmaps within a workspace. This guide covers how to structure, build, and use plans to move from AI-generated recommendations to coordinated execution.

Prerequisites

Before creating a plan, ensure the following are in place:

Active Workspace: A workspace with integrated architecture data from your subscriptions
Generated Recommendations: At least one recommendation batch generated from your architecture and context data (required for Manual Plans; AI Plans generate recommendations as part of the creation flow)
Defined Workspace Context: Context entries that reflect your organization's priorities, constraints, and strategic objectives. See What is Context?.

The Two Paths: AI vs. Manual

Catio supports two ways to build a plan:

AI Plan: Describe a goal and let Archie generate a targeted plan based on your architecture and context. Best for exploratory or goal-driven planning where you know the outcome you want but not yet which recommendations will get you there.
Manual Plan: Create an empty plan and hand-pick existing recommendations to include. Best for curating a focused set of recommendations you've already reviewed.

For step-by-step instructions on both paths, see Creating a Plan.

Structuring Your Plan

How you structure a plan depends on the scope of the initiative. Below are common approaches for organizing plans within Catio.

By Initiative

Create separate plans for distinct projects or strategic objectives:

Post-Acquisition Integration: Group recommendations related to consolidating tech stacks after an M&A event
Cloud Migration: Isolate recommendations specific to migrating on-premise systems to cloud infrastructure
Cost Optimization: Focus on recommendations that reduce redundancy, improve resource utilization, or eliminate underperforming components

By Scope or Focus Area

Use the Scope and Focus controls when generating an AI Plan to constrain the plan to a specific area of your architecture or a targeted domain. This is useful when you want a plan that addresses one part of the environment without pulling in unrelated recommendations.

By Architecture Domain

Group recommendations by technical area to align plans with the teams that own them:

Infrastructure: Compute, networking, and foundational systems
Data Architecture: Databases, pipelines, and analytics
IAM: Authentication, authorization, and access management
Monitoring: Observability, logging, and alerting
Network Security: Firewalls, intrusion detection, and secure network design

Use Cases

Enterprise Architecture Rationalization

After integrating data from multiple subscriptions, use plans to organize recommendations into a phased rationalization effort. Create separate plans for critical redundancies or security gaps versus longer-term improvements to keep execution sequenced and manageable.

Stakeholder Communication

Plans provide a structured view of intended architectural changes that can be shared with leadership, engineering teams, and cross-functional stakeholders without requiring technical deep-dives into each recommendation.

Quarterly Planning Alignment

Create plans aligned with quarterly business objectives. Use AI Plans to have Archie generate a focused plan from a described goal, or use Manual Plans to curate recommendations that match available resources and sprint capacity.