The tute this week is concerned with strategic planning for information systems and technology.

Students should find an IT strategic plan (or strategic information systems plan (SISP)), or similar, for an organisation with which you are familiar. It is highly desirable that the plan is current and was produced over the last year or two. Note that if such a plan is not readily available, IT strategic plans can be found by searching the internet, and it would be reasonable to use a plan found through such a search for this exercise.

You should then analyse and evaluate the plan in terms of the material presented in the week 3 lecture (a summary of some key points is included below). Students should provide a brief analysis of the plan and some students will be asked to briefly present their analysis to the tutorial. Your submission could include:

• a brief introduction to the organisation (little more than the name of the organisation and its primary activities) and a link to the IT strategic plan if this available
• an quick overview of the strategic information systems plan – perhaps start with the table of contents and some brief commentary (if the table of contents is very detailed, you could cut this back to the key headings). Is the IT strategic plan part of the organisational strategic plan, or is it a separate document? How does it connect to the organisation’s strategic plan? Does it contain key elements indicated in the lecture notes?
• what are 2 good things about the plan?
• what are 2 things about the plan that are not so good?

We will attempt to draw out some common themes from the various plans considered in the tutorial and discuss issues raised by the article.

Article

Amrollahi, A, Ghapanchi, AH & Talaei-Khoei, A 2014, ‘Three Decades of Research on Strategic Information System Plan Development’, Communications of the Association for Information Systems, vol. 34, no. 1, p. 84.

This article in in the reading list for week 3 and can be downloaded from: http://aisel.aisnet.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3808&context=cais (Links to an external site.)

Consider the IT strategic plan you looked at above from the point of view of the issues raised in this article. Some issues you may consider (but are not limited to) could include whether it is evident that 7 phases of SISP (Figure 4 and associated discussion) are part of the plan that you considered; and how your plan could be categorised (see tables 14 and 15).

Some comment about IT strategic plans

The lecture notes for this week provide some material on IT strategic plans, including the following summarised comments on the content of an IT strategic plan. These comments can be used to help evaluate the plan you select for this exercise.

If one were to look at examples of current real IT strategic plans, it is clear that the thinking varies as to what an IT strategic plan should contain. However, I would contend that for the plan to be effective, there is a minimum set of issues that need to be covered to some degree. Perhaps not all of these need to be in the one document and elements could be picked up in other IS departmental documentation, but all of these elements should be easily accessible by the business managers of the organisation:

• a vision for the use of IS/IT in the organisation
• a plan for overall management of IS in the organisation and the capabilities that are provided
• a summary of current state of IS/IT (perhaps this could be seen as a statement of the current IS architecture) and the organisation’s expectations for this architecture in the future including potential uses of the technology over the life of the plan
• key drivers for change
• a mission statement for the IS department
• major initiatives planned over the timeframe that will transform the IS architecture

The plan should set out the general role of the IS department.

It is important to provide a ‘context’ within the IS plan

• where we are now – broad view of IS architecture and infrastructure, finances, and the organisational resources that support IS (staff and their location)
• and how will this be impacted by the major initiatives

Should contain a series of measurable goals to be achieved (benchmarks of progress) – the strategies need to be concrete enough to make investment choices, but flexible enough to allow changes as new needs (or opportunities) arise.

Key to a strategic plan is agreement to a few basic initiatives, rather than detailed action plans