CS832 Doctor Steven Reynolds Final Project

IT STRATEGIC PLAN

By

Tai Cleveland

Class CS 832

Doctor Steven Reynolds

Week 11th assignment

Small businesses to large corporations prepare strategic plans to provide a workable

approach to the accomplishment of their vision and mission statements. Strategic plans

usually cover a time horizon as small as five years or as long as twenty years. Whatever

time horizon is covered, the aim is to identify the goals that a business will accomplish in

the next few years or the next several years. IT planners should ever be mindful that the

‘strategic’ part of the planning process is the continual attention to present changes in the

organization and its external environment, and how these could influence the future of the

organization (McNamara, 1997-2008, Introduction).

It appears that the trend in strategic planning is to identify a few outcome-oriented goals in order to provide focus and flexibility and to achieve better results. Outcome-oriented goals provide focus on achieving measurable results particularly on critical functions. It will be beneficial to the business to include related concerns in their strategic plans. Related concerns refer to strengthening partnerships and improved customer relations, improving accountability, improving performance and efficiency measures, resource assessment, to name a few examples.
Betz (2001) relates strategic plan to strategic vision as an approach applicable to information technology. He explained his idea in the following manner:
Strategy is used to mean change in direction, strategic vision to mean direction, and strategic plan to mean steps-in-a-direction. We need next to look carefully both at the concept of vision and the concept of plan. A strategic plan implements a strategy based upon a strategic vision (p. 222).

In the foregoing statement, strategic planning cannot exist by itself. It has to be coupled with strategic vision to have any meaning at all. Strategic vision will give life to the strategic plans since it provides direction. This is relevant during the implementation phase.
In information technology, strategic planning occupies a central thrust and would spell the difference between success and failure considering the typical huge investment accompanying technological innovation. The importance of strategic planning is underscored by the following vision of the Government of Jamaica (2002) in its five-year strategic information technology plan for the country:
Technology has transformed the traditional concept of value from that which is tangible, to that which is intangible. Information and knowledge are the currency of today’s economy. Rapid advances in telecommunications technology, giving rise to the “virtual office” mean that firms can outsource services anywhere in the world, as distances and time differences are now meaningless (Executive Summary, p. 8).

The foregoing quotation demonstrates the transformation of technology as a driver of economic progress. If nations show their reliance on information technology to chart their progress, no business, no matter how small, can leave their progress to mere chance. Management must exert their best effort to identify doable and measurable objectives.
Right from the start, the company should ensure broad representation in selecting members to the IT strategic planning team. The duty of the team is to develop vision, principles and goals for technology to help the company achieve its goals and a near perfect assessment of its technological capabilities. The strategic plan must provide a mechanism for identifying progress in the accomplishment of goals and for reflecting changes in the internal and external environment.
The National States Geographic Information (NSGI) Council (2006) pointed out that goal identification and formulation should also build partnerships to achieve common goals. This observation is relevant to information technology. The Council wrote:
A good strategic plan should provide a clear explanation of how one or more strategic goals are to be achieved by an organization or program. It typically outlines long-term goals and details the specific strategies and programmatic goals that are to be pursued.… Strategic planning is a critical element for articulating a shared vision, and for building the partnerships that are necessary for disparate organizations to work together on common goals. (p. 3)

The NSGI Council (2006) identified the key elements of the strategic plan. These are strategic goals, long term goals, details of strategies and building partnerships. The efforts of the Strategic Planning Team must be directed to the formulation of goals that are reflective of their information technology initiatives.
Having identified preliminary ideas on the need to formulate a strategic plan, the next step concerns just how strategic planning is conducted. There are several models available for the use of the planning team. One popular model used in planning is called SWOT Analysis. SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. The analysis involves the identification and recording of the company’s strengths, weaknesses, available and potential opportunities and threats from such sources as competitors, equipment obsolescence, environmental conditions and the like. Strengths and weaknesses are related to the internal resources of the company while opportunities and threats consider factors external to the company. (Philipo, n.d.)
The classification of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats should be related to particular objectives and the vision-mission statement of the business. The first order of the day is for the team to formulate the objectives for the business. If objectives are already identified beforehand, the team should revisit and review the objectives to see if it can be adopted as such or revised. The team should also revisit the company’s mission-vision statement.
The team leader assigns specific tasks to the members and the latter are advised to focus on IT related concerns. The team should also allocate time to gather research information, such as, the current inventory of computer equipment and IT personnel. It is advised that the conduct of SWOT analysis is better done under a workshop atmosphere than the usual office meeting. It would help if the team will be assisted by a facilitator. The facilitator will not be assigned any task like the other team members. His tasks are to assist the team members to be creative in their generation of ideas and to promote systematic documentation of the planning procedure.
It will be idealistic to presume that the planning will go smoothly. To be realistic, seldom does planning go along without any hitches. Planning consultants Strategic Plantool (2001-2009) suggests business planners to be on the lookout for causes of planning problems. It explained:
The underlying causes of strategic planning problems are seldom technical deficiencies in the planning process or the analytical approaches used. Instead, they are human and administrative in nature. (…) Managers tend to focus on short-term issues with near-term financial consequences rather than on the longer-term issues that should be addressed by strategic planning (para. 1).

The team leaders should always be on the lookout for complacency among team members. They should strive to address the first signs of planning problems as described above. In the end, the planning process will be efficient when planning problems are brought under control and minimized accordingly.
The writing of the IT strategic plan comes next and should occupy the same importance as the other planning activities. It would be a mistake if the writing activity would be relegated to some secondary function. It must be remembered that it is the written plan that gets to be read by the stakeholders and other concerned parties. The written plan serves to provide guidance as the business implements various IT projects. McNamara (1997-2008) suggests that the team leader designate a small number of people to write the draft. He discourages the use of an external facilitator or consultant to do the plan writing in behalf of the team members. The draft should be presented to the board of directors or senior management for review and approval. (McNamara, 2007-2008)
Heathfield (2009) wrote that strategic planning implementation is at the heart of how to make change of any kind happen in your organization (para 2). Heathfield also identified keys to successful implementation. These keys are:
► Full and active executive support
► Effective communication
► Employee involvement
► Thorough organizational planning and competitive analysis
► Widespread perceived need for the strategic planning

IT planners should consider these keys as early as the planning stage. These keys will give planners what they should prepare for when implementation time comes. The keys tell that strategic planning should involve everyone in the organization. Strategic planning cannot be the sole responsibility of one department or of management alone. There should be a culture of shared responsibility. The culture of shared responsibility is important during the implementation stage considering that it is everyone in the enterprise who is tasked to execute the strategic plans.
The statement of Betz (2001) on the connection of strategy to implementation is convincing. He wrote:
Strategy is about change in direction; and implementing strategy is about how to create change in that direction (…) Strategic changes require different kinds of strategic vision and the initiative to implement a vision. For implementation of strategy, a strategic vision can be expressed as a strategic initiative identifying the direction of change (p. 48).

Betz (2001) counsels that implementation should be done with a measure of strategy. In other words, the activities of strategic planning should be approached by explicit identification of the direction of change.
IT strategic planners should generate an implementation timeline to follow through on the planned change. The timeline need not be some complicated instrument. It could be as simple as enumerating the activities to be undertaken under a several time periods. Persons and specific teams who will implement the plan should be identified and their responsibilities fixed. There should also be back-up personnel just in case the assigned person will not be able to do his assigned task.
To be effective, management should create teams that will provide the needed expertise during implementation phase. A coordination team will ensure that strategic objectives are carried out by the several assigned persons and/or teams. A monitoring team can also be created that will have the task of assessing performance against the strategic plans. An effective reporting system must also be in place in order that deviations from plans can be detected early before it balloons to a difficult problem. There is also a need for a documentation officer who will be tasked to keep pertinent records of the implementation phase. The audit team can be utilized to check conformance of transactions to standards of performance. We can create such teams or assign such persons to meet the needs of the implementation phase; however, prudence should be exercised in the creation of teams as more teams might tax the span of control of management and hamper the implementation phase.
The foregoing discussion demonstrates that IT strategic planning could be completed successfully through the use of simple to understand principles that do not require any substantial financial exposure.


References

Betz, Frederick. (2001). Executive Strategy: Strategic Management and Information Technology. New York, U.S.A.: John Wiley and Sons, Inc.

Government of Jamaica. (March 2002). A 5-year strategic information technology plan for Jamaica. Retrieved on September 2, 2009, from: http://www.mct.gov.jm/GOJ%20IT%20Plan%20-%20Revised%20Version%20March%2020021.pdf

Heathfield, Susan, M. (2009). Make Strategic Planning Implementation Work. About.com. Retrieved on September 2, 2009, from: http://humanresources.about.com/od/strategicplanning1/a/implement_plan.htm

McNamara, Carter. (1997-2008). Developing your Strategic Plan. Authenticity Consulting, LLC. Retrieved on September 2, 2009, from: http://managementhelp.org/fp_progs/sp_mod/str_plan.htm

National States Geographic Information Council. (2006). Strategic Plan Template. Federal Geographic Data Committee. Retrieved on September 2, 2009, from: http://www.nsgic.org/hottopics/strategic_plan_template.pdf

Philipo. (n.d) How to Analyze Business Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. Hub Pages, Inc. Retrieved on September 2, 2009, from: http://hubpages.com/hub/How-to-Analyze-Business-Strengths--Weaknesses--Opportunities-and-Threats

Strategic Plantool. (2001-2009). Strategic Plan: Major Steps, Traditional Planning Problems. Strategic Plan Builder, LLC. Retrieved on September 2, 2009, from: http://www.strategicplantool.com/Planning_Problems.htm