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Module 1 – SLP
Strategy and Strategic Planning
Review this
comprehensive review of strategic planning
. The website is the brain-child of Dr. Ross A. Wirth, who has extensive experience in management consulting. However, the website is about general strategic planning, rather than IT planning. While you are learning from the website, you should consider the IT context. Here is an
IT plan for the US Patent and Trademark office
.
·
Do the general principles and strategies of strategic planning apply to IT planning? What may apply, what may not, and why?
Please write a 2- to 3-page article to answer the above questions. You can start by pondering about what IT is so special that its planning differs from the general strategic planning. You can choose to either discuss comprehensively of many perspectives or focus on two or three main perspectives that strike you the most. Bring your own experiences to support your arguments. If you don’t have any relevant experiences, ask your colleagues or those who handle strategic planning in your organization. You can also do some search on the Internet or at the Trident Online Library to find some references.
Submit your paper upon completion.
Use information from the modular background readings, please cite all sources, and provide a reference list at the end of your paper.
The following items will be assessed in particular:
1.
Your ability to evaluate the provided IT strategic plan.
2.
As with the Case Assignment, writing, spelling, sentence and paragraph structure will be assessed.
SLP Assignment Expectations
Length: Follow the number of pages required in the assignment, excluding cover page and references. Each page should have about 300 words.
Your assignment will be graded according to the MSITM SLP Grading Rubric.
Module 1 – Resources
Strategy and Strategic Planning
There is an open debate as to whether there should be a distinct information technology strategy separate from the enterprise strategy of a corporation. Part of this debate is understandable. Should not all divisions of the company be guided by the enterprise-level strategy? If you find that logic compelling, let me offer an example to try to convince you otherwise. Most for-profit companies have an enterprise-level strategy that is some version of grow revenue. Marketing, sales, product or service divisions, IT, and other business units or functional areas will play a role in driving that revenue. Each of those divisions of the company needs to develop their own strategies to better articulate their plans, but also to be sure that the entire division understands the substance of the plans and is pushing in the same direction to accomplish the strategy. It also helps each division to focus on the projects or initiatives that will ensure that the strategy is accomplished. Enterprise strategy is often vague by design.
Corporate strategic plans often are written with the expectation that the real work to accomplish them and therefore a translation of sorts will happen where the rubber meets the road for the company in the divisions. It is the translation of that strategy into the divisions of the company that help define specific ideas of how that strategy will be enacted. Let us remember that a good strategic plan is as much about what a company is not going to do as it is about what it is doing. The specificity of divisional plans helps focus the company. Those ideas that are not articulated in the plan should not be pursued.
The IT department is one of the few divisions of the company that touches every part of the company. The IT team is ideally suited to work with the leaders of all other divisions on their plans with a special focus on advising them on how best to bring to life those plans through better use of information and technology. Just as important, members of the IT team are positioned to see strategic priorities that are in common or that diverge for multiple parts of the company that may not even occur to the divisional leaders who propose them. As such, the IT team can help ensure that common strategic priorities are addressed commonly, or diverging needs are reconciled where necessary. In reviewing all other divisional plans, the IT leadership team will be well positioned to understand where emerging demands for technology may not yet have a supply of resources, processes, or tools to support them. That opportunity or disconnect may well lead to a strategic priority within the IT strategy.
With the strategy declared and shared, the IT team can take the necessary actions to ensure that the supply of a technology meets the demand for it by the rest of the organization. In short, the leaders of the other divisions should articulate the what, and IT leaders should articulate the how. This give and take between the other divisions and IT must be free flowing. The conversations should be frequent and IT should strive to be part of the conversations at the point at which demand is first articulated. Too often, by not having a regular cadence or even the forums for these conversations, IT finds out about new strategic priorities only after they’re fully formulated.
That’s the point when the plans are less malleable. If IT leaders can get involved earlier in the process they can advise colleagues on the art of the possible. As the IT team’s ability to do this improves they will increasingly be invited to weigh in on more strategic imperatives, creating a cycle. Therefore, IT leaders need to get more actively involved in the strategic planning processes of each division of the company, and use those conversations to inform IT’s own strategic plan. Were IT to only act against the enterprise-level strategy, IT would be stuck in a reactive mode, rather than being a prime driver of the direction of the company.
Required Reading
Use
How to find resources in Skillsoft
to access material in Skillsoft.
Bankuti, M. (2021). The Strategy Analysis Knowledge Area Course. Available in the Trident Online Library in Skillsoft.
Fernando Almeida, & José Santos. (2018).
The Business Plan Reference Manual for IT Businesses. River Publishers.
Mitigating security risks: Cyber security risks course. Available in the Trident Online Library in Skillsoft.
Mayo, S. (2022). Executiv
The Business Plan Reference Manual for IT Businesses.e’s guide to cyber risk: Securing the future today. John Wiley & Sons, Chapters 1 – 4. Available in the Trident Online Library in Skillsoft.
