Strategic IT Planning for Public Organizations: A Toolkit - UNU-IIST ...

Strategic IT Planning Toolkit – Section 2: Strategic IT Planning Process
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2 Strategic IT Planning Process
This section explains the overall IT strategy process or framework. A conceptual framework is first
provided to guide the development of the process. The conceptual framework considers generic
strategic planning models and identifies the essential steps of a strategic planning activity. Next, a
generic IT strategy process model is presented based on a set of guiding principles and requirements.
Following this, the overall implementation framework for the generic IT strategy process is explained.
Prescriptions for concrete process implementation are guided by – the Control Objectives for
Information and related Technologies (COBIT) IT Governance Framework, Balanced Scorecard
method, and the Logic Model for planning and evaluation. Available tools for supporting the overall
IT strategy process are also identified.
2.1 Conceptual Framework
Planning is a management activity involving the anticipation or specification of some future needs,
deciding or selecting strategies and procedures to meet these needs, informed by the analysis of
internal and external information on an organization. In essence, planning chooses who, what, how,
and where with respect to the attainment of a goal. More formally, planning is a formalized procedure
to produce articulated results in the form of an integrated system of decision [16].
A strategy is a long term plan of action affecting the overall direction of an organization. It is a plan
from which other plans like detailed operational plans can be developed.
Strategic planning is a disciplined effort to produce fundamental decisions and actions shaping the
nature and the direction of an organization. It is a continuous and systematic process in which
decisions are made about intended future outcomes (3 - 5 year horizon) how the outcomes are to be
accomplished (based on the analysis of internal capabilities and external trends) and how success is
measured and evaluated [16].
2.1.1 Strategic Planning Models
Several process models have been proposed and used for strategic planning. Eight of these models
are briefly explained below with emphasis on their distinguishing features:
1) Model A - specifies the following four features for a typical strategy process [14]: providing
detailed ac-count of the entities in an organization and their interaction with the environment,
addressing the allocation of resources (capital, labor and capacity), focusing mainly on long-term
issues, but not neglecting short term issues with long-term consequences, involving middle-to-top
level management and executive decision makers. This model does not prescribe a particular
process, but identifies important properties of strategy processes.
2) Model B – identifies six major phases for a strategy process [13]: planning the process;
understanding the context; vision, values, and mission discussion; review of strength, weakness,
opportunities and threats, discussion of strategic options and goals; and organizational structure.
This model emphasizes the need to plan the strategic planning process, involve the stakeholders in
establishing and agreeing on the context – existing problems and issues, for the planning exercise.
3) Model C – describes a seven-step process [11]: mission, vision, critical success factors,
assessment of the present, strategic objectives, tactics and action plan. This model is differentiated
from most of the other models reviewed here in terms of the inclusion of identification of strategic
imperatives or critical success factors and development of tactics from strategic objectives.
Report No. 417, May 2009
UNU-IIST, P. O. Box 3058, Macao