Information Systems Strategic Planning

Catalog description

Strategic planning is the art and science of setting the enterprise's vision and allocating resources to achieve the vision. When formulating information systems strategies, organizations seeks to identify emerging opportunities to leverage new technologies that may add substantial value but also dramatically change the organization. Strategic planning includes choosing which goals and objectives to accomplish, sets criteria for how well they must be accomplished to satisfy other needs, and sets forth the activities to make these "game-changing" events happen effectively and affordably. Many strategic opportunities may present themselves to an organization, or may be discovered by a variety of introspective or business intelligence activities. Making the decision to take advantage of such opportunities is deciding to make strategic change happen. Strategic opportunities may exist because of fundamental changes in technologies, market preferences, government and regulatory actions, and other factors. The strategic planner knows that nothing remains the same, and that while no plan survives contact with reality, the planning process itself provides insight and the opportunity to choose wisely. Strategic planning for information and information systems entails applying the concepts of strategic business planning to the subset of organizational activity that generates, analyzes, maintains, and produces information and knowledge to support strategic decision making. Information systems strategic planning can address, but is not limited to, choices about fundamental information technologies, systems architectures, and information risk mitigation approaches.