Tutorial work for Week 3 Tutorial
The tute this week is concerned with strategic planning for information systems and technology.
Students should find a strategic information systems plan (SISP), or similar, for an organisation with
which you are familiar. Note that if such a plan is not readily available, IT strategic plans can be
found by searching the internet, and it would be appropriate to use a plan found through such a
search.
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).
An overview of this presentation could be in the form of:
- a very brief introduction to the organisation (little more than the name of the organisation
and its primary activities) and a link to the SISP if this available
- an overview of the strategic information systems plan – one slide with the table of contents
should be sufficient to talk to (if the table of contents is very detailed, you could cut this
back to the key headings). Is the SISP part of the organisational strategic plan, or is it a
separate document? How does it connect to the org strategic plan?
- what are 2 good things about the plan?
- what are 2 things about the plan that are not so good?
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 can be downloaded from:
http://aisel.aisnet.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3808&context=cais
Add additional notes relevant to this article.
Consider the SISP 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 SISPs
The lecture for this week will provide some material on SISP, including the following summarised
comments on the content of an SISP. 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 SISPs, it is clear that the thinking varies as to what a
SISP 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
- a summary of current state of IT/IS (the IS architecture?) and the organisation’s expectations
for this architecture in the future
- 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)
Key to a strategic plan is agreement to a few basic initiatives, rather than detailed action plans
P(5.u)
Prime Essay Services , written from scratch, delivered on time, at affordable rates!