Creating An Information Systems Stra-tegic Plan

Abstract

Strategy is an action a company takes to attain one or more of its goals (Hill & Jones, 1997).  Strategic business planning involves defining an organizational mission, core values, and objectives, along with strategic initiatives to achieve these.  It requires an entity to focus on future outcomes and identify steps that will move it towards those desired outcomes, given the entity’s competitive environment.  In executing these steps, information technology resources can be used to provide information and support operations. 

The purpose of this paper is to describe the strategic planning process as it applies to information technology resources (also referred to as information systems).  Section 2.0 will overview the strategic planning process and the need for extending that process to include information systems (IS).  Section 3.0 will present an IS strategic planning methodology.  Section 4.0 will describe how the IS strategic planning process was applied in a small non-profit organization.  The final section will summarize.