A Structure for Strategic Planning Information

This chapter looks more closely at the key information thought necessary for strategic planning, to see how best to organise it for clarity and to convey essential information about the relationship between components. There is first an argument to support the development of a reference model to structure the essential information and then a reminder of the information components that have been selected to represent the strategic plan. There are finally some early models from the literature that have been used to convey pieces of the information.

The Why and the Benefits of Architecture

The advantages of using architecture are examined from the information technology (IT) point of view in order to get a feel for the more general advantages that would apply to other areas of endeavour. Then IT architecture is reviewed in more detail to see in particular the levels of abstraction that are inherent in an architecture, moving from the general outline which shows the whole enterprise, down through progressive levels of detail, to the fine detail of actual implementation instructions. General architectural principles will be identified during the examination of the various architecture definitions.

Strategic Planning Considerations

The concern in this chapter is to bring together various considerations that affect the planning process and the success of strategic planning to create a summary list of factors that it may be possible to correct and that may need clarification by survey. There is also a review of the key information elements from the literature in order to isolate the sort of information that is common to the different approaches and would be most useful to any strategic plan.

Conclusions

This chapter summarises the fact that the four objectives of the research were accomplished, and how the normative model was followed and what results were achieved. The significance and the limitations of the research are reviewed, and future research directions are suggested. The concluding remarks affirm that many of the problems of effectively implementing strategic plans are still current, and that the proposed process reference model and the associated information architecture reference model would alleviate many of the issues. Particular attention is drawn to the use of architectural principles to formulate a solution framework for any problem.

Strategic Planning, Information Systems Alignment, and Architecture

This chapter looks at some background to strategic planning, information systems alignment, and architecture, and introduces the main topics and their interaction that all have an impact of the primary aim of this investigation. Topics of governance, teamwork, and communication are reviewed, because they should also be considered when developing a strategic plan. Planning problems are mentioned, and the need for performance measurement and planning formality are introduced.

Using the IA Reference Model

In order to validate the information architecture reference model (IARM) it is used here to try and represent the same information as that was presented in a segment of a university published plan. There are problems of terminology, so there is first a comparison of terms to formulate a sort of equivalence. The segment of the plan is then remapped into the format suggested by the IARM, and a discussion draws on the significant information found to have been omitted. To strengthen the message of about the significance of what is omitted an example is drawn up of what that segment of the plan might have looked like.

Improving Strategic Plan Documentation

This chapter reviews what can be done to improve the documentation of strategic planning by looking at another discipline and the methodologies used to see if there are techniques employed that could be usefully transferred to strategic planning. There is a critique of those planning methodologies and suggestions for possible general enhancements to planning methodologies; to again see if there are clues that would lead to improvement of strategic planning. There is also a look at the documentation of one organisation that provides some indication to possible improvements in presentation.

Approaches to Strategy Development

This is a review of the work of several authors writing about strategic planning in the order it is done to obtain a broad view of different approaches to the strategic planning issue and what different authors consider to be the key elements of information that are needed to describe the future direction of an organisation. The search is for a degree of commonality between the different approaches and between the different terminologies used.

Strategic Planning Reference Models

It is now time to actually construct the reference models useful to guide the development of the strategic planning process, and it is necessary to recap some of the arguments and material gathered to date with a look at methodologies from information systems and some of the key elements promoted by them. There is first a description of a process reference model to give context to the development of the information architecture reference model needed to present the information to be contained in the plan. As will be seen, the two models are complementary and each gives strength to the other.

The Role of Information Architecture

Because the central theme of concern is the clarity and usefulness of the information presented by a strategic plan, the proposal is to examine the nature of information architecture for a solution. First there is a description of what the IT industry refers to as information architecture and what it describes and then to examine the way the idea of information architecture would apply to a strategic plan.