UH2@psuvm.psu.edu (Lee Sailer) (02/06/90)
In article <218cs-sund@massey.ac.nz>, J.Greenwood@massey.ac.nz (John Greenwood) says: > >This is a request for thoughts, ideas, references, etc. I've already >posted once, but I've widened the distribution this time. Please >consider the following points and email me any thoughts you might have >on any or all of them. > These 10 questions are so grand in scope that it is hard to figure out how to deal with them. Here's a short try to whittle them to a finer point. One kind of evidence for Strategic Planning for IT is that organi[sz]ations occasionally reorganize their IT expertise. A brief history is that IT used to be a subfunction of Accounting and Finance, gradually rose in the organization til it became a separate functional area, til lately IT Advisory Committees appeared, branching off below the President and composed of representatives from each area. Now, mini-IT departments are beginning to appear down at the bottom of each functional area again. Likewise, the creation of Information Centers and other strategies for supporting End Users have appeared. I have also seen a discussion of how a conglomerate should organize corporate wide DP/IT so that (a) the system is well integrated across businesses, (b) it is easy to add new businesses and sell off old ones, yet (c) when a business is sold off, the buyer gets only a functional information system and not the important expertise that created that system. I've sketched these ideas tersely, so no flames please about things I've left out. Read my book 8-) first. Finally, to answer your question, Strategic Planning for IT, when there is no way to forecast what the IT will look like, amounts to designing and organization that is nimble enough to pounce on opportunities when they arise. lee