Strategic Management Essay -- Information Technology

Strategic Management and Planning is a course of decisions and actions which ultimately lead to the development of a strategy to help a company give their objectives. Strategic planning focuses on the companys long term range and how to accomplish what is laid out. Effective planning will help to veto problems, provide a response if problems occur, and make available information and support needed to maintain public awareness, safety, and confidence.How do the two UCBs strategic IT plans stack up against the Baldrige criteria for assessing strategic planning? The Baldrige criteria are a series of questions that are not routinely asked on how an organization or company can function to a greater extent efficiently. The purpose of these questions is to delimit how the organization sets its strategic objectives into action plans, what are the organizations action plans, and how is the organization able to project future performance on these key performance indicators or measures. In t his paper, I will address these questions as they relate to UC Berkeley and the University of Colorados Campus-wide IT Strategic Plan. I will describe how each university used the strategic planning process to address their needs. What are the universitys current strategic objectives, the name and addresss for each objective and the timetable for achieving these objectives? How will each university alter to potential growth in technology? And what measures do the universities use to track the achievement and effectiveness of their action plans?In each report, each university clearly defined what there IT strategic plans and objectives are for their future success. By clearly defining what are their goals and needs, they mirror the Baldrige criteria. UC Berkeley d... ...essfulness of their strategic plan. In my research, this is not a problem that is quarantined to just UC Berkeley or UC-Boulder. There seems to be a common practice among the IT community to not take into account the importance of meter the effectiveness of their IT strategies. When discussing measuring for effectiveness of the IT plan at UC Berkeley, Mr. Jack McCredie explains, It is much more of a description of an end state that we are working for. We are more goal oriented, not number oriented, in our process. One UC Berkeley goal was to wire the campus, not count the number of nodes that are actually installed. Our board doesnt seem to expect particular dashboard numbers that say we are 38 percent of the way to accomplishing our goal. Both of the universities do not put enough thought into establishing priggish measures of effectiveness into their plans.