580-MOD2_WEEK2 CASE

  

580-MODULE 2 CASE

By way of introduction to the process, consider Doug Frese's discussion paper on IT

Enterprise Architecture and Pat Barton's on Enterprise Resource Planning: Factors Affecting

Success and Failure. both talk about the process of creating IT enterprise systems from a

relatively positive and more or less rational perspective, and both make perfect sense. But

Stephanie Gurlen's discussion paper on http://www.umsl.edu/~sauter/analysis/6840_f03_papers/gurlen/ is perhaps more to the

point; the phenomenon that she describes and categorizes with that memorable phrase is a

more or less constant fact of organizational life.

Structural, professional, and personal forces all work in combination to make the IT

service/planning interface problematical. Organizational politics alone would make the job

difficult; add in communication difficulties, jargon and expression differences, differing frames

of professional reference, and just plain personality conflicts and you have a recipe for a

serious misalignment. The person at the center of all this swirling chaos tends to be the chief

information officer (CIO) of the organization. There's no doubt that superior management can

make a big difference in achieving or not achieving planning alignment, or at least in making

clear when and why alignment is less than perfect. Much of what the CIO does is to explain

to both sides why the other is as it is. Here are two articles describing how CIOs play this key

middle-ground role:

Lannon, R. (2009). 7 Steps to Kick-Start your Strategic Planning Process. Retrieved from

http://www.legacybowes.com/latest-blog-posts/entry/7-steps-to-kick-start-your-strategicplanning-process.html

Scott, J. (2011, April 21). How to craft actionable business strategy from the bottom up. CIO.

Retrieved from

http://www.cio.com/article/680163/How_to_Craft_Actionable_Business_Strategy_from_the_Bottom_Up

Demand Media. (2011). Sources for business strategies. Business Strategy Examples.

Retrieved from http://smallbusiness.chron.com/business-strategy-examples/

When you've had a chance to read through these articles, and look through the background

material for additional information regarding this phenomenon and other parts of the IT

planning process, and consult any other resources that seem helpful to you on this matter,

then please compose a 4 page paper on the topic:

“Most effective CIO strategy for effective strategic IT planning”

MUST HAVE IN TEXT CITATIONS THAT MATCH REFERENCES MUST BE LESS THAN 7% TURNITIN/SAFE ASSIGN SCORE!!