Create Your IT Strategic Plan

IT strategic planning requires cooperation among many campus constituencies and broad information collection. The IT organization must commit to the creation of a future vision in which vital interests of constituents across the institution are at stake.

In short, it is not a small undertaking, and CIOs need to take the time to check their readiness—and the institution’s—to undertake an IT strategic planning process. Take the self-test from our IT Strategic Planning Preparation Playbook to assess your readiness.

A strong IT strategic plan should incorporate the views and needs of a wide array of campus stakeholders. The process will require dedicated IT resources and close cooperation from colleagues across campus, so leaders must secure support from key campus leaders early in the process. Communicating proactively with campus leaders and departments about the IT strategic planning process and its goals will also help create a fertile environment for the discovery phase of planning.

Environmental scanning establishes the context for IT strategic planning. Involved parties gather intelligence relating to the IT organization and its context, including both the campus climate and the broader technology industry.

To conduct thorough scanning, CIOs and their teams must gather information from across and beyond their institution, accounting for past performance, current capacity, and emerging trends in technology and markets.

The IT strategic plan should outline the particular strengths and weaknesses of the IT organization and demonstrate how IT priorities align with the needs and objectives of the institution’s overall strategy.

However, most institutional strategic plans are vague and overarching, and don’t often provide direct guidance to units—including IT—on how specifically the goals and objectives will be met. IT teams must therefore infer technology activities from existing institutional strategy through goals cascading.

A thoughtful mission and vision statement anchor many IT strategic plans. They express an organizational ideal and encompass the essential work to promote that shared purpose.

The mission statement expresses what IT does and who it serves in pursuit of that goal, and the vision statement is the aspirational future state that IT strives to realize. IT strategic goals then clarify the outcomes that the IT department wants to achieve, and IT objectives identify concrete actions to further those goals.

After collecting information about the IT environment and identifying IT strategic goals, it’s time to draft the plan. IT strategic plans come in many shapes and sizes, and employ differing terminology, but they tend to share common features and address similar audiences. This sample outline provides a basic model that working groups can depart from as their institution requires.