IT Strategic Planning with the Approach of Enterprise Architecture

Abstract

Strategic planning means the future planning of an organization, i.e., the direction in which the organization tends to move. IT strategic planning for any organization is a document dictating the enterprise information architecture in the light of strategic considerations, such as the mission, goals, and priorities of the organization, providing the required action plan to access systems and databases in organizational level. In other words, IT strategic planning is the charter and master plan of the organization in the context of information systems, and more generally in information technology. Despite the existence of various approaches, strategic planning is considered as a complex activity, and many problems prevent the success of this program or challenge the planners. Some approaches are: McFarlan and McKenny strategic network approach, Parsons relationship strategic approach, critical success factors approach, commercial systems planning approach, Nolan growth stages approach, investment strategy analysis approach, and enterprise architecture approach. It is not possible to investigate all these approaches in this paper, so it is suffice to say a brief introduction and review of each. Currently, the enterprise architecture approach or IT architecture approach is the proposed approach to develop long-term plan or IT comprehensive plan. Enterprise architecture is one of the most important and widely used approaches, as well as a powerful tool to organize complex information systems. The purpose of this study is to offer a basic introduction to enterprise architecture approach for strategic planning of information systems. The enterprise architecture approach is well examined in this study as it deals with developing enterprise information and communication technology strategies to provide an appropriate context to better support the business goals, integration between information systems, better utilization of information technology to achieve competitive advantage, prioritizing information systems development projects, facilitating proper decision-making for investments in information technology, improving resource allocation, coherence between different organizational activities, identifying new opportunities, facilitating management control and information flow architecture in different companies and organization.