Lecture
1. Purpose of module. SISP Requirements. Concept of alignment. Business
plans. IS plans. These must link in content and time. Integration of business
planning and IS planning should be the aim. The role of IS: from support and
automation to informating and transforming. Information systems have moved from
having a peripheral function in business e.g. like catering, to having a core
function in driving profitability in many ways - producing new products,
speeding up time-to market, producing cost efficiency, promoting or creating
customer loyalty. This integration between business and its information systems
requires an integration between the IT function and the rest of the business.
This module will look at
how IS planning is done and what tools can be used. It will examine current
trends as they influence IS strategy and deployment.
Definitions of SISP and
some criticism of definitions.
Lecture
2. Businesses develop strategies in various ways. IS often copies these
approaches, often with a delay which leaves the IS approach out-of-date.
Some Strategic Management
approaches: Mintzberg's 10 approaches to strategy.
Design,
Planning,
Positioning.
Entrepreneurial,
Cognitive,
Learning,
Power,
Cultural,
Environmental,
Configuration.
In the following sessions,
we will look at aspects of how some of the 10 approaches appear in IS planning.
We will see that while some
of these approaches do contribute well to IS planning, there is an unhealthy
reliance of formal approaches - design, planning and positioning, which are out
of tune with how business currently tackle strategic planning.
We are at every point
applying tools and ideas from strategic management and asking, ‘ how does this
influence IS planning, prioritizing, procuring and implementing?’
Lecture
3. Design. SWOT. What we look at: Environment. Economy. Society. Politics.
Legal. Technology. Current market. Context of Organisational Culture. How IS
strategy leads to IT infrastructure.
Planning. Planning as a
formal process. Yearly cycles of planning. Example of yearly IS budget
allocation. Method/1 as a formal planning approach.
Lecture
4. . Positioning. From
Lecture
5. Developing IS requirements from the Five Forces.
Developing IS requirements
from Value Chain Analysis
Lecture
6. Critical Success Factors. What they are. How to find them. Taxonomy.
Developing IS requirements from CSFs. Relation to MIS.
Lecture
7. SISP in small companies.
Problems of small
companies. Comparison of large and small. Problems of doing SISP in small
companies. An approach using Critical Success Factors
Lecture 8. Learning Approaches. Learning from what
we've already done and the present status. We’re never working with a green
field site. Influence of context. Assessing the current situation. Questions to
be asked. Case Study: Bugle Newspaper.
Who's responsible for
IS/IT? What's their view of it? Pedigree of systems. Focus of systems. Where
are the joins? Assets? Skills? Platforms?
Internal and External IS
environments.
Lecture
9. Strategic Information Systems
Idea of strategic
information systems. Identifying SIS. Can you plan for SIS? SIS and knowledge.
Identifying core competencies. Culture - role of culture in determining
strategy. Learning capabilities. The resource-based view of the firm.
Lecture
10. Knowledge creation and organisational learning.
Organisational learning and
IS. Knowledge management. Knowledge strategies. Capturing knowledge. Tacit
knowledge. Knowledge and SISs.
Lecture
11. Entrepreneurs. The role of the IT entrepreneur. The importance of
executive commitment to SISP and IS. The role of personality.
Lecture
12. Power. Power of resources, process and meaning. Why power is important
in SISP.
Lecture
13. Implementing SISP. Why does SISP fail? The value of the IS strategy
document. Judging the success of a SISP implementation.
Lecture
14. Evolutionary Strategy. The difficulties with a planning method. An
evolutionary strategy as an alternative. Generating variation, searching the
strategic space, selecting options. Chaos Theory and Information Systems
Strategy. Conclusions.
Lecture
15. IT Service Strategy. The difference between Information Systems
Strategy and IT Service Strategy. The nature of a service. Service Design,
Service Delivery, Service Quality. A framework for Service strategy.
Lecture
16. Electronic Commerce (1). The role of the Internet in IS strategy.
Positioning frameworks for Business use of the Internet. Identifying the extent
of involvement. Identifying strategic opportunities. Identifying the benefits.
Developing policies. Developing an implementation plan. The ICDT framework.
Business to Business E-commerce. Supply Chain Integration. Systems Integration.
Benefits.
Lecture
17. Electronic Commerce (2) Business to Customer E-commerce. Moving
responsibilities to the customer. Self-service. The Internet as a new channel
to market. Customer loyalty and relationship management. Brands.
Lecture
18. IS strategy in company mergers.
Lecture
19. Globalisation. Establishing a global IS strategy Global Context. Global
Business Strategy. Business information structure, IT infrastructure, IT
organisational structure.
Lecture
20. Virtual Organisations. What is a virtual organisation. Examples. How IT
is key to these. How IT might support the virtual organisation. Examples.
Note: Each lecture does not necessarily correspond to a 50 minute slot.
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