Critical Success Factors

When talking about critical success factor approach, it was discussed by my classmates during our reporting in management information system II last December 15. According to the reporters, they said Critical Success Factor Methodology (CSF) in the context of
SISP are used for interpreting more clearly the objectives, tactics, and operational activities in terms of key information needs of an organization and its managers and strengths and weaknesses of the organization’s existing systems. Rockart (1979) defines critical success factors as being ‘for any business the limited number of areas in which results, if they are satisfactory, will ensure successful competitive performance for the organization.’
CSFs can exist at a number of levels. They represent the few key areas where things must go right for the business to flourish. Consequently, critical success factors are areas of activity that should receive constant and careful attention from management. Rockart originally developed the CSF approach as a means to understanding the information needs of CEOs. The approach has subsequently been applied to the enterprise as a whole and has been extended into a broader planning methodology. It has been made the basis of many consulting practices and has achieved major results where it has been used well. There are four basic types of CSFs according to Rockart. They are: Industry CSFs resulting from specific industry characteristics; Strategy CSFs resulting from the chosen competitive strategy of the business; Environmental CSFs resulting from economic or technological changes; and Temporal CSFs resulting from internal organizational needs and changes. CSFs at a lower level are derived from those at the preceding higher level. The CSF approach introduces information technology into the initial stages of the planning process and helps provide a realistic assessment of the IT’s contribution to the organization.
For me, critical success factor means what factors that contributes to the success of a person, an organization or a company. In addition, CSF for me defines what and how a person did to become successful. I totally agree with the definition given above that CSF defines clearly the objectives and the target goal. In relating CSF in real life, I have read from the myGoals.com, there are CSF’s there that will help people in achieving success regardless of how we do it or define it. Let me share it then:
The 1st critical success factor. Clearly Identify Your Goals. The first step before reaching success is we should first define our goals. When we define our goals, let’s make it sure that it is specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timely goals. And when our plan is too complex or complicated, we can break down our plan into small and manageable parts. With this, we can make sure that we can evaluate easily if we are on track with our plans or not.
Second, Identify the Obstacles. As we all know that move we make in our lives, there will always be obstacles or hindrances. This step will help us in preparing solutions to the problems that may arise during our journey to reach our goals. In addition, we’ll be able to know how to react when such situations will occur.
Third, Know the Tasks Necessary to Overcome Each Obstacle. The quote “taking one step at a time” will come into this place. It is the same with handling all the problems; we can not solve our problems all at once. We should take each problem at a time, and with this we can think on what are the possible solutions to solve these problems.
Fourth, Assign Deadlines. Based on this article, it says there that assign a start and completion date to each task in the plan. It’s ok to be working on several different tasks at the same time, but don’t over do it. Be realistic.

And the last one, Follow the Plan. We must stick to what we have planned, the plan would serve as the guide on our way to success. An additional suggestion given by the myGoals.com is that we should be flexible. Plans as we all know may change before we can complete it. Expect the unexpected events and the plan should be updated to adapt to changes.

But what are the steps in Critical Success Factor Approach?
These steps are taken from http://www.paullemberg.com/criticalfactors.html
Step 1: Identify your critical success factors
Step 2: Establishing the measurements
Step 3: Setting the baseline
Step 4: Set new goals
Step 5: Closing the gap
Step 6: The Ben Franklin Rotation Program

The first step is to identify your special set of critical success factors. You may have thought this through in the past; you may think you know them intuitively. When asked "What matters?", many executives reflexively say things like sales, customers, people, or product development. These are all good answers, and they may be correct answers, but you will want to think deeper and broader.
Below is a list to start you thinking. It is set in no particular order and contains only the most obvious factors. Review the list and circle areas you believe are critical to your enterprise. You may have to add other, more specific or subtle factors to the list to describe the critical influences on your business' success.
• Distribution - this could be direct sales, telesales, third- party sales, etc.
• Lead generation
• Customer satisfaction
• Referrals
• Research
• Product development
• Production, including quality, costing, run-rates, etc.
• Sufficient investment capital, sufficient working capital
• Customer support / technical support
• Quality assurance
• Sales process / sales life cycle
• Market research
• Customer education
• Sales compensation
• Recruiting
• Personnel retention programs
• Expense management
• Intellectual capital development
• Training
• Marketing communications
• Logistics
• Employee equity
• Executive leadership
• Training and development
• Corporate goals / strategic objectives
• Values and beliefs
• Mission/purpose
• Individual accountability
• Productivity & effectiveness metrics
• Internal communications
• Strategic and tactical planning
• Executive team
• Board of directors/advisors
Be specific when you identify your factors. Don't say "people" when the issue is recruiting, employee satisfaction, training or compensation. Don't say "marketing" or "sales" when the issue is lead generation.
Test your assumptions by imagining a decline in a particular factor. How would that impact your business? Now imagine an improvement in that factor. How would that impact your business?
In selecting factors, limit your list to no more than seven. Why seven? Cognitive theory suggests that human minds are efficient at juggling from five to nine separate trains of thought - the average and oft- quoted number is seven. Our plan is for you to keep your eye on the ball, you want to limit the balls to those you can keep your eye on.

Step 2: Establishing the measurements
Your next step is to establish a measurement scale for each critical factor. Some of these measures will be quantitative; some qualitative. Sales is an easy one: dollars of revenue measured against budget. Leads generated is also easy - how many? You can further break down sales by product and leads by sources, or you can stick to the consolidated numbers. Choose the measure which best reflects your understanding of how the issue affects your business.
Everything is measurable, you just need the right system. How can you measure your effectiveness in sales compensation? You could establish a compound metric which includes total compensation as a percentage of sales revenue, juxtaposed against goal attainment.
Marketing communications is also difficult. One way to measure this is to subjectively assess the quality of your marcom pieces; you could also measure whether you have the total complement of marcom pieces you require. Or, measure whether prospects respond to your marcom efforts. Most likely you will combine all three to get one measure.
A final example is measuring your efforts in the area of your Board of Directors / Board of Advisors. Measures include: do you have one? Are all the board seats filled? Is the board effective for your intended purpose? Measuring the Board factor would likely blend each of these.

Step 3: Setting the baseline
Once you've established a measurement structure for a factor, the next step is setting a baseline.
Each factor should be set against a normalizing scale ranging from 1 to 10. Subjectively this can translate into non-performing(1), poor (2-3) , mediocre (4-5), good (6-7), great (8-9), and outstanding (10).
If your sales run-rate is $10 million, determine whether that is a 1, a 5, or a 10. Your answer depends of course on whether you consider performance against budget, performance against stretch goals, or performance against "home-run-out-of-the-park" goals.
If your baseline for Board of Directors is two unfilled board seats - is that a 5 (mediocre) or a poor (2-3)? Only you can decide. Although this ultimately is a subjective process, you want to make it as objective as possible.

Step 4: Set new goals

Next, create a "gap" between where you are - your baseline - and your target for that factor. You already have a sales plan, so your gap exists between your current revenue and your budgeted revenue.
You may consider your baseline a 5, and your target an 8. Implicit in this 1- 10 scale are judgements about your intentions: will reaching your budgeted revenue put you at 8 (almost great) or 10 (outstanding)?
Where do you want to peg your efforts? If you've assessed your employee training at a 4 (mediocre), are you shooting for a 7 (good) or a 9 (great)? You can see from this how your measurement structure and goal system will impact how you allocate your company's resources and energy.

Step 5: Closing the gap

You now have a baseline and a target for each factor. Between them they define a factor gap - your challenge is to close it. Each gap becomes the focus of a meditation which asks the question: What will close the gap between our current level of this factor and our desired level? What possible actions will raise that measurement?
You may have intuitive responses to these questions, and when appropriate, trust your gut. If need be, back that gut response with research - but only when cost effective.
(Sometimes the most cost effective research is implementation, particularly in simple matters.)
Use any idea generation process you are comfortable with. Develop several possible initiatives to raise the level of that factor. With luck your ideas will work together and harmonize in terms of impact or implementation requirements.
If you create competing ideas, select the best alternatives. Choose based on return on investment, required resources, scheduling conflicts, time to impact, total cost, and likelihood of success versus risk of failure.
Depending on the specific factor, and the size of the gap, you may plan to close it in stages or shoot the gap all at once. You can launch one initiative at a time, or implement several initiatives in parallel. Once you launch your gap-closing initiatives, continually measure your results. Report your progress to participants and stakeholders, and post it publicly.

Step 6: The Ben Franklin Rotation Program

As a young adult, Ben Franklin identified thirteen virtues he aspired to. In order to implement these virtues in his life he devised a "Plan for Self Examination", a program whereby he focused his attention, one virtue at a time, for one week at a time, rotating through the entire list four times a year.
He kept a detailed log of the actions he took to develop the virtues in himself, along with his personal results.
I've adapted Franklin's concept and called it the Ben Franklin Rotation Program. At any point in time, you will have in place a program for improving every one of your critical factors. But in any given week, your primary attention will be on only one factor.
Using Franklin's principles, at the beginning of each week, focus your mind - or collective mind of your management team - on improving that week's factor. What new actions can you take, what new attitudes can you adopt, what new or renewed approaches are available - which will enhance your performance in that one specific area? Do that "thing" wholeheartedly for the entire week.
Franklin also shows us how to track your progress in this venture. Create a score sheet detailing your Critical Success Factors. This sheet should detail each factor, its measurements, your current 1-10 rating and your target rating, along with your next action steps for improving that rating.
Each factor also gets a weight, which enables you to develop an overall score. Each week, re-rate all the factors on the score sheet, and graph your progress. You may also graph the overall score. Publish the score sheet and the graphs. You can establish a reward system based on individual progress, or, using the factor weights, you can develop a bonus structure which incentivizes total progress.
This simple system will focus your attention on improving each one of your critical success factors. With carefully selected factors, you insure both rapid performance increases and balance in your company.
Organizations may have different approaches in identifying their own critical success factors but what is most important is with the help of these factors, the organization can evaluate and improve their performance in delivering their service to the people

purpose of IS Planning as well as it's major challeges

“Everything has its own purpose”. This quote though very simple but it has lots of meaning. My parents would always tell me about that quote. Whenever I open my problems to them (that is a rare thing for me to do, if I can still manage it, I won’t bother telling my problems to them because I don’t want them to worry about me), they would tell me, that there are things or people we encounter everyday that their purpose might be hurting us, giving us pain and challenges or brings happiness to us. But it all ends in giving us lessons or teaches us lessons, lessons that we can ponder in our lives and be able to apply those lessons for our own personal development. Hehehe, everything I wrote above was kind of a serious thing ah! Mariechelle bares it all!

Let’s start the roll balling! (isn’t it let’s start the ball rolling?) Anyway, ok, here it goes, let’s begin! Planning is the word! (again?). Well, I have actually read a quote that reminds me of the relationship of planning and success. According to Robin Sieger, a British business executive, Planning is as natural to the process of success as its absence is to the process of failure. Deep, isn’t it? For me, this is somehow similar to what I have realized, plans without actions are nothing . How can we reach our goals in life if all we have are plans? We should work hard for it!

Purpose. One thing we might have actually asked to ourselves. What is our purpose in this ever-changing, fast-pace world. I even asked myself but as of this time, I find it hard to answer it. Nonetheless, let’s get back to business. What is the purpose of an information system plan? Based on my readings, the main purpose of the information system before is primarily incorporating technology with the business to create a better production and can lessen the burden of the organization’s employees in working on their manual business operation. That was before! Right now, it somewhat the opposite! Some of the experts say, that information system plays a vital role in an organization’s success. Based on an article, it says there that, consequently, strategic information systems planning (SISP) is a critical issue. In many industry surveys, improved SISP is often mentioned as the most serious challenge facing IS managers (Pavri and Ang, 1995, Beath and Orlikowski, 1994; Martin, 1993; Porter and Miller,1985). Strategic Information Systems Planning in the present era is not an easy task because such a process is deeply embedded in business processes. These systems need to cater to the strategic demands of organizations, i.e., serving the business goals and creating competitive advantage as well as meeting their data processing and MIS needs. The key point here is that organizations have to plan for information systems not merely as tools for cutting costs but as means to adding value. [1]

For me, the purpose of a strategic information system plan is to provide direction on where the company is going in terms of the company’s management of the information system (its future needs based on the current information system) and; I may somehow relate it with strategic planning. In strategic planning, it identifies where the organization wants to be at some point in the future and how it is going to get there. It primarily focuses on developing strategies on how to achieve the vision, mission, goals and objectives of an organization. Then, the next would be, gaining competitive advantage. Of course, business is business, they compete with each other. The word MONEY comes into place and time is of the essence. I may somehow relate it with the company’s who are working and creating microprocessors in our computers; example: Business A, created a microprocessor known as quad-core, this means that it has faster processing time knowing that it has 4 processors working, compared to Business B who created a dual core microprocessor. In this analogy, relating in real-life situation, the customers would choose to go into a company with the faster processing time than the other. And with these, an organization with a good and well-developed information system plan can gain competitive advantage.

Laying down some of the purpose of an information system plan, we now come to the challenges awaiting the team who will be working in the so-called “information system plan”. As what I have written above, some experts would say that strategic information systems planning is a serious challenge in information systems planning. But what are those challenges? I’ll try to give some of them, here it goes:
• Top management support
• Project team involving IS specialists, users, and managers
• Select a planning methodology such as Information Engineering, Business Process Re-engineering, etc. to guide planning and development
On the first challenge, is the most critical one, the lack of top management support to the team. Why I said that it is the most critical one? I may say that the support from the higher management is the root of the success of the said plan. If there is support, this means that the organization is open to answer the questions of the requirement analysts (part of the planning team). As what I have remembered, in our Systems Analysis and Design I, a reporter introduced to us the steps on systems planning. The first step is the requirements analysis: who are involved in the system, who are the users of the system, what are the problems in the existing system, or what are the business problems that occur and ahm(thinking), what are the other systems that might be affected when implementing or solving the said problem. And with top management support, the analysts can get the all the requirements or data needed, the processes involved, the user’s demand (or probably the employees). in contrast, without the top management support, the planning team will be frustrated, as what I have said it is the root of the success, now, without the support, the analysts, can not get the desired requirements, therefore, there would be a big possibility of wrong analysis of the problem, wrong set of solutions, in short the output would probably be, a wrong system. Then when the wrong system is implemented, the user’s of the system will also be affected, maybe confused and even frustrated that will result in poor job performance because of these instances, there is a very big possibility that the company will go down that will again result to unemployment, the family’s of the employees will now be affected and would result to another problem which is hunger.
Assuming, that the above challenge is addressed, everything is laid down by the organization, and the planning process is on a good start. The team is enthusiastic, more focused and gives their 100% commitment on the said project. But a good start doesn’t mean a good ending. Of course there would be an instance (or normally,ahahah) that we feel tired or we find it difficult to finish the project. Here,the next challenge would be, Project team involving IS specialists, users, and managers. There is a need of a good leader. A good leader, provides direction to the team, the leader is responsible to keep his team in good shape, healthy mind, healthy relationship with others, whenever there are clashes between the team members, it would be up to the team leader to talk things over and resolve the issues. In addition, the leader should keep his team in high spirit even if things are not going as planned. Of course, another challenge, would be, the experiences and expertise of each of the member of the team. As we all know, this is a tough job, it needs a lot of experience and expertise. It is also possible that the advances in Information Technology would be another challenge. Up to date or out dated. As we know technology changes, it’s fast that in order for us not to be left behind, we must cope up to these advancements.
Another challenge is selecting a planning methodology such as Information Engineering, Business Process Re-engineering, etc. to guide planning and development. Again, as what I have remembered, during our Systems Analysis and Design I reporting, the reporter said, that after the requirements had already been defined, the team would now develop a set or group of possible solutions then, the next step would be deciding on what solution would be the best to solve the problem. The said solution would bring out more benefits to the company, it must be consistent and it would help on reaching the VMGO of the company or in other words, it is aligned with the business plan. Now after, the organization approved the solution, it is now the time to start doing the system. In selecting a methodology
Based on my readings also, another challenge to the project team is to produce quality information system plan. A good quality of an information system plan has the following characteristics: Timely. The ISP must be timely. An ISP that is created long after it is needed is useless. In almost all cases, it makes no sense to take longer to plan work than to perform the work planned. Another characteristic is, it is Useable. The ISP must be useable. It must be so for all the projects as well as for each project. The ISP should exist in sections that once adopted can be parceled out to project managers and immediately started. Maintainable. The ISP should be maintainable. New business opportunities, new computers, business mergers, etc. all affect the ISP. The ISP must support quick changes to the estimates; technologies employed, and possibly even to the fundamental project sequences. Once these changes are accomplished, the new ISP should be just a few computer program executions away. Quality. While the ISP must be a quality product, no ISP is ever perfect on the first try. As the ISP is executed, the metrics employed to derive the individual project estimates become refined as a consequence of new hardware technologies, code generators, techniques, or faster working staff. As these changes occur, their effects should be installable into the data that supports ISP computation. In short, the ISP is a living document. It should be updated with every technology event, and certainly no less often than quarterly. Reproducible. The ISP must be reproducible. That is, when its development activities are performed by any other staff, the ISP produced should essentially be the same. The ISP should not significantly vary by staff assigned.


Another challenge would be how is the Information System plan specific enough to enable understanding of each application and to know where it stands in the order of development. Also the plan should be flexible so that priorities can be adjusted if necessary.

To close this, information systems plan should work with the business plan in an organization. They should work hand in hand for the development and the success of the organization.

Let me share to you a simple text message that I received as I am making this write-up.
Here it goes: “Everything that God allows to come our way is with a purpose. He uses even the greatest error and the deepest hurt to mold us into a person of worth and value.”
We know that all of us do have our reasons for existing in this world. It is up to us to find out what are those reasons. In finding those, we’ll encounter challenges. In every challenge, there’s a lesson to ponder and let’s just bear in mind, that God won’t allow those challenges to come in our way if we can’t overcome it or if we can’t do it. Sometimes we must be hurt in order to grow; we must fail in order to know; we must lose in order to gain because some lessons in life are best learned through pain. We’ll not give up if things are not going in our way, not everything is meant to be, but everything is worth a try.

God Bless Everyone!

Ciao!

What are the two most frequently experienced causes of frustration in IS professionals and users while working on an IS plan?

When we talk of frustration, we usually deal with it everyday, a concrete example on this, is we are in a hurry (probably late in school or in a meeting) then we are indulged in a heavy traffic caused us to be frustrated and lead to changes of our mood (e.g. angry towards the driver), and as a result, we end up not attending the meeting or be absent in the class because we are already 15 minutes late! Even I had also experienced it (I may say we all experience this!) For me, when we say frustration, I defined it as an obstacle, a rock that hinders me in what I want to do. In simple terms, I am not satisfied with what I have done. Or a feeling of disappointment caused by great expectations towards a person, an event or even a thing.

Frustration was first introduced by Sigmund Freud as a concept both external and internal in nature and related to the concept of goal attainment. Frustration occurs when there is an inhibiting condition which interferes with or stops the realization of a goal. All action has a purpose or goal whether explicit or implicit, and any interruption to the completion of an action or task can cause frustration. For Freud, frustration included both external barriers to goal attainment and internal obstacles blocking satisfaction (Freud, 1921).
This concept of frustration as a duality is continued in the analysis of frustration as both cause and effect (Britt & Janus, 1940). As a cause, frustration is an external event, acting as a stimulus to an individual and eliciting an emotional reaction. In this case, the emotional response is the effect, and the individual is aroused by this external cause and a response is often directed towards the environment.

Dollard et al. define frustration as “an interference with the occurrence of an instigated goal-response at its proper time in the behavior sequence” (Dollard, Doob, Miller, Mowrer, & Sears, 1939). Because an instigated goal response entails only that the goal be anticipated, frustration is due to the expectation and anticipation of a goal, not the actual attainment of the goal (Berkowitz, 1978). If the goal is unfulfilled, frustration is experienced because satisfaction was not achieved and hopes were suddenly thwarted. The thwarting or hindrance -- terms often used synonymously with frustration -- is not limited to the actual activity in progress, but relates to what the individual is expecting (Mowrer, 1938a).

As what I have said above, all of us experience frustration, maybe in school or in work. Same situation goes with the IS Professionals. For me, one of the most frequent causes of frustration of these people is when the higher management lacks commitment or IS professionals does not acquire support from the higher management. This is so tough for those who are working on the IS plan, as what I have stated above, the IS planning team needs to gather the data, do some evaluation on the technology and business strategies of the company. Without the higher management’s support, the planning team cannot have accurate data, or proper resources that they need. The team will be frustrated and would result to poor job performance or ineffectively carrying out their day to day duties and it leads to poor IS planning or project output (poor analysis, poor design, etc.). This simple problem would result to another problem which is on the user of the Information System (probably when implementing the IS plan).


As the result of the problem stated above, the users of the IS will greatly be affected. As an effect, based on my reading frustration with technology can lead to wasted time, changed mood, and affected interaction with colleagues. When users in a workplace are frustrated with their computers, it can lead to lower levels of job satisfaction (Murrell & Sprinkle, 1993). In some cases, user frustration with technology can even lead to increased blood volume pressure and muscle tension (Riseberg, Klein, Fernandez, & Picard, 1998). Whew! It can cause high blood pressure!


When we talking about frustration, the primary cause of this is the word “EXPECTATIONS”. And for me, expectations really sucks! So goes with the IS professionals and the users of the IS. The IS planning team expects a lot (i.e. support) from the top management, when the expectations of the IS planning team is not reached, these will lead to poor project output (as what I have stated above). Then the users of the IS expects (again!) a lot from the IS planning team (knowing that users do not have any idea on what the IS planning team is doing to produce the system) that they can use the system with ease and solve their computing problems but then again the users of the system are disappointed with the outcome. Then gradually, the business would disappear like a bubble (mawawala na parang bula). Then there goes another problem the unemployment. Then again another problem will take into place, hunger of the family of those employees who were unemployed. It seems that the problem branches out, every wrong move; there is a consequence that waits.

To close this, I may say that no man is an island. No one can live without the other. I am speaking not just as a student but also as a concerned individual. We should help one another in reaching our goals. From planning (whether it may be in professional level or personal level) down to putting our goals into actions. Frustrations and consequences are part of our lives, we should not give in to whatever problems we have knowing that every problem has its own purpose and has its own solution. Hardships in life are given to us to test us how far we can stand them. NEVER GIVE UP. They are the shadows which will us to become stronger than what we used to be. As what Epictetus said,”It is not the problems that bothering you. It is the way you look at them.” In the same manner, Chuck Swindoll declared:”Life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react on it.”
Let’s be positive!

God Bless Everyone!

What should be the nature of the relationship between the business plan and the IS plan?

Before I start discussing all about the business plan, the information system plan and the connection between the two, let me dissect all the words involved (business plan, IS plan) for us to understand (later on) their relationship.

Let me define first what is planning, according to Mr. Webster, planning is defined as a scheme for achieving an objective: it is a method of doing something that is worked out usually in some detail before it is begun and that may be written down in some form or simply retained in memory. For me, planning is somewhat like preparation on something, setting up or scheduling what has to be done. And planning is what we do everyday, right? Our beloved mothers plan on what food she will be preparing for us. In addition, we, as students, schedule our activities during the day, during the week even in month. Even our school, they have this outline of scheduled activities for the whole semester.

With the definition of the word plan or planning (as what I have stated it above), in my own opinion, a business plan, is a paper that specifies the goals of the company, as well as the plans on how to compete with other companies (or what we call the strategies of the company). Basically, it presents detailed information concerning on where a company is going and how it will get there. The Wikipedia defined business plan as a formal statement of a set of business goals, the reasons why they are believed attainable, and the plan for reaching those goals. It may also contain background information about the organization or team attempting to reach those goals. Also many experts in business considered that a business plan is critical in making or breaking a business. As Sir Randy said we should not plan to fail, so businessmen should have a carefully considered plan, because this plan can serve as an absolute road map to success for the owner and the employees. Business plan can help all of those people who are involved to stay on track while striving to achieve the goals of the company. Moreover, the business plan may be assessed and modified when needed, this would allow those working in the business to keep the strategies that are working for them or maybe improve those strategies and if possible, eliminate those strategies that don't work for them, and change goals as the business go forward.
So let’s go with the information system plan, as we all know information system is the collaboration between the people ware, software and the hardware that produces information or knowledge in an organization and these 3 elements are organized to aid in reaching the goals of the organization and be able to help the company solve their business problems. This would include the company’s manual or automated procedures. Based on my reading, information systems plan is a process for developing a strategy and plans for aligning information systems with the business strategies of an organization (1).

references
(1) http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_information_system_plan

as what I have remembered, last November 24, our instructor told us that an information systems plan usually ranges from one year planning to three year planning horizon, more than that will be awful in a sense that there might be a possibility that the application of the information technology would not fit in to the organization’s needs at that particular time. For me, in the information system planning the IS planning staffs will perform the following actions in preparation to the actual IS planning process:
~ They should review of the strategic business plan for the organization, including the vision, mission, goals, objectives, strategies, and priorities that set business direction.

~ They should evaluate the existing technological setting within the organization, including assessment of the principal hardware requirements and specifications, application software, and connectivity. The acronym SWOT now comes into place. The staffs should do the evaluation of the STRENGTHS, WEAKNESSES, OPPORTUNITIES and THREATS in terms of the technology in the organization. The primary purpose of the SWOT is that it will allow the staff to assess the company in fairly manner because it does not only focus on the strong side but also on the weak side of the company. It will also help the staff forecast the threats and opportunities. This would also help the company on how to react under different situation or in other words, the organization can prepare for the possible consequences that the will be encountering.

~ After the assessment, the staffs should develop an Information Technology Strategy based upon the study of the present situation and the goals of the business to be achieved. This strategy identifies the organization’s short term and long term goals associated to the managing and sharing of the information and information technology in support of the organization’s business strategic plan. The strategy also tackles about the organization’s technology weaknesses and needs or addressing the problem to the higher management (probably for funding.hehe).

If I am asked what is the relationship between the two plans stated above, I can say that information system plan will help the business plan reach they desired goals. It is clearly stated above that information systems plan should be aligned with the business plans. In other words they compliment each other. These two plans are partners for life. These two should work hand in hand with each other for the development and success of the organization.

To end this, planning is the key word, it may somehow relate in our real life scenario.
“if we fail to prepare then we are prepared to fail”. Whatever plans we have in mind right now, let’s bear in mind, plans will always be plans. Let’s put our plans into actions, because plans without actions are useless. With the right plans, right decisions, right actions, the right vehicle, with the support of our beloved family and friends and coupled with the love and blessings from up above, we can achieve what we want to achieve!