Discussion : Alignment of Strategy with Goals

If the CIO is to be valued as a strategic actor, how can he bring to the table the ethos of alignment, bound to the demands of process strategic planning to move IT to the forefront of the organization's future? Is there a lack of information on strategic planning?

Nope. I think the process of planning is poorly understood, and rarely endorsed. The reasons are simple enough. Planning requires a commitment of resources (time, talent, money); it requires insight; it requires a total immersion in the corporate culture.

While organizations do plan, planning is invariably attached to the budget process. It is typically here that the CIO lays out his/her vision for the coming year Now a few years ago authors began writing on the value of aligning IT purpose to organizational purpose.

They wrote at a time when enterprise architectural planning was fairly new, and enterprise resource management was on the lips of every executive.

My view is that alignment is a natural process driven by the availability of the tools to accomplish it. Twenty years ago making sense of IT was more about processing power, and database management. We are in a new age of IT, and it is the computer that is the network, not the network as an independent self-contained exchange of information.

The MIT article in your reading is getting some mileage, but it is a terrific primer for this week. The management lessons therein have not changed. Some of the technology inferences have come to pass, and you can certainly critique your reading for shifts. MIT is the center of IT behavioral research.

The problem: How does the CIO set the stage for IT alignment? What conversations does s/he have with the executive board? Use the readings to demonstrate you're answer. IT alignment refers to the convergence of IT systems with organizational goals.