IT Strategic Plan

Project Part 1: Develop an IT Strategic Plan

Introduction

In this project, you (your group) need to select an organization/governmental institution within the UAE in order to develop an IT Strategic Plan for them.
Please note that you might face three different scenarios:

1. The organization already has an IT strategic Plan and will share it with you.
2. The organization already has an IT strategic Plan but they are not willing to share it with you.
3. The organization does not have an IT strategic Plan.

In the first scenario, you can look at their IT strategic Plan, assess it, and amend as per the project requirements. For the last two scenarios you need to write a new one from scratch.
P.S. As a last resort and in case you are unable to find a real organization, your instructor might share with you a case study to start with.

Detailed Instructions

Step 1

Select an organization, establish contact with them, take an appointment and prepare Interview questions that enables you to start working on the IT strategy.
Interview questions should be about the current IT situation and about the organization’s main business objectives/imperatives such as (revenue growth, cost reduction, or business enablement).

Step 2

Based on the interview answers and collected information, assess the current IT situation, align the business objectives with the current IT situation and conduct a gap analysis (why change? what is missing?)

Step 3

Based on the previous steps, decide on a road map — suggest the new IT initiatives that are linked to the business objectives and the IT gaps identified in step 1 and step2. Suggest how these can be implemented.

Project Part 2: Adopting an Industry Framework

Based on the SWOT analysis and situation assessment that was conducted during part 1, and on the road to better IT governance within the selected organization, your group need to recommend one of the industry frameworks that was discussed in class to be adopted by the company.

For example, if IT Security was a concern, then the group can recommend implementing ISO27001, If the problem is poor IT service management, then ITIL should be recommended, while if the organization have a well-established application development unit then choose CMMI, etc.

The following points should be included in your report:

• Business need for the selected framework.
• Overview of the selected framework. Objectives and impact of implementing the framework within the organization.
• Requirements for implementing the framework within the organization.
• Framework Implementation requirements including phases (for example selected time, resources and cost of framework implementation (list any known company in the UAE that act as a third consultant that help organizations in this process).

Project Part 3: Oral presentation

In this part, each student is required to present his/her project and be ready to defend it. Each group member is expected to demonstrate knowledge of all project work.