CMT 403 -

MANAGEMENT
INFORMATION
SYSTEMS
Module 3: Information System
Planning
Learning Objectives
• What Is Planning?
• The Changing World of Planning
• Six Planning Approaches and Techniques
• Systems Development Life Cycle

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 What is Information System Planning?
• Information system planning is a formal process that develops plan for
developing and managing information systems that will support goals
of an organization.
• Information System plan includes:
i. Activities planner believes will help achieve goals.
ii. Program for monitoring real-world progress.
iii. Means for implementing changes in the plan.
iv. Management Information Systems (MIS) is the key factor to facilitate
and attain efficient decision making in an organization

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What Is Planning?
Developing a view of the future that guides decision
making today…
Impossible to tell the future…
Therefore a more strategic focus is taken – Where do
we want to end up?

3 Types of Planning:
• Strategic
• Tactical
• Operational

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Why Plan?
• To obtain resources
i. Financial
ii. Facilities – “Capacity planning”
iii. Staff
• To align Information System with the business
• To identify needed applications
• To establish goal, schedule, and milestone in order to track progress
• To provide an opportunity for communication with top management
and user management
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Approaches to Planning
• Top-down Planning
• Focuses on organizational goals first, then on the needs of business
units
• Bottom-up Planning
• Focuses on needs of business units first, then on organizational goals

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Planning Difficulties
• Business goals and systems plans need to align
• Rapidly changing technology
Technological advances, obsolete technology
 Continuous planning/monitor and follow change
• Companies need portfolios rather than projects
• Infrastructure development is difficult to fund
• Responsibility needs to be joint
CIO, CEO, CFO, COO input is needed
Systems planning in becoming business planning.

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The Changing World of Planning
• The future can be predicted
The Internet changes strategies. New unexpected
competitors.
• Time is available
• IS supports and follows the business
IS & IT are the business. E-business solutions.
• Top management knows best
To far removed from customers, suppliers, partners.
Strategy must be formed on the “front lines”.
• The company can be viewed as an army
Employee empowerment
 Better ideas, increased efficiency and higher employee satisfaction.
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Today’s Sense-and-Respond Approach
• Formulate Strategy Closest to the Action
Planning occurs at edge of company. Up to date.
• Test the Future
IS department tests future technologies.
 Provide funding, work with research organizations.
• Put the Infrastructure in Place
Most critical IT decisions are about infrastructure.
 Creating and maintaining common, consistent data definitions,
create and install mobile commerce standards among handheld
devices, implement e-commerce security and privacy measures,
determine operational platforms, such as ERP and supply chain
management.

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Sense-and-Respond Cont.
• Don’t plan the whole strategy, let it unfold
• A step-by-step strategy is more adaptable

• Guide Strategy – A Strategic Envelope

• can keep your flexible planning within limits

• Be at the table - IS execs must be involved.

• A good CIO should attain department credibility and free
up staff for planning.

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Six Planning Approaches and Techniques

i. Stages of Growth
ii. Critical Success Factors
iii. Competitive Forces Model
iv. Value Chain Analysis
v. Internet Value Matrix
vi. Linkage Analysis Planning

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Information System Planning Process
i. Establish a mission statement
ii. Assess the environment
iii. Set goals and objectives
iv. Derive strategies and policies
v. Develop long-, medium-, and short-range plans implement plans
and monitor results

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Establish a Mission Statement
• These are services that you are responsible for; it is your place in the
organization.
• It is not what you are supposed to achieve, it is who you are and what
you do in the company.

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Goals and Objectives
• Set goals – what do you want to achieve?

• Set objectives – what are your specific, measurable targets? (SMART)

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Information Systems Planning
• The IT Vision
• Wish list of what IS managers would like to see in terms of hardware,
software, and communications, to contribute to goals of the
organization.

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Systems Development Life Cycle: An
Overview
• System failure can happen for several reasons:
• Missed deadlines
• Users’ needs that weren’t met
• Dissatisfied customers
• Lack of support from top management
• Going over budget, and so forth

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Systems Development Life Cycle: An
Overview (cont’d.)
• Systems development life cycle (SDLC)
• Also known as the “waterfall model”
• Series of well-defined phases performed in
sequence that serve as a framework for
developing a system or project
• Each phase’s output (results) becomes the
input for the next phase

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Systems Development Life Cycle: An
Overview (cont’d.)
• Systems planning
• Evaluating all potential systems that need to be
implemented
• Preliminary analysis of requirements
• Feasibility study
• Conducted for each system
• Organization decides which ones are a priority
• Information system projects
• Often an extension of existing systems or involve replacing
an old technology with a new one
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Exhibit 10.1 Phases of the SDLC
Phase 1: Planning

• One of the most crucial phases of the SDLC model

• Systems designer must understand and define the problem the
organization faces
• Problem can be identified internally or externally
• Analyst or team of analysts assesses the current and future needs of
organization or a specific group of users

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Phase 1: Planning (cont’d.)

• Questions:
• Why is this information system being developed?
• Who are the system’s current and future users?
• Is the system new or an upgrade or extension of an existing system?
• Which functional areas (departments) will be using the system?

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Phase 1: Planning (cont’d.)

• Analysts must examine:

• Organization’s strategic goals
• How the proposed system can support these goals
• Which factors are critical to the proposed system’s success
• Criteria for evaluating the proposed system’s performance

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Phase 1: Planning (cont’d.)

• Make sure users understand the four Ws:

• Why
• Who
• When
• What
• End result of this phase should give users and top management a
clear view of:
• What the problem is
• How the information system will solve the problem

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Phase 1: Planning (cont’d.)

• Example: ABC Furniture is planning for an information system to solve

the problem of inaccurate inventory forecasts
• Why
• Who
• When
• What

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Formation of the Task Force
• Consisting of representatives from:
i. different departments
ii. systems analysts
iii. technical advisors, and
iv. top management
• Team collects user feedback and tries to get users involved from the
beginning
• Internal users
• Employees who will use the system regularly
• External users
• Include customers, contractors, suppliers, and other business partners
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Formation of the Task Force (cont’d.)

• Joint application design (JAD)

• Collective activity involving users and top management IT professionals
• Centers on a structured workshop
• Results in a final document containing definitions for:
i. Data elements
ii. Workflows
iii. Screens
iv. Reports, and
v. General system specifications

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Feasibility Study

• Feasibility
• Measure of how beneficial or practical an information system will be to an
organization
• Should be measured continuously throughout the SDLC process
• Usually has five major dimensions:
i. Economic
ii. Technical
iii. Operational
iv. Schedule, and
v. Legal

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 Information Systems Planning
• Strategic IS Planning
• IS Strategic plan details what is to be achieved
• Strategic plans are designed with the entire organization in mind and
begin with an organization's mission.
• Essentially, strategic plans look ahead to where the organization wants to
be in three, five, even ten years.
• Strategic plans, provided by top-level managers, serve as the framework
for lower-level planning.
• Strategic Management: Carried out by top corporate executives and
corporate boards responsible for setting and monitoring long-term
directions for the firm for three or more years into the future.
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Tactical IS Planning
• IS Tactical plan describes how goals will be met and by when Tactical
IS Plan performed by middle managers responsible for acquisition and
allocation of resources for projects according to tactical plans, set out
for one or two years.
• Tactical IS Planning:
i. evaluates current and projected information needs of the
organization
ii. prioritizes IS development projects, and
iii. develops allocation plans for financial and technology resources

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What are important factors in IS tactical
planning
i. Flexibility
ii. Compatibility
iii. Connectivity
iv. Scalability
v. Standardization
vi. Total Cost of Ownership

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 Operational IS Planning
• Operational Plan prepared by a component of an organization that clearly
defines actions it will take to support the strategic objectives and plans of
upper management.
• Operational IS Planning develops plans such as annual operating budgets
and individual IS project plans.
• Operations IS Planning performed by supervisors of smaller work units
concerned with planning and control of short-term (typically, a week or six
months) budgets and schedules.
• First, it assumes that upper management has prepared both a Strategic
Plan and a Tactical Plan.
• This means that lower management should have a clear sense of what they
are trying to achieve. 
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• They just have to come up with a detailed plan to make it happen! Second,
the Operational Plan is limited to only one part of the organization.
• For example, a large corporation (Strategic Plan) has a manufacturing
division (Tactical Plan) that produces products A, B, and C.
• Each product is manufactured in a separate plant run by a plant manager
who prepares a separate Operational Plan.
• Operational Plans can be subdivided into two categories. 
• Single-use plans address only the current period or a specific problem.
• An example would be a plan to cut costs during the next year. 
• Ongoing plans carry forward to future periods and are changed as
necessary.
• An example would be a long-term plan to retrain workers instead of layoffs.

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Hierarchy of Planning
• A good planning process:
i. helps organizations learn about themselves
ii. uses resources efficiently and effectively and
iii. promotes organizational change and renewal

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To Buy or Develop Information System?
• The planners should make the decision of buy or develop after
considering the pros and cons and doing a feasibility study to back
their arguments.
• First, it is generally less expensive to purchase software than to build
it.
• Second, when software is purchased, it is available much more quickly
than if the package is built in-house.
• Software can take months or years to build.
• A purchased package can be up and running within a few days.

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• For many years, leaders have questioned whether it is better to make or buy
software solutions for the many business problems they face.
• Pros and cons are weighed to figure out what is going to be most cost-
effective and efficient for the business.
• It's important to remember that accurately estimating the long-term
consequences of this decision can be difficult.
• This often leaves those on the front lines struggling to pick up the slack.
• The pace of technology innovation is accelerating at an exponential rate,
making it difficult for the average internal IT group to cope with this pace of
change.
• The struggle commonly lies in the fact that they not only have to create the
software internally, but they must also maintain and upgrade it indefinitely.

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• Building the software has frequently won in this debate in the past, but
with the introduction of cloud computing, the tables are turning.
• Now even large global enterprises in both public and private sectors that
have invested tens of millions of dollars in internal IT infrastructure are
beginning to migrate to cloud applications.
• In fact, the Gartner Group sees the public cloud for the hosting of enterprise
applications as the fastest growing IT market in the next ten years.
• The largest enterprise software companies in the world (IBM, Oracle, SAP,
etc.) see their future delivery platform as the cloud, so their customers are
rapidly retiring in-house IT environments.
• This dramatically reduces IT operational costs and historical reliance on an
internal IT staff for software development and support.

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***END***

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