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Strategy in the Making: Assessing the Execution of a Strategic Information Systems Plan

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Information Systems (EMCIS 2018)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing ((LNBIP,volume 341))

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Abstract

Recent research on IT Strategy is in a phase of renewal, after a long period of static formal comprehensive planning. Currently, more importance is given to incremental continuous planning, program implementation and organizational learning, what has been labeled as strategy as practice. However, less attention has been paid to the evaluation of the implementation process and results.

In this paper, we introduce an exploratory approach for assessing the implementation of IT Strategic planning, based in the combination and iteration of different methods. It is grounded in an Action Design Research exercise recently made up at a leading on-line European university.

The assessment includes three major dimensions (strategy, performance and governance), extracted from the academic and professional research. Its application to this context through a varied scaffolding of methods, tools and techniques, that is summarized in the article, seems robust, able to work out with the business and IT senior stakeholders and allows a quick deployment, even in a complex institutional environment.

We propose further research in order to extend and validate this model through its implementation and evaluation in different contexts, selecting new variables and metrics, developing improved maturity frameworks and repeating the exercise on a periodical basis.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In this context, “Customer” is the usual term used in Action Research [9].

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Acknowledgement

The authors would like to thank Dr. Carlos Juiz (Univ. Illes Balears) and Dr. Joan Antoni Pastor (Univ. Politecnica de Catalunya) for their valuable advice; Clara Belena, Eva Gil and Daniel Caballe, UOC project team members, for their relentless commitment; and Rafael Macau (COO) and Emili Rubio (CIO) for their active sponsorship of the project.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC), Barcelona, Spain

    José-Ramón Rodríguez, Robert Clarisó & Josep Maria Marco-Simó

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  1. José-Ramón Rodríguez
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Correspondence to José-Ramón Rodríguez .

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  1. University of Nicosia, Nicosia, Cyprus

    Marinos Themistocleous

  2. University of Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal

    Paulo Rupino da Cunha

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Rodríguez, JR., Clarisó, R., Marco-Simó, J.M. (2019). Strategy in the Making: Assessing the Execution of a Strategic Information Systems Plan. In: Themistocleous, M., Rupino da Cunha, P. (eds) Information Systems. EMCIS 2018. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, vol 341. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11395-7_37

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11395-7_37

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