IT strategic planning in entrepreneurial companies: an oxymoron?

A lot is being said lately about the importance of strong CEO/CIO relationship and IT-business alignment.  This relationship is often tested when IT prepares its strategic plan.  It is apparent that the IT strategic plan should be aligned with the strategic plan for the entire company, otherwise efforts to align IT with the business would fail and CEO/CIO relationship would get strained.  But does a corporate strategic plan always contain sufficient information for IT planning? 

CIOs of entrepreneurial companies know that the challenges they face are somewhat specific, and that lack of an adequate corporate strategic plan is one of them. These companies do not have much experience with strategic planning, nor do they feel the necessity for it until certain point of company growth. This is understandable since the leaders of these companies have been busy establishing and growing the business from ground zero. Strategic planning has not been their focus yet.

However, when these companies mature and transition from the entrepreneurial stage to the professionally managed stage, the requests for “IT strategic plan”, “IT roadmap”, “IT delivery schedule” become more and more vocal. The CEO of this growing company may be oblivious to the fact that an adequate IT strategic plan should be based on the corporate strategic plan, which may be missing or inadequate. These problems are best described in Dr. Flamholtz’s book “Growing Pains: Transitioning from an Entrepreneurship to a Professionally Managed Company” (John Wiley & Sons, 2000).

Is there a way to resolve the problem without demanding too much from the business? How can IT help? What specific information is the key for successful IT strategic planning?

It is our belief that the description of so called “target state” is of paramount importance for the IT strategic planning. Where the company is going to be in five years? What shape its business will take? How its business model and customer base are going to evolve? Defining “the way to get there” is also important, but a clear understanding of this “target state”, is vital. Indeed, lack of clear understanding of the “target state” deprives IT from the very fundamentals required for strategic planning. Yet for entrepreneurial

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