28-10-2016, 03:59 PM
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Alignment with business objectives is considered to be an essential outcome of
information technology (IT) strategic planning. This case study examines the process
of creating an IT strategy for an Australian university using an industry standard
methodology. The degree of alignment is determined by comparing the strategic
priorities supported by both the IT and university strategic plans, using Sharrock’s
‘four agendas’ framework. The significant differences between the two strategies are
examined and explained, revealing the need for IT strategic planning methodologies to
include a framework to measure business alignment.
Introduction: technology in higher education
This case study presents an examination of the process of creating an information
technology (IT) strategy for a small Australian university, and the university’s attempt
to align IT to the business needs of the institution. The IT strategy was developed over a
3-month period, commencing in March 2014, using a strategic planning methodology
from an IT research and advisory firm.
The mass adoption of internet-enabled technologies and mobile devices has
revolutionised both the way industries go about their business and their consumers’
expectations. These devices are powered by constantly improving communications
and computing infrastructure, which in turn is enabled by Moore’s law, an observation
about the rate of growth in semiconductor capacity (doubling approximately
every two years). Moore’s law has become a metaphor for rapid rates of growth/
change everywhere (Schaller, 1997, p. 58). Changing technologies, services and
student/consumer expectations represent both an opportunity and a threat for
universities everywhere, including Australian universities.
In their report on the effects of digital disruption on the Australian economy, Deloitte
(2013) categorised education in the ‘Long Fuse, Big Bang’ quadrant, predicting a 15–50
per cent change in metrics over a period of 4–10 years, noting government regulation as a
possible inhibitor of the rate of change. While the impact of digital disruption is large, the
longer lead times give institutions a chance to (re)position themselves to take advantage of
the new opportunities presented by the changing technology landscape. In a report on the
future of Australian universities, Ernst and Young (2012) identified the most significant
challenges currently facing higher education, including technology, and highlighted three
business models likely to emerge in response to these challenges: streamlined status-quo,
niche dominator and transformer.
In this case study, the university strategic plan is firmly located in the niche dominator
business model, targeting specific areas of strength and focusing research and teaching
operations in these areas. One of the key features of this business model is streamlining
the back office and reducing the cost of operations. This is clearly the type of strategic
objective that IT could contribute to if it is properly aligned to business strategies.
The business/IT alignment imperative
Alignment with the strategies and activities of the business has been widely recognised
as one of the top issues or problems in IT strategy. In their early attempt to define a
method of measuring this alignment, Reich and Benbasat (1996) refer to prior examples
of this, dating back to the mid-1980s, around the time when the first lower cost personal
computers (cheaper in comparison to mainframe computers) were appearing in organisations
in any numbers. Referring to the concept as a ‘linkage’ rather than as an
alignment, they defined it as ‘the degree to which the IT mission, objectives, and
plans, support and are supported by the business mission, objectives, and plans’
(Reich & Benbasat, 1996, p. 56).
Alignment is a priority for higher education IT, the first three items on the
EDUCAUSE top 10 issues of 2014 also focus on business/IT alignment (Grajek, 2014).
Similarly, the Council of Australian University Directors of IT (CAUDIT) also focuses on
providing business solutions and alignment (CAUDIT, 2014). Table 1 shows how each
body describes and ranks these priorities.
Creating better alignment of business and IT strategies to provide valuable solutions to
the business are goals that dominate the IT profession in all industries, but different types
of organisations present different challenges for those responsible for making this happen.
The challenges facing a publicly listed, for-profit manufacturing company will be very
different from those faced by a university with multiple missions and broad-ranging social
responsibilities inherent in the public good aspects of higher education. In itself, IT culture
The case study
In this case study, the approach to IT strategy development followed by the university
was an Alignment model. In this model, the business strategy is developed first, and
then business and IT leaders collaborate to produce an IT strategy to support it
(Albrecht et al., 2004). In the case study, the delay between creation of the business
and IT strategic plans was nearly 2 years. Overall, the IT strategic planning approach
undertaken was based on the Gartner IT strategic planning model shown in Figure 2
(Schulte, 2015).
In the case study, the university’s nomenclature for these phases was
1. IT strategic vision (Demand)
2. IT strategic plan (Control)
3. Implementation (Supply)
This paper focuses on the first of these phases, the IT strategic vision. The primary
assumption underlying this phase is that it will provide the connection and alignment of
IT to business strategy. Consultation in this phase involved interviewing senior executive
staff and workshop groups with senior academic and professional staff (deans and
directors) from several stakeholder communities: teaching staff, research staff, professional
staff, IT managers and students. The results of this consultation were compiled into
an IT strategic vision document that was presented to, and ratified by, the institution’s
senior leadership.
Methodology and analysis
In order to analyse the degree of business/IT alignment, Sharrock’s ‘four management
agendas’ framework (2012) was applied. Produced from a thematic analysis of Australian
university strategies, this presents a higher education industry-specific set of institutional
priorities, as shown in Table 3.
The Sharrock model has been used to help assess the degree of alignment between the
university strategic plan and the IT strategic vision. Using these definitions, business
priorities are categorised into one of the four ‘management agendas’ to allow valid
comparisons to be made. In order to determine the business priorities for IT, the strategic
plan was examined for explicit or implied mentions of IT, or concepts related to IT
capability. The results are shown in Table 4.
The case study university’s strategic plan itself contained very few direct references
to IT, but several indirect references were present. For example, new forms of
student engagement could reasonably be assumed to include new technologies to
supplement pedagogies. After duplication of items was taken into account, the four
business priorities for IT remained. These are shown as rows in Table 5, which
summarises the analysis. Initial analysis of the data using the four management
agendas framework assigned each business priority to a single management agenda.
Examination of these results gave an incomplete picture of the agendas being
supported, as every priority clearly had impacts on other agendas. As a result,
secondary categories were added to the analysis. Management agendas in the secondary
categories are considered to be agendas that are supported as a consequence
of activity in the primary agenda.
New forms of student engagement
IT is an implied enabler of this priority. The main drivers of new forms of student
engagement will have to be people and pedagogy, that is, the professional community
(PC) agenda, where shared values across staff groups support the student experience.
While new technology and software tools will undoubtedly play a supporting role in new
types of student engagement, so too will other factors, such as the physical facilities, as
learning spaces are transformed from traditional tutorial rooms and lecture theatres to
collaborative group learning spaces. The small, implied, IT component of this priority
consists of communication/collaboration software and fits primarily in the creative
engagement (CE) agenda, with its focus on learning, engagement and innovation. The
wider PC agenda of this priority is enabled by the CE dimension and is thus considered a
secondary agenda for IT.
Research collaboration tools
While internationalisation is described as the key element of the overall strategy, research
is the common theme that binds all the plan’s priorities together. The research section of
the strategic plan focuses on collaboration amongst researchers, particularly from other
international institutions. The implied priority for IT is to provide the technology required
to support this collaboration. Collaboration amongst researchers is clearly located in the
PC domain; however, the technology required to support it is primarily part of the CE
agenda, pursuing learning, discovery and innovation, and external collaboration. The PC
agenda is supported as a consequence of the CE agenda and thus is classified as a
secondary agenda.
Modernised systems and infrastructure
Unlike the previous two priorities, modernised systems and infrastructure are direct
references to almost everything that is typically considered to be IT. There are
enough potential arguments around the semantics of what could be considered to
constitute a ‘modern’ system or piece of infrastructure to fill another dissertation.
For the purposes of this discussion, ‘modern’ systems and infrastructure are assumed
to be systems and equipment that are supported by vendors and have a future
product development roadmap, or those that are actively developed and supported
in-house.
Modernised systems and infrastructure primarily support a system integrity (SI)
agenda, keeping the technology platform current, secure and fit-for-purpose.
High-quality IT tools as an enabler of teaching, research and professional operations
The final strategic priority is IT as an enabler of the business operations of the university,
an objective consistent with those identified earlier by EDUCAUSE and CAUDIT. Where
the previous priority was concerned with establishing a stable, modern, operating platform,
this priority is about providing the tools and technologies to meet the current and
emerging business needs of every facet of the university’s operations including its ‘back
office’ operations such as finance and human resource management.
Management agendas supported by IT
In order to rank the agendas, a simple weighted approach was applied. An overall total
value of 1 was given to both primary and secondary instances, with 0.5 allocated to each
category. A value per instance within categories was determined by dividing 0.5 by the
number of instances in each category. Four primary instances meant a value of 0.125 per
instance, and 10 secondary instances meant a value of 0.05 per instance. The decimal
values have been converted to percentages and the scores are summed to determine the
final priority ranking. The results of the analysis of the management agendas are presented
below. The raw count of instances is shown first, with the percentage figure presented
afterwards in parentheses (Table 6).
The final priority order of business agendas is thus:
1. Creative engagement
2. Sustainable enterprise
3. Professional community
4. System integrity
In order to be aligned to the business requirements laid out in the strategic plan, the IT
strategic vision should support the management agendas in the same order.
IT strategic vision management agendas: stakeholder feedback
In the case study, the IT strategic vision was constructed from feedback gathered in
workshops and meetings held with senior executive and stakeholder groups representing
the business areas of the university. Workshops were delivered in a common format,
focusing on the four questions in the demand section of the Gartner model. The results of
the workshops are summarised in Table 7, with the management agenda domain shown in
parentheses.
A final, unofficial question was asked in each of the workshops: ‘what sort of
relationship do you want to have with IT, a client/service provider relationship, or a
business partner relationship?’ The answer to this question was unanimously ‘business
partner’. This observation is significant as it implies close alignment and collaboration
between business areas and IT on high-value business priorities. An answer of ‘client/
service provider’ would have indicated the type of relationship where IT only provided
Alignment with business objectives is considered to be an essential outcome of
information technology (IT) strategic planning. This case study examines the process
of creating an IT strategy for an Australian university using an industry standard
methodology. The degree of alignment is determined by comparing the strategic
priorities supported by both the IT and university strategic plans, using Sharrock’s
‘four agendas’ framework. The significant differences between the two strategies are
examined and explained, revealing the need for IT strategic planning methodologies to
include a framework to measure business alignment.
Introduction: technology in higher education
This case study presents an examination of the process of creating an information
technology (IT) strategy for a small Australian university, and the university’s attempt
to align IT to the business needs of the institution. The IT strategy was developed over a
3-month period, commencing in March 2014, using a strategic planning methodology
from an IT research and advisory firm.
The mass adoption of internet-enabled technologies and mobile devices has
revolutionised both the way industries go about their business and their consumers’
expectations. These devices are powered by constantly improving communications
and computing infrastructure, which in turn is enabled by Moore’s law, an observation
about the rate of growth in semiconductor capacity (doubling approximately
every two years). Moore’s law has become a metaphor for rapid rates of growth/
change everywhere (Schaller, 1997, p. 58). Changing technologies, services and
student/consumer expectations represent both an opportunity and a threat for
universities everywhere, including Australian universities.
In their report on the effects of digital disruption on the Australian economy, Deloitte
(2013) categorised education in the ‘Long Fuse, Big Bang’ quadrant, predicting a 15–50
per cent change in metrics over a period of 4–10 years, noting government regulation as a
possible inhibitor of the rate of change. While the impact of digital disruption is large, the
longer lead times give institutions a chance to (re)position themselves to take advantage of
the new opportunities presented by the changing technology landscape. In a report on the
future of Australian universities, Ernst and Young (2012) identified the most significant
challenges currently facing higher education, including technology, and highlighted three
business models likely to emerge in response to these challenges: streamlined status-quo,
niche dominator and transformer.
In this case study, the university strategic plan is firmly located in the niche dominator
business model, targeting specific areas of strength and focusing research and teaching
operations in these areas. One of the key features of this business model is streamlining
the back office and reducing the cost of operations. This is clearly the type of strategic
objective that IT could contribute to if it is properly aligned to business strategies.
The business/IT alignment imperative
Alignment with the strategies and activities of the business has been widely recognised
as one of the top issues or problems in IT strategy. In their early attempt to define a
method of measuring this alignment, Reich and Benbasat (1996) refer to prior examples
of this, dating back to the mid-1980s, around the time when the first lower cost personal
computers (cheaper in comparison to mainframe computers) were appearing in organisations
in any numbers. Referring to the concept as a ‘linkage’ rather than as an
alignment, they defined it as ‘the degree to which the IT mission, objectives, and
plans, support and are supported by the business mission, objectives, and plans’
(Reich & Benbasat, 1996, p. 56).
Alignment is a priority for higher education IT, the first three items on the
EDUCAUSE top 10 issues of 2014 also focus on business/IT alignment (Grajek, 2014).
Similarly, the Council of Australian University Directors of IT (CAUDIT) also focuses on
providing business solutions and alignment (CAUDIT, 2014). Table 1 shows how each
body describes and ranks these priorities.
Creating better alignment of business and IT strategies to provide valuable solutions to
the business are goals that dominate the IT profession in all industries, but different types
of organisations present different challenges for those responsible for making this happen.
The challenges facing a publicly listed, for-profit manufacturing company will be very
different from those faced by a university with multiple missions and broad-ranging social
responsibilities inherent in the public good aspects of higher education. In itself, IT culture
The case study
In this case study, the approach to IT strategy development followed by the university
was an Alignment model. In this model, the business strategy is developed first, and
then business and IT leaders collaborate to produce an IT strategy to support it
(Albrecht et al., 2004). In the case study, the delay between creation of the business
and IT strategic plans was nearly 2 years. Overall, the IT strategic planning approach
undertaken was based on the Gartner IT strategic planning model shown in Figure 2
(Schulte, 2015).
In the case study, the university’s nomenclature for these phases was
1. IT strategic vision (Demand)
2. IT strategic plan (Control)
3. Implementation (Supply)
This paper focuses on the first of these phases, the IT strategic vision. The primary
assumption underlying this phase is that it will provide the connection and alignment of
IT to business strategy. Consultation in this phase involved interviewing senior executive
staff and workshop groups with senior academic and professional staff (deans and
directors) from several stakeholder communities: teaching staff, research staff, professional
staff, IT managers and students. The results of this consultation were compiled into
an IT strategic vision document that was presented to, and ratified by, the institution’s
senior leadership.
Methodology and analysis
In order to analyse the degree of business/IT alignment, Sharrock’s ‘four management
agendas’ framework (2012) was applied. Produced from a thematic analysis of Australian
university strategies, this presents a higher education industry-specific set of institutional
priorities, as shown in Table 3.
The Sharrock model has been used to help assess the degree of alignment between the
university strategic plan and the IT strategic vision. Using these definitions, business
priorities are categorised into one of the four ‘management agendas’ to allow valid
comparisons to be made. In order to determine the business priorities for IT, the strategic
plan was examined for explicit or implied mentions of IT, or concepts related to IT
capability. The results are shown in Table 4.
The case study university’s strategic plan itself contained very few direct references
to IT, but several indirect references were present. For example, new forms of
student engagement could reasonably be assumed to include new technologies to
supplement pedagogies. After duplication of items was taken into account, the four
business priorities for IT remained. These are shown as rows in Table 5, which
summarises the analysis. Initial analysis of the data using the four management
agendas framework assigned each business priority to a single management agenda.
Examination of these results gave an incomplete picture of the agendas being
supported, as every priority clearly had impacts on other agendas. As a result,
secondary categories were added to the analysis. Management agendas in the secondary
categories are considered to be agendas that are supported as a consequence
of activity in the primary agenda.
New forms of student engagement
IT is an implied enabler of this priority. The main drivers of new forms of student
engagement will have to be people and pedagogy, that is, the professional community
(PC) agenda, where shared values across staff groups support the student experience.
While new technology and software tools will undoubtedly play a supporting role in new
types of student engagement, so too will other factors, such as the physical facilities, as
learning spaces are transformed from traditional tutorial rooms and lecture theatres to
collaborative group learning spaces. The small, implied, IT component of this priority
consists of communication/collaboration software and fits primarily in the creative
engagement (CE) agenda, with its focus on learning, engagement and innovation. The
wider PC agenda of this priority is enabled by the CE dimension and is thus considered a
secondary agenda for IT.
Research collaboration tools
While internationalisation is described as the key element of the overall strategy, research
is the common theme that binds all the plan’s priorities together. The research section of
the strategic plan focuses on collaboration amongst researchers, particularly from other
international institutions. The implied priority for IT is to provide the technology required
to support this collaboration. Collaboration amongst researchers is clearly located in the
PC domain; however, the technology required to support it is primarily part of the CE
agenda, pursuing learning, discovery and innovation, and external collaboration. The PC
agenda is supported as a consequence of the CE agenda and thus is classified as a
secondary agenda.
Modernised systems and infrastructure
Unlike the previous two priorities, modernised systems and infrastructure are direct
references to almost everything that is typically considered to be IT. There are
enough potential arguments around the semantics of what could be considered to
constitute a ‘modern’ system or piece of infrastructure to fill another dissertation.
For the purposes of this discussion, ‘modern’ systems and infrastructure are assumed
to be systems and equipment that are supported by vendors and have a future
product development roadmap, or those that are actively developed and supported
in-house.
Modernised systems and infrastructure primarily support a system integrity (SI)
agenda, keeping the technology platform current, secure and fit-for-purpose.
High-quality IT tools as an enabler of teaching, research and professional operations
The final strategic priority is IT as an enabler of the business operations of the university,
an objective consistent with those identified earlier by EDUCAUSE and CAUDIT. Where
the previous priority was concerned with establishing a stable, modern, operating platform,
this priority is about providing the tools and technologies to meet the current and
emerging business needs of every facet of the university’s operations including its ‘back
office’ operations such as finance and human resource management.
Management agendas supported by IT
In order to rank the agendas, a simple weighted approach was applied. An overall total
value of 1 was given to both primary and secondary instances, with 0.5 allocated to each
category. A value per instance within categories was determined by dividing 0.5 by the
number of instances in each category. Four primary instances meant a value of 0.125 per
instance, and 10 secondary instances meant a value of 0.05 per instance. The decimal
values have been converted to percentages and the scores are summed to determine the
final priority ranking. The results of the analysis of the management agendas are presented
below. The raw count of instances is shown first, with the percentage figure presented
afterwards in parentheses (Table 6).
The final priority order of business agendas is thus:
1. Creative engagement
2. Sustainable enterprise
3. Professional community
4. System integrity
In order to be aligned to the business requirements laid out in the strategic plan, the IT
strategic vision should support the management agendas in the same order.
IT strategic vision management agendas: stakeholder feedback
In the case study, the IT strategic vision was constructed from feedback gathered in
workshops and meetings held with senior executive and stakeholder groups representing
the business areas of the university. Workshops were delivered in a common format,
focusing on the four questions in the demand section of the Gartner model. The results of
the workshops are summarised in Table 7, with the management agenda domain shown in
parentheses.
A final, unofficial question was asked in each of the workshops: ‘what sort of
relationship do you want to have with IT, a client/service provider relationship, or a
business partner relationship?’ The answer to this question was unanimously ‘business
partner’. This observation is significant as it implies close alignment and collaboration
between business areas and IT on high-value business priorities. An answer of ‘client/
service provider’ would have indicated the type of relationship where IT only provided