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Aligning IT Strategies with Business Initiatives

Prior to beginning work on this assignment read Chapter 4 from the course text and review the relevant information from this week’s lecture. Review the instructions below and research at least three additional scholarly sources to support your statements. You may wish to review the recommended resources for this week for assistance with finding appropriate resources.

In previous weeks you have constructed a mission statement, a vision statement, and a time-line horizon. Additionally, you identified the strategic initiatives of the business and built an IT Major Projects Plan. This week you will put these all together in an aligned and coordinated IT Strategic Matrix in which you will match the major projects that you want to accomplish over the next one to three years with the company’s strategic business initiatives. Within this hierarchy, the business develops its strategy and specific initiatives, and as the IT Leader you will build your strategy from those initiatives. In some cases this presents some duplication of effort, but at some point, a consolidation of direction and efforts must take place in order to move the business forward. In order for IT to be successful (meaning, it drives the business forward and supports its mission and vision productively), it must sync up its activities to those needed by the business.

In this assignment you will write a 4-5 page paper that describes the alignment of IT Strategic Plans with the Strategic Business Initiative.

Using the ISM645 Acme Full Strategic Plan, determine the elements of the business initiatives and match them to the major IT strategic projects necessary. Discuss the strategic relationship between the elements within your narrative and why you aligned the specific IT initiatives to the Business initiatives.

Include the following elements in your paper.

• Align the IT strategies with the corporate strategies and business initiatives.
• Identify the potential future IT needs for each business initiative utilizing research and innovative practices.
• Align IT strategic elements against a one, two, and three year time frame.
• Create a cost estimate for each IT strategic element
• Include a matrix that shows the alignment of the IT Strategic Plan and the Strategic Business Initiatives.

Refer to the ISM645 Business Initiative IT Planning Matrix Worksheet to for a guide to creating the table.

The Alignment of IT Strategies with Business Initiatives paper

• Must be completed in the provided ISM645 Business Initiative IT Plan Matrix template.
• Must use at least three scholarly sources in addition to the course text.
  • The Scholarly, Peer Reviewed, and Other Credible Sources (Links to an external site.) table offers additional guidance on appropriate source types. If you have questions about whether a specific source is appropriate for this assignment, please contact your instructor. Your instructor has the final say about the appropriateness of a specific source for a particular assignment.
• Must document all sources in APA style as outlined in the Writing Center.
• Must include a separate references page that is formatted according to APA style as outlined in the Writing Center.

Carefully review the Grading Rubric (Links to an external site.) for the criteria that will be used to evaluate your assignment.

Recommended Assignment Outline

Week-4 Assignment

Paper Title

Start the first page of the paper following the cover page and optional abstract section with a centered Level 1 Header that names the title of the paper in both upper and lower-case letters followed with the introductory paragraph with thesis sentence.

Alignment of IT Strategies with Corporate Strategies and Business Initiatives

The aim of this section is to use the ISM645 Acme Full Strategic Plan to determine all corporate strategic and business initiative elements and match them to major IT strategic projects, which you would be overseeing as the IT Department Lead Executive.

Potential Future IT Needs for Each Business Initiative

This section focuses on using research and innovative practices to figure out potential future IT needs for each strategic business initiative.  This is where you have an opportunity to be creative in figuring out potential future IT innovations, which could include considering business ramifications and potential pilot implementations toward areas such as machine learning, artificial intelligence, and robotics. Research and innovative practices can include competitor research, researching evolving trends and capabilities, and finding what IT solutions are currently used in industry.

Three-Year Time Frame Alignment of IT Strategic Elements

This section on aligning IT strategic elements within a one-, two-, and three-year timeframe is where you would logically align all major deliverables and milestones associated with each information technology (IT) initiative contributing toward achieving the associated business initiatives, which is crucial for IT and leadership understanding and planning purposes.

Cost Estimate for Each IT Strategic Element

This section on creating a cost estimate for each IT strategic element is important to keep focus and clarity toward funding information important to senior leaders to enable understandability and decision making. Associated descriptive values for consideration would include added narrative toward aspects such as needed full-time equivalent (FTE) personnel, cost per FTE, hardware or software expenditures, and contractual support cost.

Conclusion

The concluding paragraph should restate the assignment purpose, thesis, and paper highlights.  Take time to make the concluding paragraph distinct from the introduction and remember that the first and last paragraph of any written effort are usually the ones that most affect a reader’s attention.