Customer Reviews

A Practical Guide to Information Systems Strategic Planning, Second Edition

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

My graduate IS/IT Strategic Planning course did not assign a text book on writing up an IS/IT Strategic Plan, so I had to track one down on my own. After reviewing at least a dozen books, I found Cassidy's to be the most practical with multiple and varied examples of the critical ideas, sections & components found within an IS Strategic Plan. There are many great examples of Mission and Vission statements and detailed sections on ROI analysis, executive summaries and the entire planning process, etc. The graphics & exhibits are easily understood and well organized, as is the entire book. In fact, other students actually purchased this book during the semester at my recommendation and our professor is looking to add this book as required reading for the course! It is especially good for those who have little to no experience putting together an entire IS plan from ground zero. Thorough, to the point, terrific examples and extremely well organized is how I would sum up this book. It will serve both students and IS/IT professionals extremely well.

I work for a large East Coast Utilities company. Our project team was charged with producing an "Information Systems Strategic Plan". A daunting task given multiple platforms, architectures, and technologies. Our team was experienced and knowledgeable, but lacked process direction.

We turned to Anita Cassidy's book and found it amazingly helpful. We found ourselves referring to it many times during the planning and implementation stages of the project.

Her book provides an authoritative reference which allowed us to cut total project time by 25%. We didn't need to argue about process, methodology, or research strategy. We went with Cassidy's suggestions and we were more than pleased with the results.

Cassidy's simple, straightforward approach is easy to follow, meaningful, and very applicable. If you have the task of assembling an IS Strategic Plan, then this book will give you the step-by-step methodology to do so.

Nice job Anita!

This book, like all of Ms. Cassidy's work, is straightforward, to the point and reads like a blueprint for success. In particular, she frames the objectives (Where are we? Where do we need to be? What's the best way to get there?), then gives guidance on answering the questions and a realistic and actionable plan for meeting the objectives.

Her approach is focused on business needs and linked to the overriding imperatives and strategies of that domain. She begins by discussing the business drivers and why strategic planning is necessary, then provides a phased approach to the strategic planning process itself. This approach captures the business and technical "as-is" and "to-be" pictures, performs a gap analysis, and a plan for going from "as-is" to "to-be". On the surface this appears to be common sense, but the devil is in the details, and she provides the details. That is what makes this book so valuable. More importantly, it's obvious that she has extensive experience in strategic planning because all of the subtle issues are addressed, and her advice is on the mark every step of the way.

Of course, one of the big issues in strategic planning is the question of what capital investments to make in software, either as an upgrade or entire replacement of company-critical systems, that align to the slected strategy. This book shows how to select the best fit to meet strategic plans, and how to capture the true costs and support requirements as a matter of due diligence.

This book is, in my opinion, one of the better ones on the topic, and is only exceeded by her most recent book titled "A Practical Guide to Planning for E-Business Success: How to E-enable Your Enterprise". That book contains substantially the same approach as this one, but is aligned to e-business. Regardless of which book you choose, you'll find Ms. Cassidy's approach to reflect best practices, and the advice interspersed throughout the book to be invaluable.

This is worth reading, and the practical approach drawing on experience has been useful to me in the past.

However, having re-read my copy recently, what struck me most was how much it felt like a history lesson. This is very much what companies used to do and what many still do. I could think of many examples from my own experience that matched the descriptions in the book. What it is not is a blueprint of how to do things in the future or even a description of the best of today's practices.

Worth reading, but keep it as background and not as a guide for working today.

[...]

I usually read many IT management books, and opposite to other books which are more academic or "stay in the heights", this is a very practical guide which is very helpful when you face the challenge of developing a Strategic Systems Plan effort for the real customers demanding our services.

When you finish a book like this, you shoud ask yourself: does this book enables an experience guy in IT management to write a system's plan efficently?

In this case, the answer is YES! So that I recommend it to anyone who wants to develop and strategic system's plan.

Alex @ Cynertia Consuling [...]

I was looking for a comprehensive book on IT strategy. As a CIO and a consultant I have performed strategy development engagements. But I wanted to make sure I was indeed covering all the right areas. This book contains a number of examples, sample questions and surveys which are very helpful in conducting a strategy engagement. Although, some are too detailed for an experienced person, they are still useful from completeness point of view.

I would have liked some of these to be available in an electronic form to be able to be customized.

I recommend this book to strategy novices as well as practitioners.

I have not worked completely through this book, but have found it to be very readible with sound information. Everything does not apply to my situation (very small organization), but the concepts are clear.

Finding the style the book is written a bit hard to engage. The methodology is great, but it bogs down at times comapared to others. Some of my favourite titles of late have been from Harvard Business School and these seem easier to digest in quick spurts (time to read is limited). Otherwise a very detailed process with sound princples

Half of the book deals with strategic planning which is quite helpful. Half the book deals with how to acquire an application which is not.