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IT Strategic Plan (Information Technology Strategic Plan)

  • 1 Definition of an IT Strategic Plan
  • 2 Key Components of an IT Strategic Plan
  • 3.1 What an IT Strategic Plan is Not [1]
  • 4 How to Create a Winning IT Strategic Plan [2]
  • 5 IT Strategic Plan Model [3]
  • 6 Phases in the Development of IT Strategic Plan [4]
  • 7 Challenges in Successfully Implementing an IT Strategy Plan [5]
  • 8 12 Common Mistakes to Avoid
  • 10 References
  • 11 Further Reading

Definition of an IT Strategic Plan

An IT Strategic Plan is a document that details the specific steps, with dates and deliverables, taken to implement the IT Strategy of an organization.

These steps:

  • Are necessary and sufficient to implement a strategy
  • They are prioritized
  • They are divided into distinct phases
  • They can be iterative and usually are

An IT Strategic Plan is created using an IT Strategy Template .

A Strategic Plan for IT must include the roles and responsibilities tasked with the implementation of each step in the plan. An IT Strategic Plan must also include relevant governance information.

An IT Strategic Plan follows a charter.

An Information Technology Strategic Plan (ITSP) aims at discovering the resources and IT in an organization, to direct the technological and information architecture to its strategic objectives.

IT Strategy Map

Key Components of an IT Strategic Plan

An IT Strategic Plan outlines how the IT department will support the organization's overall business objectives. It is a roadmap for how IT will evolve to meet business needs in both the short and long term. Here are the key components of an IT Strategic Plan:

  • Executive Summary : A high-level overview of the IT strategic plan, including its purpose and key points.
  • Mission: Describes the primary purpose of the IT department within the organization.
  • Vision: Outlines where the IT department aims to be in the future.
  • Values: Defines the guiding principles for how the IT department operates and makes decisions.
  • Business Goals and Objectives Alignment : Demonstrates how IT initiatives align with the broader business goals and objectives. This is crucial for ensuring that IT and business strategies are in sync.
  • SWOT Analysis: A breakdown of the IT department's Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.
  • Infrastructure Overview: Details about the current IT infrastructure, tools, and platforms in use.
  • Gap Analysis: Identifies the differences between the current IT capabilities and what's needed to achieve the desired future state.
  • Strategic Initiatives and Projects : A list of major IT projects and initiatives that will be undertaken to support the strategic plan. This should include priorities, timelines, and necessary resources.
  • Resource Allocation : Details about how resources (financial, human, and technological) will be allocated to support the strategic initiatives.
  • Stakeholder Analysis : Identifies the main stakeholders and describes their interests, influence, and potential impact on the strategic plan's implementation.
  • Risk Management : Highlights potential risks associated with the plan's implementation and proposes strategies to mitigate or manage these risks.
  • Governance and Leadership : Describes how decisions related to IT initiatives will be made, who is responsible, and how accountability will be ensured.
  • Change Management : Outlines how changes will be introduced and managed within the organization, ensuring smooth transitions and minimal disruptions.
  • Performance Metrics and KPIs : Defines the metrics and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that will be used to measure the progress and effectiveness of the IT strategic initiatives.
  • Communication Strategy : Specifies how information about IT initiatives, progress, and changes will be communicated to stakeholders, including employees, management, and other relevant parties.
  • Technology Roadmap : A visual representation that outlines the evolution of the organization's IT landscape over time, including key milestones, technology adoption, and phase-outs.
  • Budget and Financial Forecast : An estimate of the costs associated with implementing the strategic plan, including potential returns on investment (ROI).
  • Review and Revision Mechanisms : Describes how and when the strategic plan will be reviewed and updated to ensure its continued relevance and effectiveness.

An effective IT Strategic Plan should be dynamic and adaptable. The fast-paced evolution of technology and the changing needs of businesses mean that regular reviews and updates are essential to ensure that the plan remains aligned with organizational goals.

Why is a Strategic Plan for IT Essential for an Organization?

An IT Strategic Plan serves as a guiding document for an organization's technological direction. It ensures that IT investments and initiatives align with the organization's broader goals and strategic direction. Creating an IT Strategic Plan is a crucial step for organizations aiming to harness the full potential of their technological investments and ensure alignment with their overarching goals.

Here are compelling reasons why an organization should create an IT Strategic Plan:

  • Alignment with Business Strategy: One of the primary reasons to have an IT Strategic Plan is to ensure that the organization's technology initiatives and investments align seamlessly with its broader business objectives. This ensures that IT is not operating in a silo but is deeply integrated with the company's goals and vision.
  • Optimized Resource Allocation: With a clear strategic plan, organizations can prioritize IT projects based on their potential impact and ROI. This helps in the optimal allocation of resources, ensuring that the most value-driven projects are funded and executed first.
  • Proactive Approach: A strategic plan allows organizations to anticipate technological trends, challenges, and opportunities. This proactive stance ensures they're well-prepared for the future, rather than merely reacting to technological changes as they happen.
  • Risk Management: In the digital age, cybersecurity threats, data breaches, and system outages can have severe consequences. A strategic plan identifies potential IT risks and sets out strategies to mitigate them, safeguarding the organization.
  • Clear Communication: An IT Strategic Plan serves as a communication tool, ensuring all stakeholders, from top management to the operational teams, are on the same page regarding the technological direction and initiatives.
  • Performance Metrics: A well-defined plan will establish metrics and KPIs to measure the success and effectiveness of IT initiatives. This allows for ongoing assessment, ensuring that the organization gets the desired outcomes from its IT investments.
  • Budget Predictability: IT projects can be capital-intensive. A strategic plan offers a clearer picture of required investments over time, aiding in financial planning and ensuring cost efficiency.
  • Competitive Advantage: In many industries, leveraging the latest technologies can provide a significant edge over competitors. A strategic plan guides the organization in adopting and implementing technologies to drive innovation and differentiate it from competitors.
  • Change Management: Technology implementations can significantly change workflows and processes. A strategic plan outlines the approach to manage these changes, ensuring smoother transitions and minimal disruptions.
  • Stakeholder Engagement: A well-articulated plan can get buy-in from key stakeholders, ensuring their support and collaboration for IT initiatives. This can be crucial for the successful implementation of technology-driven projects.
  • Long-term Vision: While day-to-day IT operations focus on immediate issues, a strategic plan provides a long-term vision. It sets a clear direction for where the organization wants to be technologically.

An IT Strategic Plan is a document and a roadmap. It ensures that technology is a robust pillar supporting the organization's growth, innovation, and operational excellence. Without such a plan, organizations might be adrift in the rapidly evolving digital landscape, making reactive decisions that might not align with their long-term goals.

What an IT Strategic Plan is Not [1]

  • An IT Strategic Plan is NOT Tactical or Prescriptive: A strategic plan is a framework for allowing departmental managers to make decisions and implement solutions that support the overall strategic plan. That decision-making ability is key in gaining support for the strategy. A tactical plan containing specific information about what must be done in order to meet strategic goals is a mandate, not a plan. This approach is guaranteed to turn the organization’s lower-level managers against the plan.
  • A Strategic Plan is NOT Static Document That Should Never Change: The strategic plan should be built to allow for updates and adapt to changes in the market. The point of a strategic plan is to consider what the future may hold and align resources today to support that vision. By regularly considering what the future may hold, you can make small manageable course corrections rather than having to “right the ship” when unexpected change occurs.

How to Create a Winning IT Strategic Plan [2]

To effectively support today’s IT-informed business strategies, CIOs must embrace new approaches to IT Strategic Planning that are more business-driven, flexible, and frequently revisited than in years past

  • Start with Business Strategy: IT strategic plan must be firmly rooted in the business strategic plan — period. If the business strategy is to invest in digital transformation, for instance, IT must extrapolate what that means for existing architecture, operating processes, skills, sourcing, governance, and culture. The best IT plan is no longer simply a rundown of the financial investment required or a list of technologies to implement. Rather, it is an assessment of the changes demanded to achieve business goals. The line between business strategy and technology strategy has disappeared, says ServiceNow’s CTO Chris Bedi. “They are one and the same.” Fenwick goes so far as to suggest there should be no IT strategy separate from the business strategy, preferring to call the IT-specific component an operating plan.
  • Plan the Planning Process: At the outset, IT leaders should establish a plan to develop the plan. Gartner advises creating a “clear and achievable” process for developing the strategic plan, using any existing or previously used plan as a starting point.
  • Strategize Swiftly: While an IT Strategic Plan is important, spending too much time to develop it can also be dangerous. Gartner advocates swift and focused strategic plan development in order to prevent loss of focus, scope creep, or diminished currency and relevance.
  • Focus on the Mid-term Horizon: Long-term roadmaps still have their place, but they have largely fallen out of favor, given today’s era of rapid technology and business shifts. While IT leaders must ensure that their choices are flexible enough to adapt to longer-term technology change, the IT strategic plan should largely focus on the mid-term horizon, typically 12 to 18 months ahead. It can also address, in less granularity, plans in the two- to the three-year range and five-plus years. Whatever time period IT leaders decide to cover, they should be sure to clarify the difference between the more tactical operating portion of the plan, mid-term strategy, and long-term goals.
  • Nail the Key Components: An effective IT plan will include information on the people, staffing, partnerships, organizational changes, and governance required to achieve business outcomes. It can also include an investment portfolio roadmap, timeframes, goals, and a discussion of risks and other issues.
  • Build in metrics for success: The best IT strategic plans include measures of success that will serve as mile markers for progress over time. In today’s technology-driven marketplace, however, those metrics should focus less on the inputs or outputs IT may have used as guideposts in the past and more on actual business outcomes. Having clear, outcome-based key performance indicators (KPI)s is essential. It is important to ensure tight integration with the business strategy. Those KPIs should be measured and reported at least monthly, although some should be tracked more frequently. Without defined measurable goals and measurement against them, a strategy can quickly become a pretty set of charts that get looked at once and filed away.
  • Tie Guiding Principles into the Corporate Vision: Many IT leaders will include a set of guiding principles or other explanations that guide IT’s decision-making. Those guiding principles should tie into the overall corporate vision.
  • Match Planning Frequency to the Cadence of the Business: Most IT organizations will create a full IT strategic plan at least once a year, but the fast-changing business environment demands that most update their approaches more frequently. The best rule of thumb is to adjust the frequency of IT planning to the cadence of the business. For most companies, quarterly updates (at a minimum) will make the most sense. IT leaders in consumer-focused businesses, for instance, will want to make changes more frequently.

IT Strategic Planning

IT Strategic Plan Model [3]

There are several ITSP development models, including the one proposed by Microsoft (Microsoft. 2011), named Microsoft Methodology Consulting Service (MCS) which is based on the technical recommendations of COBIT and developed jointly with partners who specialize in this practice. This model is divided into five stages and each stage has activities related to its responsibility. The first stage deals with the generation of the IT strategic plan, the second includes a survey of IT needs, the third one maps the desired situation, the fourth prepares the strategic IT plan, and the fifth one is for ITSP implementation and monitoring.

The model proposed by some authors considers three steps in ITSP development. The first one is preparation, generated throughout the framework to create an ITSP , the second step diagnoses the current situation, where the body has an exact notion of the stage, and the needs are raised. The final step is to plan the situation whose attainment is planned, at which point the ITSP is produced (Hazan, Claudia. 2010; Fagundes, Vladimir 2011; Cruz, Cláudio Silva da. 2009; Rezende, D. A. 2003).

In Brazil, the Department of Planning, Budget and Management (MPBM) issued a Normative Instruction (NI04) stating that the acquisition of IT (Products and Services) is preceded by Information Technology Strategic Plan (ITSP). The Information Technology Strategic Plan - ITSP provides a complete view of the current environment and Information Technology, according to current and future needs, and allows direct information architecture and technology aligned with the strategic objectives of the institution. The Information Technology Strategic Plan consists primarily of knowledge of its resources (services, Business Processes, Information Systems , Infrastructure, and Technology) from an analysis based on the purpose of the organization, definition, and planning of a strategy to IT evolution. An administration concerned about the ITSP is a company that uses modern principles of rationality, consistency, and quality, creating a policy for success. Looking to improve the construction process and its monitoring of the ITSP, an idea rose to develop a model to provide direction, control and monitor the development of ITSPs and after their production, to allow an effective management and monitoring.

The objective of this model is to define a set of steps that can help IT managers in the Federal Administration in the construction, monitoring, and management of its Information Technology Strategic Plan - ITSP. In the following sections details the development and management of ITSP. The model of design and construction of an ITSP was split into two parts: 1. Preparation, comprising the steps of Preparation, Diagnosis, and Planning (Actions and Risks); 2. Management and Control.

IT Strategic Plan Model

Phases in the Development of IT Strategic Plan [4]

  • Stakeholder Buy-In: The process followed to develop an IT strategic plan can be just as important as the plan itself. Successful IT strategic plan development should follow a comprehensive process focused on obtaining full stakeholder involvement. Since many stakeholders are involved in funding and implementing parts of a plan, getting their buy-in is essential. The best way to obtain buy-in is to include them in the plan development process as much as possible, and by doing so, it can help ensure that specific goals and objectives in the plan receive the necessary funding and resources to implement. The project must also receive full support from upper management so that stakeholders understand the importance of the project and will commit their time and resources to it. Many organizations utilize consultants to undertake the process of creating a plan. This helps ensure objectivity and dedicates resources that can efficiently create a plan, usually within a three- to four-month timeframe depending on the scope of the project and the size of the organization. If an organization believes it has the expertise and resources to undertake the plan creation in-house, it’s important that stakeholders outside of IT are directly involved in the plan’s creation, as this will help with objectivity and buy-in across the organization.
  • Create Project Charter; Define Roles and Resposibilities" Plan creation also need to follow best practices in project management. This means creating a project charter, developing and following a detailed project plan, and forming a project team with a project manager to guide and oversee the process. It is important to define roles and responsibilities upfront. The project team will still play a significant role in the project, and it’s essential that the project team is composed of representatives from all major departments.
  • Discovery: The next stage in creating a plan is the discovery phase. This is where information is gathered and feedback from stakeholders is garnered. A variety of documents will be needed, including hardware and software inventories, telecommunications services, organization charts, network topology diagrams, policies and procedures, disaster recovery/continuity of operations plans, and other pertinent documents. The Project Lead should also facilitate collecting feedback from all stakeholders. This can be accomplished in a variety of ways, including employee surveys, focus groups, and stakeholder interviews. The goal of the feedback is to assess how IT is performing and gather perspectives on what challenges and opportunities IT faces. Feedback should also be obtained from outside agencies, external customers, and gather industry best practices data.
  • Analysis: The next phase of the project is the analysis phase. After all the data has been collected, the Project Lead will analyze the data, look at best practices, and perform gap analysis to determine what deficiencies exist in IT and develop initial findings and recommendations. It’s important to obtain feedback from the project team to ensure the initial findings are on target. Some of the specific recommendations will likely require additional research and might include emerging technologies that may not be widely deployed.
  • Documentation: The next phase is the document phase. The Project Lead will form the goals and objectives, develop guiding principles, and write the plan. Guiding principles help with decision-making and are intended to assist IT and management when issues or technologies come up that are not part of the goals and objectives. For instance, “IT will take a cloud-first approach when purchasing new software.” The project team will need to provide plenty of feedback in the document phase and help with prioritizing the strategic initiatives or plan objectives. The group will also want to ensure that funding, resource, and timeframes are realistic and achievable. The Project Lead will then write the detailed plan and obtain feedback from the project group and other designated stakeholders.
  • Review and Revise: The final phase is the review and revise phase. This is where the Project Lead takes the feedback and then revises and finalizes the plan. Often, the Project Lead or Project Manager will present the plan to senior management, IT staff, and other key stakeholders and publish it for internal, and sometime external, distribution, depending on the organization.
  • Implementation: After the plan is completed, it’s just as important to implement the objectives and initiatives within the specified timeframe and within the planned budget specified. Since a lot can happen during the span of a three- to five-year plan, it’s important to track progress and update the plan. A Chinese proverb states it best, “A good plan is always under construction.” No plan will be perfectly implemented, as external factors like the economy, funding, and emerging technologies could alter the course of the plan. Disruptive technologies can especially alter the implementation. For instance, no one could have predicted the impact that the original Apple iPhone had on mobile computing, which forced nearly every organization to change plans and embrace this new, groundbreaking technology. After three to five years, the organization should plan on developing a new IT strategic plan and begin the process all over again.

Challenges in Successfully Implementing an IT Strategy Plan [5]

There are many challenges that organisations face when implementing a successful strategic IT plan. These largely stem from the mystery that is “Information Technology” and the lack of experience building such plans in the past. This blog will outline these challenges and present ways in which organisations may overcome them.

  • A Business Person, not an IT Person: Organisations are typically not made up of IT people. Senior management such as the CEO are first and foremost business people; they understand business strategy and objectives, but the world of IT is often a mystery. Topics ranging from databases to networking, from business intelligence to infrastructure can be overwhelming, especially when they don’t immediately appear to have a direct influence on the organisation’s objectives. Using senior managers to create the high level critical success factors for strategic IT planning is very effective, however often they need assistance with defining the more detailed elements of a complete IT strategy Plan. Senior managers often struggle with the risk management elements of a strategic plan as they may lack a comprehensive understanding of all the technical elements of IT environments.
  • Internal Bias: There may be issues when implementing a strategic IT plan internally, as bias can come into play. For instance, when someone has been given the task of implementing a strategic IT plan for the organisation. Because each person has only ever worked in a handful of different environments, the strategic objectives and technology drivers can often be biased around their personal experience. A not for profit company in Victoria developed a strategic objective to use the CRM product Salesforce to manage their constituents, however, while this is a great product, the recommendation was biased due to the experience the CFO had in a previous role. Subsequently, the implementation was hugely costly and did not deliver on the underlying core objectives - they ultimately needed an ERP instead of a CRM and had challenges with the SaaS (Software as a service) model. As every organisation has a unique set of requirements, it is crucial to understand the needs of each individual organisation and base the strategic IT plan on these specific needs.
  • Required Expertise to Cover the Broad Range of IT: The world of IT is vast and without the right knowledge, very confusing. Elements of IT extend from hardware] and infrastructure to software platforms as well as phones, networking, business intelligence, databases, spreadsheets and even programming. All of this requires many professionals with an expertise in each specific field, so trying to create a cohesive strategy to tackle the varied field of IT internally can be difficult.
  • Helping Stakeholders to Understand the Value of IT: Another challenge that organisations must overcome when implementing a strategic IT plan is figuring out how to help stakeholders (who typically don’t have much IT knowledge) to understand the value that formal and comprehensive strategic IT planning will deliver to the organisation. Many issues arise from a lack of understanding of the return on investment in IT planning. Often it seems that a strategic IT plan is not necessary for the goals of your organisation, but that is far from the case. The effective use of Information Technology can bring any organisation positive tangible and intangible benefits that need to be articulated in a way that makes sense to stakeholders. Whether this is through TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) analysis or ROI (Return on Investment) calculators stakeholders must understand the true value of developing a documented strategic IT plan, and formalised strategic IT planning processes.

12 Common Mistakes to Avoid

Creating an IT Strategic Plan is a complex task that requires foresight, alignment with business goals, and adaptability to changing technological landscapes. Given its intricacy, several common mistakes can be made during the process:

  • Lack of Alignment with Business Objectives: If the IT plan isn't synchronized with the organization's overarching goals, the result can be wasted resources on projects that don't add strategic value.
  • Overly Technical Focus: An IT Strategic Plan that's too technical might fail to convey the broader business impact of IT initiatives. Balancing technical detail with strategic insight is crucial to ensure it's understandable and relevant to all stakeholders.
  • Failure to Anticipate Change: Technology, by nature, evolves rapidly. Not considering future technological trends, or not building flexibility into the plan, can render it obsolete quickly.
  • Ignoring Current IT Capabilities: Overlooking the current state of IT – its strengths, weaknesses, and existing infrastructure – can lead to unrealistic expectations and strategies that are challenging to implement.
  • Not Engaging Stakeholders: If key stakeholders, from top executives to departmental heads, aren't involved in the planning process, the resulting plan may lack buy-in and face resistance during execution.
  • Insufficient Risk Management: Neglecting to identify, assess, and strategize for potential risks, like cybersecurity threats or vendor lock-ins, can expose the organization to unforeseen challenges.
  • Vague Goals and Metrics: Without clear objectives and measurable KPIs, it becomes challenging to assess the effectiveness of the plan and to make necessary adjustments.
  • Static Mindset: Treating the IT Strategic Plan as a one-off document, rather than a living, evolving roadmap, can stifle adaptability and responsiveness to changing conditions.
  • Lack of Budgeting Details: Not aligning the plan with financial forecasts or not accounting for potential costs can lead to budget overruns and financial strain.
  • Overambitious Objectives: While ambition is commendable, setting unrealistic or too many goals can spread resources thin and set the stage for disappointment.
  • Failing to Review and Update: The IT landscape and business needs change, and so should the strategic plan. Not periodically reviewing and adjusting the plan based on performance metrics and changing conditions can result in missed opportunities and inefficiencies.
  • Underestimating the Importance of Change Management: Not preparing the organization for the changes that come with new technologies or strategies can lead to resistance, confusion, and failed implementations.

Creating an effective IT Strategic Plan requires a careful balance of ambition, realism, foresight, and adaptability. It's essential to be aware of these potential pitfalls to navigate the complexities of strategic IT planning successfully.

  • IT Governance
  • Enterprise Architecture (EA)
  • IT Portfolio Management (ITPM)
  • Digital Transformation (DX)
  • IT Budgeting
  • Cloud Strategy
  • Cybersecurity Strategy
  • Business Continuity Planning (BCP)
  • SWOT Analysis
  • Stakeholder Analysis
  • Change Management
  • ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library)
  • Agile Strategy
  • Technology Lifecycle
  • ↑ What a Strategic Plan is Not BMC
  • ↑ Anatomy of an IT Strategic Plan CIO Magazine
  • ↑ IT Strategic Plan Model Wagner Silva, Marco Vaz, Jano Moreira De Souza
  • ↑ Phases in the Development of IT Strategic Plan DocumentMedia
  • ↑ Challenges in Successfully Implementing an IT Strategy Plan RGT Technologies

Further Reading

  • IT Strategy Example
  • IT Strategy Presentation
  • Evaluating Information Technology Strategic Planning Process: Lesson Learnt from Bruneian Small Businesses -Afzaal H. Seyal

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Home » Change Management » Creating an IT Strategic Plan: A Step-by-Step Guide for CIOs and IT Leaders

Creating an IT Strategic Plan: A Step-by-Step Guide for CIOs and IT Leaders

Creating an IT Strategic Plan: A Step-by-Step Guide for CIOs and IT Leaders

According to a McKinsey survey, the proliferation of disruptive technologies emerging as a response to the pandemic “ speeded the adoption of digital technologies by several years—and many of these changes could be here for the long haul .” 

From shifting to remote work to implementing safety protocols, the pandemic has disrupted how businesses operate and interact with their customers at every level. The rise of virtual events, contactless payments, and online shopping has challenged traditional business models and forced companies to innovate.

Despite being a few years removed from the unprecedented events of COVID-19, major industries worldwide are still figuring out how to adapt and transform to the new normal. 

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63% of firms are still experiencing revenue levels below what they were before the pandemic, while 76% of firms have either reduced their workforce or put a hold on hiring, according to the Federal Reserves SCBS 2022 survey.

63% of firms are still experiencing revenue levels below what they were before the pandemic

As such, enterprises must rapidly accelerate digital transformation efforts to become future-ready and remain viable in their respective markets. CIOs must avoid deploying short-sighted IT strategies and solutions that only remedy immediate needs and instead align with those that facilitate overall organizational development .

Siloed tech investments that barely scratch the surface of true transformation are no longer enough.

CIOs and IT leaders need to deploy an IT strategic plan that provides a holistic view of the entire IT ecosystem, and that aligns with the ITIL framework – along with the provision of change management efforts that expedite this process.

This article discusses creating an IT strategic plan and provides a step-by-step guide for CIOs and IT leaders. We define an IT strategic plan, who’s responsible for developing it, and the benefits of having one. We cover the essential pillars of a successful IT strategic plan and provide practical examples from various industries. By the end of this guide, we’ll have equipped readers with the tools and knowledge necessary to help create a comprehensive IT strategic plan.

What is an IT Strategic Plan?

An IT strategic plan (Information Technology strategic plan) is a comprehensive roadmap that outlines an organization’s approach to using technology to achieve long-term goals and objectives. It provides a framework for aligning technology investments with business goals and helps guide decision-making around IT initiatives and projects.

SWZD states that “ adoption plans have grown significantly YoY for newer technologies such as 5G, edge computing, serverless computing, 3D printing, VR, and blockchain .” 

A well-crafted plan considers an organization’s current and future technology needs, as well as its budget, resources, and constraints. It identifies critical systems and applications that support business operations and outlines strategies for managing those systems over time, including upgrades, maintenance, and security measures.

An effective IT strategic plan also includes a clear vision for how technology can drive innovation and growth for the organization.

It explores emerging technologies and trends and assesses their potential impact on the business. It also includes a plan for training and developing IT staff and ensuring they have the skills and knowledge to effectively manage and support technology systems.

Companies that invest in Information Technology (IT) tend to experience higher productivity levels than those that don’t.

Overall, an IT Strategic Plan is a crucial tool for organizations that wish to leverage technology to stay competitive and achieve their goals. It provides a roadmap for aligning technology investments with business objectives and helps ensure that technology initiatives are properly managed and executed to achieve optimal results.

Who’s Responsible for Developing an IT Strategic Plan?

Developing an IT strategic plan is a complex process that requires careful planning and execution. 

As such, organizations must assign responsibility to a capable team or individual who can deliver a comprehensive plan that aligns with the company’s goals.

Generally speaking, the responsibility of developing an IT strategic plan falls on senior management or IT leaders, such as a Chief Information Officer (CIO) or Chief Technology Officer (CTO). This is because creating an IT strategic plan involves technical expertise and a keen understanding of business objectives and budget constraints.

A new study from CIO found that IT leaders spent most of their time on practical and transformational work this year, similar to the previous year of 2022.

The IT strategic planning process also requires input from different departments of an organization, including finance, marketing, and operations. IT leaders can collaborate with these teams to gather relevant information, identify gaps and opportunities, and create a prioritized roadmap.

It’s also important for IT leaders to engage with the broader organization and stakeholders to ensure that the strategic plan aligns with the company’s overall mission and vision. This helps to ensure that the IT strategic plan is not isolated and contributes to the organization’s success.

The Benefits of an IT Strategic Plan

The Benefits of an IT Strategic Plan

An IT strategic plan offers a multitude of benefits to an organization. At its core, such a plan provides a roadmap for successful and sustainable IT operations; it aligns IT initiatives and resources with business strategy, identifying opportunities for innovation, growth, and improvement across the enterprise.

Consequently, a sound strategic plan can enhance operational efficiency, reduce costs, and improve IT performance, thereby improving overall business performance. 

By laying out clear goals, timelines, budgets, and performance metrics, an IT strategic plan can help a company prioritize and allocate resources more effectively; this leads to greater operational agility and responsiveness, increased innovation, and a more competitive market position in the long run.

Moreover, an IT strategic plan supports organizational decision-making and governance while enhancing risk management and security practices. By identifying potential risks and establishing mitigation strategies, a strategic plan anticipates and addresses potential cybersecurity threats, disaster recovery, competitive pressures, and changing market conditions.

Ultimately, implementing and executing a well-designed IT strategic plan can lead to long-term benefits such as increased growth, profitability, and customer satisfaction, while also enhancing organizational agility and competitiveness. 

According to Gartner’s forecast, IT spending is expected to increase in all regions worldwide despite global economic turbulence. The report estimates that by 2023, worldwide IT spending will reach $4.6 trillion in total value, representing a 5.5% increase from the previous year.

5 Vital Steps of the IT Strategic Planning Process

5 Vital Steps of the IT Strategic Planning Process

Developing a strategic IT plan is fundamental to the success of any modern business. Effective planning and execution require a methodical, well-structured approach. 

By following these five key steps, CIOs and IT leaders can develop a comprehensive strategy designed to meet your organization’s current and future needs and help achieve your business objectives.

Step 1: Identify Your Strategic Objectives

The first step in developing your IT strategy involves identifying your goals and desired outcomes.  

To accomplish this, you must understand your organization’s current state and what you hope to achieve through your IT strategy. This clarity will help you determine what success looks like, allowing you to measure your progress over time.

Step 2: Craft a Vision Statement

Once you have identified your strategic objectives, the next step is to create a vision statement that reflects your IT strategy’s aspirations. 

This statement should outline the purpose of your IT plan and explain how it will achieve your organization’s goals. By aligning your IT leaders and team members to your cause, your vision statement will inspire them to work towards a common set of objectives.

Step 3: Assess Your Current IT Resources and Capabilities

In order to create an effective IT strategy, you must assess your current IT resources and capabilities. This includes evaluating your existing technology to identify any gaps or opportunities for improvement. 

By understanding your IT department’s strengths and weaknesses, you can identify specific areas for improvement and ensure that your IT strategy is designed to address your organization’s unique needs.

Step 4: Create an Actionable Plan

In this penultimate step, you must create an actionable plan to achieve your IT strategy’s goals. This involves creating an IT roadmap that outlines the tasks, resources, and timelines required to achieve your desired outcomes. 

By focusing on specific initiatives and tracking progress over time, you can adjust your IT strategy as necessary to ensure it remains aligned with your organization’s evolving needs.

Step 5: Implement the Strategy and Measure Results

Implementing your IT strategy involves setting up the necessary systems and processes to execute your plan effectively. 

You’ll need to allocate resources, manage projects, and maintain governance. After implementation, regularly monitor progress, measure results against KPIs, and adjust your approach accordingly. Change management tools can help you gain insights into the effectiveness of your IT strategy and identify opportunities for further technology investment.

IT Strategic Plan Examples

Strategic IT planning is a critical activity that ensures the effective use of technology to achieve a company’s goals and objectives. However, given that companies have varying objectives, strategic IT plans can take on many forms. 

Depending on an organization’s nature, scope, and size, the format of strategic IT plans can differ significantly. For instance, a small business might have a basic plan that outlines its technology requirements. At the same time, a larger conglomerate may require a more comprehensive plan that covers various departments and business units.

To provide a clearer picture of the variations that exist among strategic IT plans, here are four examples for your consideration:

Harvard University IT Strategic Plan Template:

Harvard University IT Strategic Plan Template

IMAGE – Can the graphic design team please save and input the image from PAGE 6 from this link?

Resolute Technology Solutions IT Strategic Plan Template:

Resolute Technology Solutions IT Strategic Plan Template

Gartner’s IT Strategic Plan Example Template:

Gartner's IT Strategic Plan Example Template

Cascade’s IT Strategic Plan Template:

City of cambridge’s 180-day it strategic plan:.

City of CambridgeΓÇÖs 180-day IT Strategic Plan

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The Best Piece of Strategic Planning Advice We Can Offer

Kirk Reickhoff , Senior Partner at McKinsey, states that a great leader provides a rough outline for the team to figure out the rest. An IT strategic plan is the foundation of your IT transformation journey, guiding your progress and ensuring continuity. It is an iterative process that requires regular updates to stay up-to-date.

However, your employees are the driving force behind your success. They are the meat and muscle of your IT organization, pushing you forward and keeping you going. An IT strategic plan can guide you, but it’s ultimately up to your team to execute it successfully.

For an IT strategic plan to be effective, it must align with and reinforce the overall business vision. It is critical to avoid siloed thinking and ensure that all technology-related investments and initiatives are fully integrated and help advance the organization’s broader mission and objectives. 

Every dollar spent on IT must be fully accounted for and justified based on its contribution to achieving the company’s overall goals. 

McKinsey reports that as CIOs face budgets of

McKinsey reports that as CIOs face budgets of $500 million or more, they’re increasingly seeking IT providers to help support and strengthen their internal talent’s ability to innovate and drive the company’s digital strategy. This is partly due to a desire to sustain innovation in critical business areas and those that interact directly with customers. 

As a CIO or IT leader, it is imperative to clearly understand the business goals and how IT can aid in achieving them. By following the steps in this article, CIOs and IT leaders can begin to create a strategic plan that cultivates a collaborative process between IT and business leaders, focusing on aligning IT initiatives with the company’s overall objectives.

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IT Strategic Planning: Why You Need An IT Strategy

strategic plan for it department

If you’re an IT manager , chances are good you’ll be involved in IT strategic planning during your career. Sometimes strategic planning goes well. Sometimes it doesn’t. And strategic plans are often filed away in cloud storage , seldom referenced and hardly ever used.

Which begs the question: if no one uses your IT strategic plan, why bother creating one?

IT strategic planning has several significant benefits—even when the plan is seldom looked at. Today, we’ll discuss why it’s important to have an IT strategy and what IT strategic planning does for an organization. Specifically, we’ll look at:

  • What is an IT Strategy?
  • What an IT Strategy isn’t
  • Critical benefits of an IT strategy

What is an IT strategy?

Stephen Covey popularized the phrase “begin with the end in mind.” This phrase captures the spirit of a strategic planning process. If we do not know where we want to be in 3-5 years, how do we ever stand a chance of getting there?

An IT strategy defines your IT vision and creates a strategic roadmap for using information technology, digital assets, and technical knowledge to create organizational value (i.e., its strategy). As we’ve written before, your IT strategy answers one particularly important question for your organization:

What IT changes are demanded to align IT with our organizational goals, support our business strategy, and create value for the organization?

Looked at this way, IT strategic planning is the process that gets us out of our day-to-day thinking. It focuses on the important—not the urgent. An IT strategy creates a mechanism for achieving our most important goals.

(For more information on what an IT strategy is and what it should include, check out How to Create an IT Strategy: Getting Started .)

Successful IT strategies

It’s just as important to understand what an IT strategy isn’t as well as what it is. Successful IT strategies are:

Strategic, not tactical

A strategic plan is a framework that guides an organization in making decisions and implementing solutions that create meaningful value, support the business strategy, and meet organizational goals. It focuses on the IT vision, processes, organization, and infrastructure, the whats and whens of aligning IT with its business goals and increasing IT capability.

Tactical plans focus on specific information for what must be done (the hows of executing the strategy). Tactics support your strategy and can rapidly change over time. Strategic plans often fail because they focus on tactics, not the strategy itself.

(Read more about IT/business alignment .)

Dynamic, not static

An IT strategy is a process not a one-time event. Your strategy shouldn’t be saved on write-once storage; It must be revised on a regular basis.

Our own personal preference is to write a 5-year strategic plan every year.

A strategic plan should allow for updates, and it must adapt to changes in the market. A strategic plan considers what the future may hold and aligns IT and business resources today to support that vision. By regularly reconsidering what the future should look like, you can make small manageable course corrections rather than having to “right the ship” when unexpected change occurs.

Published with limits, non-restrictive

In our next section, we’ll go over several benefits an IT strategy provides. Implicit in these benefits is the assumption that the published IT strategy is available to all affected staff. Upper-level management shouldn’t be the only ones who understand the IT strategy.

Except for confidential information, anyone expected to implement the strategy should understand the strategy. Your IT strategy should be shared, not restricted.

benefits-of-it-strategic-planning

Benefits of an IT strategy

A well-conceived IT strategy provides the following benefits:

  • Enables delegation of decision making
  • Provides proactive and emergency response to change

Provides parameters for creative thinking

  • A way to addresses shadow IT
  • Communicating intentions to leadership

Let’s take a look at each benefit.

Enabling delegation of decision making

Decision making is one of the most challenging things for a manager to delegate. Despite our best efforts, it’s often difficult to get our employees to think the same way we do.

A well-written strategic plan provides a framework for IT decision-making. When making decisions, employees can use the strategic plan to ask, “Is what I’m doing in line with the plan (wishes of the organization)?” or “Is what I’m doing opposed to the plan?”

A strategic plan empowers employees to make decisions and move initiatives forward without management involvement in every decision. This in turn helps to create a more agile, faster moving organization.

Provides proactive & emergency responses to change

A strategic plan helps an organization in two ways.

  • First, it lays out the vision, requirements, critical initiatives, and directions IT will take to meet business strategies and goals. Strategic planning encourages planning based on organizational priorities.
  • Second, a strategic plan also allows us to be better prepared for unexpected change and emergencies. Strategic objectives can be used to respond to unanticipated changes as well as to promote growth.

One example might occur when in-house file server storage space unexpectedly fills up at the same time the strategic plan calls for cloud storage migration . Being familiar with the strategic plan, your team may have implemented a pilot project for cloud storage and can move up storage migration in response to the disk issue. In this case, strategic thinking prepares for efficient responses.

(Learn more about regular & emergency change .)

When developing solutions to organizational challenges, sometimes a blank slate is too much leeway. Think of building a house. Most of us do not start with a stack of lumber and a box of nails. We rely on a builder who has several floorplan options to start with.

This is analogous to a strategic plan. Once we have a plan, we can have conversations about what we like and what we do not like. We can also talk about features and how the system will be used. Before long, a house (system) that meets our needs starts to take shape.

You will find that problems can be addressed much more quickly when everyone has at least a basic understanding of where the organization wants to go. Planning sessions can more easily be focused on capabilities and not get caught up in “lumber selection” that has minor impact on the larger goals.

Offers a way to address shadow IT

Many organizations have seen a rise in shadow IT in recent years. In its simplest definition Shadow IT is an IT function/application/department created by individual units that are unaffiliated with the official (or central) IT department.

Shadow IT evolves in organizations oftentimes because IT departments are not agile enough or are not meeting the needs of the smaller departments in large organizations. A strategic plan can allow an organization to discover why Shadow IT exists and incorporate that need into the overall goals. Oftentimes a great method of dealing with shadow IT is to acknowledge the need and gain support for bringing them into the main IT organization.

(Read more about shadow IT , including its risks & surprising opportunities.)

Communicates intentions to leadership

A strategic plan for IT is the single most valuable tool for communicating your intentions to senior leadership. High level strategy is what senior leaders are most concerned with in organizations. Having a documented plan allows you to have conversations with C-Level executives about your goals.

Most importantly it provides senior leadership the opportunity to redirect any of your efforts that might not be 100% in line with their vision. These conversations allow senior leadership to establish an understanding of what the IT department is doing without having to be involved in day-to-day operations.

Related reading

  • BMC Business of IT Blog
  • IT Project Management: Concepts, Solutions & Best Practices
  • Business Continuity Planning: How To Create & Maintain BCPs
  • CIO vs CTO: What’s the Difference?
  • 7 Business-Critical IT Policies & How To Implement Them
  • Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Explained

New strategies for modern service assurance

86% of global IT leaders in a recent IDG survey find it very, or extremely, challenging to optimize their IT resources to meet changing business demands.

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These postings are my own and do not necessarily represent BMC's position, strategies, or opinion.

See an error or have a suggestion? Please let us know by emailing [email protected] .

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Joe Hertvik PMP owns Hertvik & Associates, an IT infrastructure and marketing management consultancy. Joe provides contract services for IT environments including Project Management, Data Center, network, Infrastructure, and IBM i management.

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How To Write A Strategic Plan That Gets Results + Examples

strategic plan for it department

Are you feeling overwhelmed with the thought of writing a strategic plan for your business? Do you want to create a plan that will help you move your team forward with inspired alignment and disciplined execution? You're not alone.

Gone are the days of rigid, 5- or 10-year planning cycles that do not leave room for flexibility and innovation. To stay ahead of the curve, you need a dynamic and execution-ready strategic plan that can guide your business through the ever-evolving landscape.

At Cascade, we understand that writing a strategic plan can be dreadful, especially in today's unpredictable environment. That's why we've developed a simple model that can help you create a clear, actionable plan to achieve your organization's goals. With our tested and proven strategic planning template , you can write a strategic plan that is both adaptable and effective .

Whether you're a seasoned strategy professional or a fresh strategy planner, this guide will walk you through the process step-by-step on how to write a strategic plan. By the end, you'll have a comprehensive, easy-to-follow strategic plan that will help you align your organization on the path to success.

#1 Strategy Execution Platform Don't plan to fail.  Break down the complexity of your plans from high-level initiative to  executable outcome.   Learn how. Book a demo!

Follow this guide step-by-step or skip to the part you’re most interested in: 

  • Pre-Planning Phase: Build The Foundation

Cascade Model For Strategic Planning: What You Need To Know

  • Key Elements of a Strategic Plan

How To Write A Strategic Plan In 6 Simple Steps

3 strategic plan examples to get you started, how to achieve organizational alignment with your strategic plan.

  • Quick Overview of Key Steps In Writing A Strategic Plan

Create An Execution-Ready Strategic Plan With Cascade 🚀

*Editor’s note: This article is part of our ‘How to create a Strategy’ collection. At the end of this article, you’ll find a link to each piece within this collection so you can dig deeper into each element of an effective strategic plan and more related resources to master strategy execution.

Pre-Planning Phase: Build The Foundation 

Before we dive into writing a strategic plan, it's essential to know the basics you should cover before the planning phase. The pre-planning phase is where you'll begin to gather the data and strategic insights necessary to create an effective strategic plan.

1. Run a strategic planning workshop

The first step is to run a strategic planning workshop with your team. Get your team in the room, get their data, and gather their insights. By running this workshop, you'll foster collaboration and bring fresh perspectives to the table. And that’s not all. 

The process of co-creating and collaborating to put that plan together with stakeholders is one of the most critical factors in strategy execution . According to McKinsey’s research , initiatives in which employees contribute to development are 3.4 times more likely to be successful. They feel like the plan is a result of their efforts, and they feel ownership of it, so they're more likely to execute it. 

💡 Tip: Use strategy frameworks to structure your strategy development sessions, such as GAP analysis , SWOT analysis , Porter’s Five Forces , Ansoff matrix , McKinsey 7S model , or GE matrix . You can even apply the risk matrix that will help you align and decide on key strategic priorities.

2. Choose your strategic planning model

Before creating your strategic plan, you need to decide which structure you will use. There are hundreds of ways to structure a strategic plan. You’ve likely heard of famous strategic models such as OKRs and the Balanced Scorecard .

But beyond the well-known ones, there's also a myriad of other strategic planning models ranging from the extremely simple to the absurdly complex.

Many strategic models work reasonably well on paper, but in reality, they don't show you how to write a strategic plan that fits your organization's needs.

Here are some common weaknesses most popular strategic models have:

  • They're too complicated. People get lost in terminology rather than focus on execution.
  • They don’t scale. They work well for small organizations but fail when you try to extend them across multiple teams.
  • They're too rigid. They force people to add layers for the sake of adding layers.
  • They're neither tangible nor measurable. They’re great at stating outcomes but lousy at helping you measure success.
  • They're not adaptable. As we saw in the last years, the business environment can change quickly. Your model needs to be able to work in your current situation and adapt to changing economic landscapes.

Our goal in this article is to give you a simpler, more effective way to write a strategic plan. This is a tested and proven strategic planning model that has been refined over years of working with +20,000 teams around the world. We call it the Cascade Strategy Model.

This approach has proven to be more effective than any other model we have tried when it comes to executing and implementing the strategy .

It’s easy to use and it works for small businesses, fast-growing startups, as well as multinationals trying to figure out how to write a fail-proof strategic plan.

We’ve created a simple diagram below to illustrate what a strategic plan following the Cascade Model will look like when it's completed:

The Cascade Model for strategic planning and execution

Rather than a traditional roadmap , imagine your strategy as a flowchart. Each row is a mandatory step before moving on to the next.

We call our platform  Cascade for a reason: strategy must cascade throughout an organization along with values, focus areas, and objectives.

Above all, the Cascade Model is intended to be execution-ready —in other words, it has been proven to deliver success far beyond strategic planning. It adds to a successful strategic management process.Key elements of a Strategic Plan

Key Elements Of A Strategic Plan

The key elements of a strategic plan include: 

  • Vision : Where do you want to get to? 
  • Values : How will you behave on the journey? 
  • Focus Areas : What are going to be your strategic priorities? 
  • Strategic objectives : What do you want to achieve? 
  • Actions and projects : How are you going to achieve the objectives? 
  • KPIs : How will you measure success?

In this part of the article, we will give you an overview of each element within the Cascade Model. You can follow this step-by-step process in a spreadsheet , or sign up to get instant access to a free Cascade strategic planning template and follow along as we cover the key elements of an effective strategic plan.

Your vision statement is your organization's anchor - it defines where you want to get to and is the executive summary of your organization's purpose. Without it, your strategic plan is like a boat without a rudder, at the mercy of strong winds and currents like Covid and global supply chain disruptions.

A good vision statement can help funnel your strategy towards long-term goals that matter the most to your organization, and everything you write in your plan from this point on will help you get closer to achieving your vision.

Trying to do too much at once is a surefire way to sink your strategic plan. By creating a clear and inspiring vision statement , you can avoid this trap and provide guidance and inspiration for your team. A great vision statement might even help attract talent and investment into your organization.

For example, a bike manufacturing company might have a vision statement like, “To be the premier bike manufacturer in the Pacific Northwest.” This statement clearly articulates the organization's goals and is a powerful motivator for the team.

In short, don't start your strategic plan without a clear vision statement. It will keep your organization focused and help you navigate toward success.

📚 Recommended read: How to Write a Vision Statement (With Examples, Tips, and Formulas)

Values are the enablers of your vision statement —they represent how your organization will behave as you work towards your strategic goals. Unfortunately, many companies throw around meaningless words just for the purpose of PR, leading to a loss of credibility.

To avoid this, make sure to integrate your organization’s core values into everyday operations and interactions. In today's highly-competitive world, it's crucial to remain steadfast in your values and cultivate an organizational culture that's transparent and trustworthy.

Companies with the best company cultures consistently outperform competitors and their average market by up to 115.6%, as reported by Glassdoor . 

For example, a bike manufacturing company might have core values like:

  • Accountability

These values reflect the organization's desire to become the leading bike manufacturer, while still being accountable to employees, customers, and shareholders.

👉 Here’s how to add vision and values to your strategic plan in Cascade: 

After you sign up and invite your team members to collaborate on the plan, navigate to Plans and Teams > Teams page, and add the vision, mission and values. This will help you to ensure that the company’s vision, mission statement, and values are always at top of mind for everyone.

📚When you're ready to start creating some company values, check out our guide, How To Create Company Values .

3. Focus Areas

Your focus areas are the strategic priorities that will keep your team on track and working toward the company’s mission and vision. They represent the high-level areas that you need to focus on to achieve desired business outcomes.

In fact, companies with clearly defined priorities are more likely to achieve their objectives. According to a case study by the Harvard Business Review , teams that focus on a small number of key initiatives are more likely to succeed than those that try to do too much. 

That’s also something that we usually recommend to our customers when they set up their strategic plan in Cascade. Rather than spreading your resources too thin over multiple focus areas, prioritize three to five. 

Following our manufacturing example above, some good focus areas include:

  • Aggressive growth
  • Producing the nation's best bikes
  • Becoming a modern manufacturer
  • Becoming a top place to work

Your focus areas should be tighter in scope than your vision statement, but broader than specific goals, time frames, or metrics. 

By defining your focus areas, you'll give your teams a guardrail to work within, which can help inspire innovation and creative problem-solving. 

With a clear set of focus areas, your team will be better able to prioritize their work and stay focused on the most important things, which will ultimately lead to better business results.

👉Here’s how you can set focus areas in Cascade: 

In Cascade, you can add focus areas while creating or importing an existing strategic plan from a spreadsheet. With Cascade’s Focus Area deep-dive functionality , you will be able to: 

  • Review the health of your focus areas in one place.
  • Get a breakdown by plans, budgets, resources, and people behind each strategic priority. 
  • See something at-risk? Drill down into each piece of work regardless of how many plans it's a part of.

add focus areas in cascade strategy execution platform

📚 Recommended read: Strategic Focus Areas: How to create them + Examples

4. Strategic Objectives

The importance of setting clear and specific objectives for your strategic plan cannot be overstated. 

Strategic objectives are the specific and measurable outcomes you want to achieve . While they should align with your focus areas, they should be more detailed and have a clear deadline. 

According to the 2022 State of High Performing Teams report , there is a strong correlation between goals and success not only at the individual and team level but also at the organizational level. Here’s what they found: 

  • Employees who are unaware of their company's goals are over three times more likely to work at a company that is experiencing a decline in revenue than employees who are aware of the goals. 
  • Companies with shrinking revenues are almost twice as likely to have employees with unclear work expectations. 

Jumping straight into actions without defining clear objectives is a common mistake that can lead to missed opportunities or misalignment between strategy and execution.

To avoid this pitfall, we recommend you add between three and six objectives to each focus area .

It's here that we need to start being a bit more specific for the first time in your strategic planning process . Let's take a look at an example of a well-written strategic objective:

  • Continue top-line growth that outpaces the industry by 31st Dec 2023.

This is too specific to be a focus area. While it's still very high level, it indicates what the company wants to accomplish and includes a clear deadline. Both these aspects are critical to a good strategic objective.

Your strategic objectives are the heart and soul of your plan, and you need to ensure they are well-crafted. So, take the time to create well-planned objectives that will help you achieve your vision and lead your organization to success. 

👉Here’s how you can set objectives in Cascade: 

Adding objectives in Cascade is intuitive, straightforward, and accessible from almost anywhere in the workspace. With one click, you’ll open the objective sidebar and fill out the details. These can include a timeline, the objective’s owner, collaborators, and how your objective will be measured (success criteria).

📚 Recommended read: What are Strategic Objectives? How to write them + Examples

5. Actions and projects

Once you’ve defined your strategic objectives, the next step is to identify the specific strategic initiatives or projects that will help you achieve those objectives . They are short-term goals or actionable steps you or your team members will take to accomplish objectives. They should leverage the company’s resources and core competencies. 

Effective projects and actions in your strategic plan should: 

  • Be extremely specific. 
  • Contain a deadline.
  • Have an owner.
  • Align with at least one of your strategic objectives.
  • Provide clarity on how you or your team will achieve the strategic objective.

Let's take a look at an example of a well-written project continuing with our bike manufacturing company using the strategic objective from above:

Strategic objective: Continue top-line growth that outpaces the industry by 31st Dec 2023.

Project: Expand into the fixed gear market by 31st December 2023.

This is more specific than the objective it links to, and it details what you will do to achieve the objective.

Another common problem area for strategic plans is that they never quite get down to the detail of what you're going to do.

It's easier to state "we need to grow our business," but without concrete projects and initiatives, those plans will sit forever within their PowerPoint templates, never to see the light of day after their initial creation.

Actions and projects are where the rubber meets the road. They connect the organizational strategic goals with the actual capabilities of your people and the resources at their disposal. Defining projects is a vital reality check every strategic plan needs.

👉Here’s how you create actions and projects in Cascade: 

From the Objective sidebar, you can choose to add a project or action under your chosen objective. In the following steps, you can assign an owner and timeline to each action or project.

Plus, in Cascade, you can track the progress of each project or action in four different ways. You can do it manually, via milestones, checklists, or automatically by integrating with Jira and 1000+ other available integrations .  

📚 Recommended read: How to create effective projects

Measuring progress towards strategic objectives is essential to effective strategic control and business success. That's where Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) come in. KPIs are measurable values that track progress toward achieving key business objectives . They keep you on track and help you stay focused on the goals you set for your organization.

To get the most out of your KPIs, make sure you link them to a specific goal or objective. In this way, you'll avoid creating KPIs that don't contribute to your objectives and distract you from focusing on what matters. 

Ideally, you will add both leading and lagging KPIs to each objective so you can get a more balanced view of how well you're progressing. Leading KPIs can indicate future performance while lagging KPIs show how well you’ve done in the past. Both types of KPIs are critical for operational planning and keeping your business on track.

Think of KPIs as a form of signpost in your organization. They provide critical insights that inform business leaders of their organization’s progress toward key business objectives. Plus, they can help you identify opportunities faster and capitalize on flexibility. 

👉Here’s how you can set and track KPIs in Cascade: 

In Cascade , you can add measures while creating your objectives or add them afterward. Open the Objective sidebar and add your chosen measure. 

When you create your Measure, you can choose how to track it. Using Cascade, you can track it manually or automatically. You can automate tracking via 1000+ integrations , including Excel spreadsheets and Google Sheets. In this way, you can save time and ensure that your team has up-to-date information for faster and more confident decision-making.

📚 Recommended reads:

  • 10 Popular KPI Software Tools To Connect & Visualize Your Data (2023 Guide)
  • ‍ How To Track KPIs To Hit Your Business Goals

Corporate Strategic Plan 

Following the steps outlined above, you should end up with a strategic plan that looks something like this:

corporate strategy plan template in cascade

This is a preview of a corporate strategic plan template that is pre-filled with examples. Here you can use the template for free and begin filling it out to align with your organization's needs. Plus, it’s suitable for organizations of all sizes and any industry. 

Once you fill in the template, you can also switch to the timeline view. You’ll get a complete overview of how the different parts of your plan are distributed across the roadmap in a Gantt chart view.

timeline view strategic planning corporate strategy

This template will help you create a structured approach to the strategic planning process, focus on key strategic priorities, and drive accountability to achieve necessary business outcomes. 

👉 Get your free corporate strategic plan template here.

Coca-Cola Strategic Plan 

Need a bit of extra inspiration to start writing your organization’s strategic plan? Check out this strategic plan example, inspired by Coca-Cola’s business plan: 

coca-cola strategy plan template in cascade

This template is pre-filled with Coca-Cola’s examples so you can inspire your strategic success on one of the most iconic brands on the planet. 

👉 Grab your free example of a Coca-Cola strategic plan here.

The Ramsay Health Care expansion strategy

Ramsay Health Care is a multinational healthcare provider with a strong presence in Australia, Europe, and Asia.

Almost all of its growth was organic and strategic. The company founded its headquarters in Sydney, Australia, but in the 21st century, it decided to expand globally through a primary strategy of making brownfield investments and acquisitions in key locations.

Ramsay's strategy was simple yet clever. By becoming a majority shareholder of the biggest local players, the company expanded organically in each region by leveraging and expanding their expertise.

Over the last two decades, Ramsay's global network has grown to 460 locations across 10 countries with over $13 billion in annual revenue.

📚 Recommended read: Strategy study: The Ramsay Health Care Growth Study

✨ Bonus resource: We've created a list of the most popular and free strategic plan templates in our library that will help you build a strategic plan based on the Cascade model explained in this article. You can use these templates to create a plan on a corporate, business unit, or team level.

We highlighted before that other strategic models often fail to scale strategic plans and goals scales across multiple teams and organizational levels. 

In an ideal world, you want to have a maximum of two layers of detail underneath each of your focus areas. This means you'll have a focus area, followed by a layer of objectives. Underneath the objectives, you'll have a layer of actions, projects, and KPIs.

Diagram of the Cascade Model framework showing the structure for focus areas, objectives, KPIs, actions and projects

If you have a single team that’s responsible for the strategy execution, this works well. However, how do you implement a strategy across multiple and cross-functional teams? And why is it important? 

According to LSA research of 410 companies across 8 industries, highly aligned companies grow revenue 58% faster and are 72% more profitable. And this is what Cascade can help you achieve. 

To achieve achieve organization-wide alignment with your strategic plan and impact the bottom line, there are two ways to approach it in Casade: through contributing objectives or shared objectives .

1. Contributing objectives

This approach involves adding contributing objectives that link to your main strategic objectives, like this:

diagram showing contributing objectives in the cascade model

For each contributing objective, you simply repeat the Objective → Action/Project → KPI structure as follows:

contributing objectives with kpis and actions cascade model

Here's how you can create contributing objectives in Cascade: 

Option A: Create contributing objectives within the same plan 

This means creating multiple contributing objectives within the same strategic plan that contribute to the main objective. 

However, be aware that if you have a lot of layers, your strategic plan can become cluttered, and people might have difficulty understanding how their daily efforts contribute to the strategic plan at the top level. 

For example, the people responsible for managing contributing objectives at the bottom of the plan ( functional / operational level ) will lose visibility on how are their objectives linked to the main focus areas and objectives (at a corporate / business level ). 

This approach is best suited to smaller organizations that only need to add a few layers of objectives to their plan.

Option B: Create contributing objectives from multiple plans linking to the main objective

This approach creates a network of aligned strategic plans within your organization. Each plan contains a set of focus areas and one single layer of objectives, each with its own set of projects, actions, and KPIs. This concept looks like this:

Diagram showing contributing objectives from multiple plans linking to the main objective in Cascade

This example illustrates an objective that is a main objective in the IT strategic plan , but also contributes to the main strategic plan's objective.

For example, let’s say that your main business objective is to improve customer satisfaction by reducing product delivery time by 25% in the next quarter. This objective requires multiple operational teams within your organization to work together to achieve a shared objective. 

Each team will create its own objective in its plan to contribute to the main objective: 

  • Logistics team: Reduce the shipment preparation time by 30%
  • IT team: Implement new technology to reduce manual handling in the warehouse
  • Production team: Increase production output by hour for 5%   

Here’s how this example would look like within Cascade platform:

example of contributing objectives in cascade

Although each contributing objective was originally created in its own plan, you can see how each contributing objective relates to the main strategic objective and its status in real-time.

2. Shared objectives

In Cascade, shared objectives are the same objectives shared across different strategic plans.

For example, you can have an objective that is “Achieve sustainable operations”. This objective can be part of the Corporate Strategy Plan, but also part of the Operations Plan , Supply Chain Plan , Production Plan, etc. In short, this objective becomes a shared objective between multiple teams and strategic plan. 

This approach helps you to:

  • Cascade your business strategy as deep as you want across a near-infinite number of people while maintaining strategic alignment throughout your organization .
  • Create transparency and a much higher level of engagement in the strategy throughout your organization since objective owners are able to identify how their shared efforts contribute to the success of the main business objectives.

The more shared objectives you have across your organization, the more your teams will be aligned with the overarching business strategy. This is what we call " alignment health ”. 

Here’s how you can see the shared objectives in the alignment map and analyze alignment health within Cascade:

Alignment Map and Objective Sidebar in cascade for shared objectives

You get a snapshot of how is your corporate strategic plan aligned with sub-plans from different business units or departments and the status of shared objectives. This helps you quickly identify misaligned initiatives and act before it’s too late.  Plus, cross-functional teams have better visibility of how their efforts contribute to shared objectives. 

So whether you choose contributing objectives or shared objectives, Cascade has the tools and features to help you achieve organization-wide alignment and boost your bottom line.

Quick Overview Of Key Steps In Writing A Strategic Plan

Here’s a quick infographic to help you remember how everything connects and why each element is critical to creating an effective strategic plan:

The Cascade Model Overview cheatsheet

This simple answer to how to write a strategic plan avoids confusing jargon and has elements that the whole organization can both get behind and understand. 

💡Tip: Save this image or bookmark this article for your next strategic planning session.

If you're struggling to write an execution-ready strategic plan, the Cascade model is the solution you've been looking for. With its clear, easy-to-understand terminology, and simple linkages between objectives, projects, and KPIs, you can create a plan that's both scalable and flexible.

But why is a flexible and execution-ready strategic plan so important? It's simple: without a clear and actionable plan, you'll never be able to achieve your business objectives. By using the Cascade Strategic Planning Model, you'll be able to create a plan that's both tangible and measurable, with KPIs that help you track progress towards your goals.

However, the real value of the Cascade framework lies in its flexibility . By creating links between main business objectives and your teams’ objectives, you can easily scale your plan without losing focus. Plus, the model's structure of linked layers means that you can always adjust your strategy in response to new challenges or opportunities and keep everyone on the same page. 

So if you want to achieve results with your strategic plan, start using Cascade today. With its unique combination of flexibility and focus, it's the perfect tool for any organization looking to master strategy execution and succeed in today's fast-paced business world. 

Want to see Cascade in action? Get started for free or book a 1:1 demo with Cascade’s in-house strategy expert.

This article is part one of our mini-series "How to Write a Strategic Plan". This first article will give you a solid strategy model for your plan and get the strategic thinking going.

Think of it as the foundation for your new strategy. Subsequent parts of the series will show you how to create the content for your strategic plan.

Articles in our How to Write a Strategic Plan series

  • How To Write A Strategic Plan: The Cascade Model (This article)
  • How to Write a Good Vision Statement
  • How To Create Company Values
  • Creating Strategic Focus Areas
  • How To Write Strategic Objective
  • How To Create Effective Projects
  • How To Write KPIs + Ultimate Guide To Strategic Planning

More resources on strategic planning and strategy execution: 

  • 6 Steps to Successful Strategy Execution
  • 4-Step Strategy Reporting Process (With Template)
  • Annual Planning: Plan Like a Pro In 5 Steps (+ Template) 
  • 18 Free Strategic Plan Templates (Excel & Cascade) 2023
  • The Right Way To Set Team Goals
  • 23 Best Strategy Tools For Your Organization in 2023

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  • What is strategic planning? A 5-step gu ...

What is strategic planning? A 5-step guide

Julia Martins contributor headshot

Strategic planning is a process through which business leaders map out their vision for their organization’s growth and how they’re going to get there. In this article, we'll guide you through the strategic planning process, including why it's important, the benefits and best practices, and five steps to get you from beginning to end.

Strategic planning is a process through which business leaders map out their vision for their organization’s growth and how they’re going to get there. The strategic planning process informs your organization’s decisions, growth, and goals.

Strategic planning helps you clearly define your company’s long-term objectives—and maps how your short-term goals and work will help you achieve them. This, in turn, gives you a clear sense of where your organization is going and allows you to ensure your teams are working on projects that make the most impact. Think of it this way—if your goals and objectives are your destination on a map, your strategic plan is your navigation system.

In this article, we walk you through the 5-step strategic planning process and show you how to get started developing your own strategic plan.

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What is strategic planning?

Strategic planning is a business process that helps you define and share the direction your company will take in the next three to five years. During the strategic planning process, stakeholders review and define the organization’s mission and goals, conduct competitive assessments, and identify company goals and objectives. The product of the planning cycle is a strategic plan, which is shared throughout the company.

What is a strategic plan?

[inline illustration] Strategic plan elements (infographic)

A strategic plan is the end result of the strategic planning process. At its most basic, it’s a tool used to define your organization’s goals and what actions you’ll take to achieve them.

Typically, your strategic plan should include: 

Your company’s mission statement

Your organizational goals, including your long-term goals and short-term, yearly objectives

Any plan of action, tactics, or approaches you plan to take to meet those goals

What are the benefits of strategic planning?

Strategic planning can help with goal setting and decision-making by allowing you to map out how your company will move toward your organization’s vision and mission statements in the next three to five years. Let’s circle back to our map metaphor. If you think of your company trajectory as a line on a map, a strategic plan can help you better quantify how you’ll get from point A (where you are now) to point B (where you want to be in a few years).

When you create and share a clear strategic plan with your team, you can:

Build a strong organizational culture by clearly defining and aligning on your organization’s mission, vision, and goals.

Align everyone around a shared purpose and ensure all departments and teams are working toward a common objective.

Proactively set objectives to help you get where you want to go and achieve desired outcomes.

Promote a long-term vision for your company rather than focusing primarily on short-term gains.

Ensure resources are allocated around the most high-impact priorities.

Define long-term goals and set shorter-term goals to support them.

Assess your current situation and identify any opportunities—or threats—allowing your organization to mitigate potential risks.

Create a proactive business culture that enables your organization to respond more swiftly to emerging market changes and opportunities.

What are the 5 steps in strategic planning?

The strategic planning process involves a structured methodology that guides the organization from vision to implementation. The strategic planning process starts with assembling a small, dedicated team of key strategic planners—typically five to 10 members—who will form the strategic planning, or management, committee. This team is responsible for gathering crucial information, guiding the development of the plan, and overseeing strategy execution.

Once you’ve established your management committee, you can get to work on the planning process. 

Step 1: Assess your current business strategy and business environment

Before you can define where you’re going, you first need to define where you are. Understanding the external environment, including market trends and competitive landscape, is crucial in the initial assessment phase of strategic planning.

To do this, your management committee should collect a variety of information from additional stakeholders, like employees and customers. In particular, plan to gather:

Relevant industry and market data to inform any market opportunities, as well as any potential upcoming threats in the near future.

Customer insights to understand what your customers want from your company—like product improvements or additional services.

Employee feedback that needs to be addressed—whether about the product, business practices, or the day-to-day company culture.

Consider different types of strategic planning tools and analytical techniques to gather this information, such as:

A balanced scorecard to help you evaluate four major elements of a business: learning and growth, business processes, customer satisfaction, and financial performance.

A SWOT analysis to help you assess both current and future potential for the business (you’ll return to this analysis periodically during the strategic planning process). 

To fill out each letter in the SWOT acronym, your management committee will answer a series of questions:

What does your organization currently do well?

What separates you from your competitors?

What are your most valuable internal resources?

What tangible assets do you have?

What is your biggest strength? 

Weaknesses:

What does your organization do poorly?

What do you currently lack (whether that’s a product, resource, or process)?

What do your competitors do better than you?

What, if any, limitations are holding your organization back?

What processes or products need improvement? 

Opportunities:

What opportunities does your organization have?

How can you leverage your unique company strengths?

Are there any trends that you can take advantage of?

How can you capitalize on marketing or press opportunities?

Is there an emerging need for your product or service? 

What emerging competitors should you keep an eye on?

Are there any weaknesses that expose your organization to risk?

Have you or could you experience negative press that could reduce market share?

Is there a chance of changing customer attitudes towards your company? 

Step 2: Identify your company’s goals and objectives

To begin strategy development, take into account your current position, which is where you are now. Then, draw inspiration from your vision, mission, and current position to identify and define your goals—these are your final destination. 

To develop your strategy, you’re essentially pulling out your compass and asking, “Where are we going next?” “What’s the ideal future state of this company?” This can help you figure out which path you need to take to get there.

During this phase of the planning process, take inspiration from important company documents, such as:

Your mission statement, to understand how you can continue moving towards your organization’s core purpose.

Your vision statement, to clarify how your strategic plan fits into your long-term vision.

Your company values, to guide you towards what matters most towards your company.

Your competitive advantages, to understand what unique benefit you offer to the market.

Your long-term goals, to track where you want to be in five or 10 years.

Your financial forecast and projection, to understand where you expect your financials to be in the next three years, what your expected cash flow is, and what new opportunities you will likely be able to invest in.

Step 3: Develop your strategic plan and determine performance metrics

Now that you understand where you are and where you want to go, it’s time to put pen to paper. Take your current business position and strategy into account, as well as your organization’s goals and objectives, and build out a strategic plan for the next three to five years. Keep in mind that even though you’re creating a long-term plan, parts of your plan should be created or revisited as the quarters and years go on.

As you build your strategic plan, you should define:

Company priorities for the next three to five years, based on your SWOT analysis and strategy.

Yearly objectives for the first year. You don’t need to define your objectives for every year of the strategic plan. As the years go on, create new yearly objectives that connect back to your overall strategic goals . 

Related key results and KPIs. Some of these should be set by the management committee, and some should be set by specific teams that are closer to the work. Make sure your key results and KPIs are measurable and actionable. These KPIs will help you track progress and ensure you’re moving in the right direction.

Budget for the next year or few years. This should be based on your financial forecast as well as your direction. Do you need to spend aggressively to develop your product? Build your team? Make a dent with marketing? Clarify your most important initiatives and how you’ll budget for those.

A high-level project roadmap . A project roadmap is a tool in project management that helps you visualize the timeline of a complex initiative, but you can also create a very high-level project roadmap for your strategic plan. Outline what you expect to be working on in certain quarters or years to make the plan more actionable and understandable.

Step 4: Implement and share your plan

Now it’s time to put your plan into action. Strategy implementation involves clear communication across your entire organization to make sure everyone knows their responsibilities and how to measure the plan’s success. 

Make sure your team (especially senior leadership) has access to the strategic plan, so they can understand how their work contributes to company priorities and the overall strategy map. We recommend sharing your plan in the same tool you use to manage and track work, so you can more easily connect high-level objectives to daily work. If you don’t already, consider using a work management platform .  

A few tips to make sure your plan will be executed without a hitch: 

Communicate clearly to your entire organization throughout the implementation process, to ensure all team members understand the strategic plan and how to implement it effectively. 

Define what “success” looks like by mapping your strategic plan to key performance indicators.

Ensure that the actions outlined in the strategic plan are integrated into the daily operations of the organization, so that every team member's daily activities are aligned with the broader strategic objectives.

Utilize tools and software—like a work management platform—that can aid in implementing and tracking the progress of your plan.

Regularly monitor and share the progress of the strategic plan with the entire organization, to keep everyone informed and reinforce the importance of the plan.

Establish regular check-ins to monitor the progress of your strategic plan and make adjustments as needed. 

Step 5: Revise and restructure as needed

Once you’ve created and implemented your new strategic framework, the final step of the planning process is to monitor and manage your plan.

Remember, your strategic plan isn’t set in stone. You’ll need to revisit and update the plan if your company changes directions or makes new investments. As new market opportunities and threats come up, you’ll likely want to tweak your strategic plan. Make sure to review your plan regularly—meaning quarterly and annually—to ensure it’s still aligned with your organization’s vision and goals.

Keep in mind that your plan won’t last forever, even if you do update it frequently. A successful strategic plan evolves with your company’s long-term goals. When you’ve achieved most of your strategic goals, or if your strategy has evolved significantly since you first made your plan, it might be time to create a new one.

Build a smarter strategic plan with a work management platform

To turn your company strategy into a plan—and ultimately, impact—make sure you’re proactively connecting company objectives to daily work. When you can clarify this connection, you’re giving your team members the context they need to get their best work done. 

A work management platform plays a pivotal role in this process. It acts as a central hub for your strategic plan, ensuring that every task and project is directly tied to your broader company goals. This alignment is crucial for visibility and coordination, allowing team members to see how their individual efforts contribute to the company’s success. 

By leveraging such a platform, you not only streamline workflow and enhance team productivity but also align every action with your strategic objectives—allowing teams to drive greater impact and helping your company move toward goals more effectively. 

Strategic planning FAQs

Still have questions about strategic planning? We have answers.

Why do I need a strategic plan?

A strategic plan is one of many tools you can use to plan and hit your goals. It helps map out strategic objectives and growth metrics that will help your company be successful.

When should I create a strategic plan?

You should aim to create a strategic plan every three to five years, depending on your organization’s growth speed.

Since the point of a strategic plan is to map out your long-term goals and how you’ll get there, you should create a strategic plan when you’ve met most or all of them. You should also create a strategic plan any time you’re going to make a large pivot in your organization’s mission or enter new markets. 

What is a strategic planning template?

A strategic planning template is a tool organizations can use to map out their strategic plan and track progress. Typically, a strategic planning template houses all the components needed to build out a strategic plan, including your company’s vision and mission statements, information from any competitive analyses or SWOT assessments, and relevant KPIs.

What’s the difference between a strategic plan vs. business plan?

A business plan can help you document your strategy as you’re getting started so every team member is on the same page about your core business priorities and goals. This tool can help you document and share your strategy with key investors or stakeholders as you get your business up and running.

You should create a business plan when you’re: 

Just starting your business

Significantly restructuring your business

If your business is already established, you should create a strategic plan instead of a business plan. Even if you’re working at a relatively young company, your strategic plan can build on your business plan to help you move in the right direction. During the strategic planning process, you’ll draw from a lot of the fundamental business elements you built early on to establish your strategy for the next three to five years.

What’s the difference between a strategic plan vs. mission and vision statements?

Your strategic plan, mission statement, and vision statements are all closely connected. In fact, during the strategic planning process, you will take inspiration from your mission and vision statements in order to build out your strategic plan.

Simply put: 

A mission statement summarizes your company’s purpose.

A vision statement broadly explains how you’ll reach your company’s purpose.

A strategic plan pulls in inspiration from your mission and vision statements and outlines what actions you’re going to take to move in the right direction. 

For example, if your company produces pet safety equipment, here’s how your mission statement, vision statement, and strategic plan might shake out:

Mission statement: “To ensure the safety of the world’s animals.” 

Vision statement: “To create pet safety and tracking products that are effortless to use.” 

Your strategic plan would outline the steps you’re going to take in the next few years to bring your company closer to your mission and vision. For example, you develop a new pet tracking smart collar or improve the microchipping experience for pet owners. 

What’s the difference between a strategic plan vs. company objectives?

Company objectives are broad goals. You should set these on a yearly or quarterly basis (if your organization moves quickly). These objectives give your team a clear sense of what you intend to accomplish for a set period of time. 

Your strategic plan is more forward-thinking than your company goals, and it should cover more than one year of work. Think of it this way: your company objectives will move the needle towards your overall strategy—but your strategic plan should be bigger than company objectives because it spans multiple years.

What’s the difference between a strategic plan vs. a business case?

A business case is a document to help you pitch a significant investment or initiative for your company. When you create a business case, you’re outlining why this investment is a good idea, and how this large-scale project will positively impact the business. 

You might end up building business cases for things on your strategic plan’s roadmap—but your strategic plan should be bigger than that. This tool should encompass multiple years of your roadmap, across your entire company—not just one initiative.

What’s the difference between a strategic plan vs. a project plan?

A strategic plan is a company-wide, multi-year plan of what you want to accomplish in the next three to five years and how you plan to accomplish that. A project plan, on the other hand, outlines how you’re going to accomplish a specific project. This project could be one of many initiatives that contribute to a specific company objective which, in turn, is one of many objectives that contribute to your strategic plan. 

What’s the difference between strategic management vs. strategic planning?

A strategic plan is a tool to define where your organization wants to go and what actions you need to take to achieve those goals. Strategic planning is the process of creating a plan in order to hit your strategic objectives.

Strategic management includes the strategic planning process, but also goes beyond it. In addition to planning how you will achieve your big-picture goals, strategic management also helps you organize your resources and figure out the best action plans for success. 

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Build Your 2024 AI Transformation Roadmap 🚀

The strategic planning process in 4 steps, to help you throughout our strategic planning framework, we have created a how-to guide on the basics of a strategic plan, which we will take you through step-by-step..

Free Strategic Planning Guide

What is Strategic Planning?

Strategic Planning is when organizations define a bold vision and create a plan with objectives and goals to reach that future. A great strategic plan defines where your organization is going, how you’ll win, who must do what, and how you’ll review and adapt your strategy development.

What

Overview of the Strategic Planning Process:

The strategic management process involves taking your organization on a journey from point A (where you are today) to point B (your vision of the future).

Part of that journey is the strategy built during strategic planning, and part of it is execution during the strategic management process. A good strategic plan dictates “how” you travel the selected road.

Effective execution ensures you are reviewing, refreshing, and recalibrating your strategy to reach your destination. The planning process should take no longer than 90 days. But, move at a pace that works best for you and your team and leverage this as a resource.

To kick this process off, we recommend 1-2 weeks (1-hour meeting with the Owner/CEO, Strategy Director, and Facilitator (if necessary) to discuss the information collected and direction for continued planning.)

Strategic Planning Guide and Process

Questions to Ask:

  • Who is on your Planning Team? What senior leadership members and key stakeholders are included? Checkout these links you need help finding a strategic planning consultant , someone to facilitate strategic planning , or expert AI strategy consulting .
  • Who will be the business process owner (Strategy Director) of planning in your organization?
  • Fast forward 12 months from now, what do you want to see differently in your organization as a result of your strategic plan and implementation?
  • Planning team members are informed of their roles and responsibilities.
  • A strategic planning schedule is established.
  • Existing planning information and secondary data collected.

Action Grid:

What

Step 1: Determine Organizational Readiness

Set up your plan for success – questions to ask:

  • Are the conditions and criteria for successful planning in place at the current time? Can certain pitfalls be avoided?
  • Is this the appropriate time for your organization to initiate a planning process? Yes or no? If no, where do you go from here?

Step 2: Develop Your Team & Schedule

Who is going to be on your planning team? You need to choose someone to oversee the strategy implementation (Chief Strategy Officer or Strategy Director) and strategic management of your plan? You need some of the key individuals and decision makers for this team. It should be a small group of approximately 12-15 people.

OnStrategy is the leader in strategic planning and performance management. Our cloud-based software and hands-on services closes the gap between strategy and execution. Learn more about OnStrategy here .

Step 3: Collect Current Data

All strategic plans are developed using the following information:

  • The last strategic plan, even if it is not current
  • Mission statement, vision statement, values statement
  • Past or current Business plan
  • Financial records for the last few years
  • Marketing plan
  • Other information, such as last year’s SWOT, sales figures and projections

Step 4: Review Collected Data

Review the data collected in the last action with your strategy director and facilitator.

  • What trends do you see?
  • Are there areas of obvious weakness or strengths?
  • Have you been following a plan or have you just been going along with the market?

Conclusion: A successful strategic plan must be adaptable to changing conditions. Organizations benefit from having a flexible plan that can evolve, as assumptions and goals may need adjustments. Preparing to adapt or restart the planning process is crucial, so we recommend updating actions quarterly and refreshing your plan annually.

Strategic Planning Pyramid

Strategic Planning Phase 1: Determine Your Strategic Position

Want more? Dive into the “ Evaluate Your Strategic Position ” How-To Guide.

Action Grid

Step 1: identify strategic issues.

Strategic issues are critical unknowns driving you to embark on a robust strategic planning process. These issues can be problems, opportunities, market shifts, or anything else that keeps you awake at night and begging for a solution or decision. The best strategic plans address your strategic issues head-on.

  • How will we grow, stabilize, or retrench in order to sustain our organization into the future?
  • How will we diversify our revenue to reduce our dependence on a major customer?
  • What must we do to improve our cost structure and stay competitive?
  • How and where must we innovate our products and services?

Step 2: Conduct an Environmental Scan

Conducting an environmental scan will help you understand your operating environment. An environmental scan is called a PEST analysis, an acronym for Political, Economic, Social, and Technological trends. Sometimes, it is helpful to include Ecological and Legal trends as well. All of these trends play a part in determining the overall business environment.

Step 3: Conduct a Competitive Analysis

The reason to do a competitive analysis is to assess the opportunities and threats that may occur from those organizations competing for the same business you are. You need to understand what your competitors are or aren’t offering your potential customers. Here are a few other key ways a competitive analysis fits into strategic planning:

  • To help you assess whether your competitive advantage is really an advantage.
  • To understand what your competitors’ current and future strategies are so you can plan accordingly.
  • To provide information that will help you evaluate your strategic decisions against what your competitors may or may not be doing.

Learn more on how to conduct a competitive analysis here .

Step 4: Identify Opportunities and Threats

Opportunities are situations that exist but must be acted on if the business is to benefit from them.

What do you want to capitalize on?

  • What new needs of customers could you meet?
  • What are the economic trends that benefit you?
  • What are the emerging political and social opportunities?
  • What niches have your competitors missed?

Threats refer to external conditions or barriers preventing a company from reaching its objectives.

What do you need to mitigate? What external driving force do you need to anticipate?

Questions to Answer:

  • What are the negative economic trends?
  • What are the negative political and social trends?
  • Where are competitors about to bite you?
  • Where are you vulnerable?

Step 5: Identify Strengths and Weaknesses

Strengths refer to what your company does well.

What do you want to build on?

  • What do you do well (in sales, marketing, operations, management)?
  • What are your core competencies?
  • What differentiates you from your competitors?
  • Why do your customers buy from you?

Weaknesses refer to any limitations a company faces in developing or implementing a strategy.

What do you need to shore up?

  • Where do you lack resources?
  • What can you do better?
  • Where are you losing money?
  • In what areas do your competitors have an edge?

Step 6: Customer Segments

What

Customer segmentation defines the different groups of people or organizations a company aims to reach or serve.

  • What needs or wants define your ideal customer?
  • What characteristics describe your typical customer?
  • Can you sort your customers into different profiles using their needs, wants and characteristics?
  • Can you reach this segment through clear communication channels?

Step 7: Develop Your SWOT

What

A SWOT analysis is a quick way of examining your organization by looking at the internal strengths and weaknesses in relation to the external opportunities and threats. Creating a SWOT analysis lets you see all the important factors affecting your organization together in one place.

It’s easy to read, easy to communicate, and easy to create. Take the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats you developed earlier, review, prioritize, and combine like terms. The SWOT analysis helps you ask and answer the following questions: “How do you….”

  • Build on your strengths
  • Shore up your weaknesses
  • Capitalize on your opportunities
  • Manage your threats

What

Strategic Planning Process Phase 2: Developing Strategy

Want More? Deep Dive Into the “Developing Your Strategy” How-To Guide.

Step 1: Develop Your Mission Statement

The mission statement describes an organization’s purpose or reason for existing.

What is our purpose? Why do we exist? What do we do?

  • What are your organization’s goals? What does your organization intend to accomplish?
  • Why do you work here? Why is it special to work here?
  • What would happen if we were not here?

Outcome: A short, concise, concrete statement that clearly defines the scope of the organization.

Step 2: discover your values.

Your values statement clarifies what your organization stands for, believes in and the behaviors you expect to see as a result. Check our the post on great what are core values and examples of core values .

How will we behave?

  • What are the key non-negotiables that are critical to the company’s success?
  • What guiding principles are core to how we operate in this organization?
  • What behaviors do you expect to see?
  • If the circumstances changed and penalized us for holding this core value, would we still keep it?

Outcome: Short list of 5-7 core values.

Step 3: casting your vision statement.

What

A Vision Statement defines your desired future state and directs where we are going as an organization.

Where are we going?

  • What will our organization look like 5–10 years from now?
  • What does success look like?
  • What are we aspiring to achieve?
  • What mountain are you climbing and why?

Outcome: A picture of the future.

Step 4: identify your competitive advantages.

How to Identify Competitive Advantages

A competitive advantage is a characteristic of an organization that allows it to meet its customer’s need(s) better than its competition can. It’s important to consider your competitive advantages when creating your competitive strategy.

What are we best at?

  • What are your unique strengths?
  • What are you best at in your market?
  • Do your customers still value what is being delivered? Ask them.
  • How do your value propositions stack up in the marketplace?

Outcome: A list of 2 or 3 items that honestly express the organization’s foundation for winning.

Step 5: crafting your organization-wide strategies.

What

Your competitive strategy is the general methods you intend to use to reach your vision. Regardless of the level, a strategy answers the question “how.”

How will we succeed?

  • Broad: market scope; a relatively wide market emphasis.
  • Narrow: limited to only one or few segments in the market
  • Does your competitive position focus on lowest total cost or product/service differentiation or both?

Outcome: Establish the general, umbrella methods you intend to use to reach your vision.

What

Phase 3: Strategic Plan Development

Want More? Deep Dive Into the “Build Your Plan” How-To Guide.

Strategic Planning Process Step 1: Use Your SWOT to Set Priorities

If your team wants to take the next step in the SWOT analysis, apply the TOWS Strategic Alternatives Matrix to your strategy map to help you think about the options you could pursue. To do this, match external opportunities and threats with your internal strengths and weaknesses, as illustrated in the matrix below:

TOWS Strategic Alternatives Matrix

Evaluate the options you’ve generated, and identify the ones that give the greatest benefit, and that best achieve the mission and vision of your organization. Add these to the other strategic options that you’re considering.

Step 2: Define Long-Term Strategic Objectives

Long-Term Strategic Objectives are long-term, broad, continuous statements that holistically address all areas of your organization. What must we focus on to achieve our vision? Check out examples of strategic objectives here. What are the “big rocks”?

Questions to ask:

  • What are our shareholders or stakeholders expectations for our financial performance or social outcomes?
  • To reach our outcomes, what value must we provide to our customers? What is our value proposition?
  • To provide value, what process must we excel at to deliver our products and services?
  • To drive our processes, what skills, capabilities and organizational structure must we have?

Outcome: Framework for your plan – no more than 6. You can use the balanced scorecard framework, OKRs, or whatever methodology works best for you. Just don’t exceed 6 long-term objectives.

Strategy Map

Step 3: Setting Organization-Wide Goals and Measures

What

Once you have formulated your strategic objectives, you should translate them into goals and measures that can be communicated to your strategic planning team (team of business leaders and/or team members).

You want to set goals that convert the strategic objectives into specific performance targets. Effective strategic goals clearly state what, when, how, and who, and they are specifically measurable. They should address what you must do in the short term (think 1-3 years) to achieve your strategic objectives.

Organization-wide goals are annual statements that are SMART – specific, measurable, attainable, responsible, and time-bound. These are outcome statements expressing a result to achieve the desired outcomes expected in the organization.

What is most important right now to reach our long-term objectives?

Outcome: clear outcomes for the current year..

Strategic Planning Outcomes Table

Step 4: Select KPIs

What

Key Performance Indicators (KPI) are the key measures that will have the most impact in moving your organization forward. We recommend you guide your organization with measures that matter. See examples of KPIs here.

How will we measure our success?

Outcome: 5-7 measures that help you keep the pulse on your performance. When selecting your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), ask, “What are the key performance measures we need to track to monitor if we are achieving our goals?” These KPIs include the key goals you want to measure that will have the most impact on moving your organization forward.

Step 5: Cascade Your Strategies to Operations

NPS Step #5

To move from big ideas to action, creating action items and to-dos for short-term goals is crucial. This involves translating strategy from the organizational level to individuals. Functional area managers and contributors play a role in developing short-term goals to support the organization.

Before taking action, decide whether to create plans directly derived from the strategic plan or sync existing operational, business, or account plans with organizational goals. Avoid the pitfall of managing multiple sets of goals and actions, as this shifts from strategic planning to annual planning.

Questions to Ask

  • How are we going to get there at a functional level?
  • Who must do what by when to accomplish and drive the organizational goals?
  • What strategic questions still remain and need to be solved?

Department/functional goals, actions, measures and targets for the next 12-24 months

Step 6: Cascading Goals to Departments and Team Members

Now in your Departments / Teams, you need to create goals to support the organization-wide goals. These goals should still be SMART and are generally (short-term) something to be done in the next 12-18 months. Finally, you should develop an action plan for each goal.

Keep the acronym SMART in mind again when setting action items, and make sure they include start and end dates and have someone assigned their responsibility. Since these action items support your previously established goals, it may be helpful to consider action items your immediate plans on the way to achieving your (short-term) goals. In other words, identify all the actions that need to occur in the next 90 days and continue this same process every 90 days until the goal is achieved.

Examples of Cascading Goals:

What

Phase 4: Executing Strategy and Managing Performance

Want more? Dive Into the “Managing Performance” How-To Guide.

Step 1: Strategic Plan Implementation Schedule

Implementation is the process that turns strategies and plans into actions in order to accomplish strategic objectives and goals.

How will we use the plan as a management tool?

  • Communication Schedule: How and when will you roll-out your plan to your staff? How frequently will you send out updates?
  • Process Leader: Who is your strategy director?
  • Structure: What are the dates for your strategy reviews (we recommend at least quarterly)?
  • System & Reports: What are you expecting each staff member to come prepared with to those strategy review sessions?

Outcome: Syncing your plan into the “rhythm of your business.”

Once your resources are in place, you can set your implementation schedule. Use the following steps as your base implementation plan:

  • Establish your performance management and reward system.
  • Set up monthly and quarterly strategy meetings with established reporting procedures.
  • Set up annual strategic review dates including new assessments and a large group meeting for an annual plan review.

Now you’re ready to start plan roll-out. Below are sample implementation schedules, which double for a full strategic management process timeline.

Strategic Planning Calendar

Step 2: Tracking Goals & Actions

Monthly strategy meetings don’t need to take a lot of time – 30 to 60 minutes should suffice. But it is important that key team members report on their progress toward the goals they are responsible for – including reporting on metrics in the scorecard they have been assigned.

By using the measurements already established, it’s easy to make course corrections if necessary. You should also commit to reviewing your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) during these regular meetings. Need help comparing strategic planning software ? Check out our guide.

Effective Strategic Planning: Your Bi-Annual Checklist

What

Never lose sight of the fact that strategic plans are guidelines, not rules. Every six months or so, you should evaluate your strategy execution and strategic plan implementation by asking these key questions:

  • Will your goals be achieved within the time frame of the plan? If not, why?
  • Should the deadlines be modified? (Before you modify deadlines, figure out why you’re behind schedule.)
  • Are your goals and action items still realistic?
  • Should the organization’s focus be changed to put more emphasis on achieving your goals?
  • Should your goals be changed? (Be careful about making these changes – know why efforts aren’t achieving the goals before changing the goals.)
  • What can be gathered from an adaptation to improve future planning activities?

Why Track Your Goals?

  • Ownership: Having a stake and responsibility in the plan makes you feel part of it and leads you to drive your goals forward.
  • Culture: Successful plans tie tracking and updating goals into organizational culture.
  • Implementation: If you don’t review and update your strategic goals, they are just good intentions
  • Accountability: Accountability and high visibility help drive change. This means that each measure, objective, data source and initiative must have an owner.
  • Empowerment: Changing goals from In Progress to Complete just feels good!

Step 3: Review & Adapt

Guidelines for your strategy review.

The most important part of this meeting is a 70/30 review. 30% is about reviewing performance, and 70% should be spent on making decisions to move the company’s strategy forward in the next quarter.

The best strategic planners spend about 60-90 minutes in the sessions. Holding meetings helps focus your goals on accomplishing top priorities and accelerating the organization’s growth. Although the meeting structure is relatively simple, it does require a high degree of discipline.

Strategy Review Session Questions:

Strategic planning frequently asked questions, read our frequently asked questions about strategic planning to learn how to build a great strategic plan..

Strategic planning is when organizations define a bold vision and create a plan with objectives and goals to reach that future. A great strategic plan defines where your organization is going, how you’ll win, who must do what, and how you’ll review and adapt your strategy..

Your strategic plan needs to include an assessment of your current state, a SWOT analysis, mission, vision, values, competitive advantages, growth strategy, growth enablers, a 3-year roadmap, and annual plan with strategic goals, OKRs, and KPIs.

A strategic planning process should take no longer than 90 days to complete from start to finish! Any longer could fatigue your organization and team.

There are four overarching phases to the strategic planning process that include: determining position, developing your strategy, building your plan, and managing performance. Each phase plays a unique but distinctly crucial role in the strategic planning process.

Prior to starting your strategic plan, you must go through this pre-planning process to determine your organization’s readiness by following these steps:

Ask yourself these questions: Are the conditions and criteria for successful planning in place now? Can we foresee any pitfalls that we can avoid? Is there an appropriate time for our organization to initiate this process?

Develop your team and schedule. Who will oversee the implementation as Chief Strategy Officer or Director? Do we have at least 12-15 other key individuals on our team?

Research and Collect Current Data. Find the following resources that your organization may have used in the past to assist you with your new plan: last strategic plan, mission, vision, and values statement, business plan, financial records, marketing plan, SWOT, sales figures, or projections.

Finally, review the data with your strategy director and facilitator and ask these questions: What trends do we see? Any obvious strengths or weaknesses? Have we been following a plan or just going along with the market?

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></center></p><p>Strategy | Sep 10</p><h2>No Company Strategic Plan? Create One for Your Department!</h2><p>Several years ago, I was an executive in a software company where the CEO fundamentally believed the company did not need a strategic plan. It was his belief that everyone knew what we were all about and the direction we were headed and that would be good enough to insure success.</p><p>As a leader in the company I wanted to support the CEO and, at the same time, I was committed to having an overall game plan for my team. Instead of debating the merits for a strategic plan for the company, I decided that if our department had a plan, achieved some “stretch targets” that we set, and met or exceeded the executive team expectations; we could demonstrate the power of a strategic plan.</p><h2>What We Did</h2><p>I started by gathering my management team to determine what we wanted to achieve with a three-year strategic plan for our services department. We invested an evening of collaboration and came to the conclusion that we needed to answer these four key questions:</p><ul><li>What was our services department’s current position?</li><li>Where did we want to be at the end of the three-year planning horizon?</li><li>How did we plan to get from where we were at that moment to where we wanted to be in three years?</li><li>How would we track our progress once we had a three-year plan?</li></ul><p>To determine our current position, we identified the need to ask our key stakeholders about how they viewed our products, our people and our services. These stakeholders included employees, partners, clients and prospects. We also documented a list of our key competitors and decided to hire an outside firm to conduct research on what they were doing and how we performed relative to them in our markets.</p><p>We then thought about where we wanted to be at the end of our plan. We established goal areas and specific targets (we called these objectives) around revenue, gross margins, customer satisfaction, and client retention/turnover.</p><p>Once we had identified where we wanted to be in three years, we had to determine how to achieve these targets. There was a lot of discussion about which people on our team had to be present in order to get their commitment or buy-in on the plan and strategies/actions that we would agree to undertake. It became clear to the handful of my direct reports that we needed to have sixteen other people that played key roles on our team attend our planning meeting.</p><p>Then we tackled the toughest part, tracking the progress. The single biggest problem my direct reports experienced with prior planning efforts, in our organization as well as others where they worked, was lack of impact earlier plans achieved. The team agreed that the primary reason for this shortfall was a lack of keeping the plan in the forefront and, that if we were going to make this plan a “living and breathing plan” we would have to all make a commitment to reporting progress as well as making mid-course adjustments based on what we learned as well as changes in the market, industry and our company’s direction.</p><p>Finally, we decided that for all of us to be involved in this planning effort we would ask a member of the corporate HR team to facilitate our planning meeting. My direct reports believed that, if I led this meeting, there would be less chance for me to really hear what other participants were saying and that I might not have been able to be as objective as they believed was needed for the best possible plan. I must admit this was a tough decision for me to make yet, in hindsight, it was one of the best things I did. Not only was I able to more actively engage but I learned much more about the challenges and possibilities that I was unaware of as well as some very intriguing leverage points for us to maintain our aggressive growth plans.</p><h2>Key Learnings</h2><p>By the end of the process we walked away learning a few things. First, this plan gave us an overall roadmap on which to base decisions. As Yogi Berra once said, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” While not profound, the plan provided guidance on which road to take when we arrived at those forks.</p><p>Another important learning was that the plan was dynamic and not static. We used this plan to track progress against key objectives and we made adjustments as conditions changed. These adjustments included modifying objectives/strategies as well as adding new ones and dropping existing ones.</p><p>And the biggest learning I walked away with was that divisions, departments and teams might consider taking the time to develop a “strategic plan” as an overall framework to establish targets and monitor progress against those targets.</p><p>As a result of my department’s efforts and the success we saw, word began to travel throughout the organization. Eventually more and more departments started creating their own strategic plan and this got the attention of our CEO who did end up taking the whole organization through the strategic planning process.</p><h2>Want to learn more tips and techniques for creating a successful strategic plan?</h2><p>Check out our Secrets to Facilitating Strategy course!</p><ul><li>Onsite Training</li><li>Open Enrollment</li><li>Virtual Facilitation & Training</li><li>Privacy Policy</li></ul><h2>Host a Public Class</h2><p><center><img style=

Free Strategic Planning Templates

By Joe Weller | May 16, 2018

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The success of your organization — no matter what size or industry — depends on the thoroughness of your planning and vision. A strategic plan can provide a roadmap for accomplishing specific goals, and will increase your chances of reaching objectives on time and budget. In this article, we’ve rounded up the top strategic planning templates in Microsoft Word and Excel, all of which are free to download and fully customizable.

Additionally, we've provided customizable strategic planning templates in Smartsheet, a collaborative, real-time work execution platform that empowers you to better plan, manage, and report on strategic initiatives.

Strategic Business Plan Template

Strategic Business Plan Template

Download Strategic Business Plan Template

Excel | Smartsheet

A comprehensive, strategic business plan may include company information, SWOT analysis, research, goals, resources, risks and more. A template provides structure for your business planning process as well as a communication tool that’s simple to update or modify. Use the template as a guide for evaluating your business, identifying opportunities for growth and development, and creating a strategic plan.

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Nonprofit Strategic Plan Template

Nonprofit Strategic Plan Template

Download Nonprofit Strategic Plan Template

A nonprofit strategic plan often emphasizes vision, values, and mission as the foundation for future objectives. A template can be used to clearly define who is being served and what issues need to be addressed. As with a business plan, nonprofit planning may include sections for evaluating risks and opportunities, measuring financial resources, developing a marketing plan, and creating objectives for organizational change.

HR Strategic Plan Template

HR Strategic Plan template

‌ Download HR Strategic Plan Template

Create a detailed human resources strategic plan for your organization, or modify the template to focus on one specific area, such as recruitment or employee relations. Use the template to translate strategies into measurable action plans. This simple layout makes it easy for readers to quickly view key information.

IT Strategic Planning Template

IT Strategic Plan Template

‌ Download IT Strategic Planning Template

IT is an essential part of any business, nonprofit, school, or government agency. While information technology is just one part of an overall business strategy, creating a separate strategic plan for IT will help ensure that you have a comprehensive roadmap to follow for managing and purchasing new assets, understanding your current and potential technology usage, and aligning your IT goals with business objectives.

Strategic Marketing Plan Template

Strategic Marketing Plan Template

‌ Download Strategic Marketing Plan Template

Use this free template to help shape your marketing strategy. It combines information on your target market and business with marketing tactics to help you think strategically and create a plan of action. The template can guide your research process or be used as a simple brainstorming tool.

Social Media Strategy Plan Template

Social Media Strategic Plan

‌ Download Social Media Strategy Plan Template

Social media is an integral part of online marketing, and creating a strategic plan can help ensure that you are using your time and resources effectively. Consider your branding, mission, target audience, competition and other factors to determine which social networks and types of content will perform best for your company. Keep track of KPIs and adjust your social media plan accordingly.

SWOT Analysis Strategy Template

SWOT Analysis Strategic Template

‌ Download SWOT Analysis Strategy Template

This matrix template combines SWOT analysis with strategic planning. Examine the relationships between your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, and then list related strategies to tackle your goals. The layout of this template allows you to view the SWOT categories and strategies side-by-side, which may be useful for a presentation or summary.

One-Page Strategic Planning Template

One Page Strategic Planning Template

Download One-Page Strategic Planning Template

Excel | Word | Smartsheet

A one-page strategic plan is perfect for small businesses or for summarizing a longer planning process. Use this template as is, or edit the layout or included information to better suit your needs. This template includes all the essentials on one page, including values, strengths and weaknesses, goals, and actions.

Strategic Vision Template

Strategic Vision Summary Template

Download Strategic Vision Template

Excel | Word

Summarize your strategic vision and plan, highlighting key information for stakeholders, management, investors, or for your own reference. Combining a vision statement with a brief summary of goals, actions and KPIs makes it easy to see how your business values and purpose relate to your objectives. It also provides a succinct summary for use in a presentation or meeting.

University Strategic Plan Outline

University Strategic Plan Outline Word Template

‌ Download University Strategic Plan Outline

This template provides an outline for university strategy planning. The actual strategic plan may cover multiple pages and provide an in-depth analysis and detailed mission and vision statements. Strategic planning is an opportunity for universities to look closely at campus needs, institutional values, infrastructure, long-term goals, important obstacles, and more. The strategic plan will be a guiding document that is reviewed and updated regularly.

What Is Strategic Planning?

Strategic planning is an organization’s process for defining their strategy so that they can accomplish specific goals and objectives. Strategic planning may be utilized on a large scale, such as planning for business growth over several years or to help a nonprofit or governmental organization reach its stated mission. A strategic plan can also be used on a smaller scale, such as crafting a marketing plan or developing strategy for the goals of one department within a business or organization. It is important to note that strategy is distinct from planning: While strategy looks at why certain steps should be taken, a plan outlines how to enact those steps. strategic planning marries these two concepts in order to determine the best possible course of action. The purpose of strategic planning is to provide a thoughtful, deliberate approach to reaching objectives based on an in-depth analysis of both internal and external factors affecting an organization.

A strategic plan often covers multiple years, addressing both short- and long-term goals. It also provides a way of tracking progress and measuring success. However, it’s not a document that is fixed in stone — instead, it’s wise to revisit and adjust a strategic plan periodically based on the evolving vision, objectives, needs, and resources of a business or institution.

Depending on the scope of your plan, you may be working with a team of multiple stakeholders during the strategic planning process. To keep the process running smoothly, make roles and responsibilities clear. Different parties may be responsible for providing data, reviewing the plan, or authorizing strategic decisions. As you prepare for planning, make sure all participants understand what’s involved in the process and have received any relevant information prior to meeting.

Benefits of Strategic Planning

There are benefits of strategic planning, including the following:

  • Align the goals of a department or project with larger business goals
  • Provide clear communication to team members, stakeholders, or clients
  • Clearly define the vision and mission of an organization
  • Provide clarity on how to deal with internal or environmental changes

Parts of a Strategic Plan

One way to think about strategic planning is that it identifies any gaps between a current state and desired future state, and then dictates how to close those gaps — how you get from where you are to where you want to be. To that end, various factors are taken into consideration in order to formulate an effective plan. Here are some of the elements often included in a strategic plan.

  • Introductory Statement: The introductory statement should briefly describe why the strategic plan was developed and for what time period, and list the authors of the plan.  
  • Background Statement: This section may provide information about the organization, such as history, management structure, and supporting partners or agencies. Alternatively, you could use this section as a brief business statement — more of an elevator pitch — to concisely describe your business.  
  • Organizational Structure: Include this information if it’s relevant to evaluate how your business or organization operates and is structured, from governing board to staffing.  
  • Vision: A vision statement should briefly describe what a company wants to achieve or become. This is one of the primary organizational tenets to consider, along with values and mission.  
  • Values: These are the principles that an organization stands for and abides by. Many businesses create core value statements to guide company culture.  
  • Mission Statement: A mission statement describes the purpose of a business or organization. This is distinct from a vision statement because it is not a projected goal for the future.  
  • Problem Statement: Some plans include a problem statement, which can outline key or discrete issues that need to be addressed.  
  • SWOT Analysis: A SWOT analysis provides a foundation and context for developing strategy by examining the strengths and weaknesses within and organization as well as external opportunities and threats.  
  • Goals: As stated earlier, a strategic plan may include long-term as well as short-term (i.e, monthly or quarterly) goals. Objectives should be measurable and broken down into actionable steps, and the action plan for each goal should specify who is responsible for implementing the strategy, a timeline for starting and ending the action, and how the outcome will be evaluated.  
  • Evaluation: Methods for evaluation should be spelled out in the strategic plan. This could include tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) and documenting the progress of action steps on an ongoing basis.  
  • Executive Summary : This final summary helps employees, investors, or other readers quickly understand your plan.

No matter what type of strategic plan you are working on, using a template provides a simple and quick outline to organize your process. In the following sections, you’ll find free, downloadable planning templates for business, nonprofit, human resources, marketing, IT strategic planning, and more.

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The Department is modernizing the way it manages and delivers IT services. With increased interconnectedness in the Department, across bureaus and around the globe, driving diplomacy with technology offers more opportunities to leverage innovation, secure data and prioritize IT resources. The Fiscal Years 2024-2026 Information Technology Strategic Plan highlights goals necessary to the support the mission of the Department of State and its workforce.

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The U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Strategic Plan for Fiscal Years 2020-2024 fulfills the GPRA Modification Act of 2010 (P.L. 111-352) and the Office of Management and Budget’s Circular A-11, Part 6 (2013) requirement for all Federal departments and agencies to publish an Agency Strategic Plan.  The FY20-24 Strategic Plan articulates the Department’s missions and goals, the strategies we employ to achieve each goal, and long-term performance measures that we use to evaluate our progress.

The DHS Strategic Plan comprehensively reflects the Department’s complex mission. Every day, each operator and employee across the Department advances the strategic goals and objectives contained herein to keep Americans safe, secure, and resilient. The DHS Strategic Plan establishes a common framework to analyze and inform the Department’s management decisions, including strategic guidance, operational requirements, budget formulation, annual performance reporting, and mission execution. Along with the DHS Strategic Plan, DHS also conducts the Quadrennial Homeland Security Review , which identifies strategic homeland security priorities based on extensive analysis and stakeholder engagement. Together, these documents inform internal operations and our interactions with Congress, interagency counterparts, and the American public.

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As part of an ongoing commitment to collaboration and continuous improvement, the Asheville Fire Department (AFD) is excited to invite the community to participate in a survey to develop its new strategic plan. This short survey, open until March 19, will allow the department to collect the community’s thoughts, expectations, and priorities to ensure the plan reflects the diverse needs of its stakeholders.

The insights and perspectives of the members of the Asheville community are invaluable as AFD shapes the future direction of the fire department to allow it to better serve and protect the City of Asheville’s citizens, businesses, and visitors. The data collected from this survey will be used to help create a strategic plan that ensures the fire department’s services meet the expectations of the community it serves.

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U.s. department of commerce releases 2023 update to equity action plan, outlines new commitments to advance equity, office of public affairs.

Today the U.S. Department of Commerce released the 2023 update to its Equity Action Plan , in coordination with the Biden-Harris Administration’s whole-of-government equity agenda. This Equity Action Plan is part of the Department’s efforts to implement the President’s Executive Order on “ Further Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through The Federal Government ,” which reaffirmed the Administration’s commitment to deliver equity and build an America in which all can participate, prosper, and reach their full potential.

“Homogeneity is the enemy of innovation. If we are to out-build, out-innovate, and out-compete the rest of the world, we need to ensure we’re harnessing and empowering Americans across the country by utilizing our greatest strength - diversity,” said Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo. “That’s why the Biden-Harris Administration’s commitment to equity is so important and why I’m proud to see that reflected in this updated action plan. We fail to meet our full potential as a nation unless we harness the talents and strengths of all parts of the country, including those who have too often been left behind.”

Deputy Secretary of Commerce Don Graves will participate in an event at the White House this morning to outline the updated Equity Action Plan, where he will be accompanied by Donna Ennis, Co-Director of the Georgia Artificial Intelligence in Manufacturing (Georgia AIM), who is a winner of the Build Back Better Regional Challenge (BBBRC). The presentation will highlight  workforce pipelines put in place to ensure all Americans, including people from underserved communities, can participate in the innovation economy.

“Thanks to President Biden’s continued and steadfast commitment to supporting underserved and underrepresented communities, this Administration has made historic progress to achieving equity centered initiatives,” said Deputy Commerce Secretary Don Graves. “Through investments in business grants and funding opportunities, the Secretary and I are proud of the Commerce Department’s efforts in promoting equitable and inclusive capitalism that will pave the path to America’s economic prosperity.”

In alignment with the Department of Commerce’s strategic goals , the Equity Action Plan includes real-life examples of how America’s economy and people are best served by filtering our work through a prism of equity. America’s diversity is its competitive advantage – but only if everyone has an opportunity to fulfill their potential and fully participate in our economy.

The equity strategies associated with each strategic goal will assist in designing programs that will address barriers to equity and meet the needs of all Americans, including underserved communities.

  • Equity Strategy 1: Mobilize our nation’s diversity to fuel innovation and sustain our global competitiveness across geographic regions so that all communities have equal access to opportunities.
  • Equity Strategy 2: Expand growth opportunities for businesses and entrepreneurs, including in underserved communities.
  • Equity Strategy 3: Promote equitable economic development and career pathways to good jobs.
  • Equity Strategy 4: Use targeted investments and program design to address the climate crisis through mitigation, adaptation, and resilience efforts to ensure environmental and economic resilience.
  • Equity Strategy 5: Expand opportunity and discovery through data to inform and evaluate actions that improve community outcomes.

Since the release of its first-ever Equity Action Plan in 2022, the Department of Commerce has:

  • Released $3 billion in American Rescue Plan dollars across 780 awards through six innovative economic development programs.
  • Reduced the cost of bringing high-speed internet to unserved and underserved communities, and increased the resilience of internet infrastructure.
  • Invested $100 million to support the needs of tribal governments and Indigenous communities across 51 awards in 25 states and the Northern Mariana Islands.

Learn more about the Administration’s equity work at whitehouse.gov/equity and check out all Federal Equity Action Plans at performance.gov/equity .

To follow stories and posts across agencies, follow the hashtags #GovEquity and #GovDelivers on social media.

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Navy’s enhanced lethality surface combatant fleet

Release details

Release type, related ministers and contacts, the hon richard marles mp.

Deputy Prime Minister

Minister for Defence

Media contact

[email protected]

02 6277 7800

The Hon Pat Conroy MP

Minister for Defence Industry

Minister for International Development and the Pacific

[email protected]

(02) 6277 7840

General enquiries

[email protected]

Release content

20 February 2024

Today, the Albanese Government has released its blueprint for a larger and more lethal surface combatant fleet for the Royal Australian Navy, more than doubling the size of the surface combatant fleet under the former government’s plan.

This follows the Government’s careful consideration of the recommendations of the independent analysis of the surface combatant fleet, commissioned in response to the Defence Strategic Review.

Our strategic circumstances require a larger and more lethal surface combatant fleet, complemented by a conventionally-armed, nuclear-powered submarine fleet.

Navy’s future fleet will be integral to ensure the safety and security of our sea lines of communication and maritime trade, through operations in our immediate region. This fleet will constitute the largest number of surface combatants since WWII.

The independent analysis of Navy’s surface combatant fleet lamented the current surface combatant fleet was the oldest fleet Navy has operated in its history, and emphasised the need for immediate action to boost Navy’s air defence, long-range strike, presence and anti-submarine warfare capabilities.

In line with independent analysis’ recommendations, Navy’s future surface combatant fleet will comprise:

  • Three Hobart class air warfare destroyers with upgraded air defence and strike capabilities
  • Six Hunter class frigates to boost Navy’s undersea warfare and strike capabilities
  • 11 new general purpose frigates that will provide maritime and land strike, air defence and escort capabilities
  • Six new Large Optionally Crewed Surface Vessels (LOSVs) that will significantly increase Navy’s long-range strike capacity
  • Six remaining Anzac class frigates with the two oldest ships to be decommissioned as per their planned service life.

The Government has also accepted the independent analysis’ recommendations to have:

  • 25 minor war vessels to contribute to civil maritime security operations, which includes six Offshore Patrol Vessels (OPVs).

The Hunter class frigates will be built at the Osborne shipyard in South Australia, and will be followed by the replacement of the Hobart class destroyer. The Hobart destroyers will be upgraded at Osborne with the latest US Navy Aegis combat system.

The new general purpose frigate will be accelerated to replace the Anzac class frigates, meaning the Transition Capability Assurance (TransCAP) upgrades are no longer required. These new general purpose frigates will be modern, capable and more lethal, requiring smaller crews than the Anzac.

Consolidation of the Henderson precinct is currently underway, as recommended by the Defence Strategic Review. Successful and timely consolidation will enable eight new general purpose frigates to be built at the Henderson precinct, and will also enable a pathway to build six new Large Optionally Crewed Surface Vessels in Western Australia.

The Albanese Government is committed to continuous naval shipbuilding in Australia and the design of Navy’s future fleet will provide a stable and ongoing pipeline of work to the 2040s and beyond.

In order to implement the recommendations of the independent analysis, the Albanese Government has committed to funding the planned acquisition and sustainment of the future surface fleet.

This will see the Albanese Government inject an additional $1.7 billion over the Forward Estimates and $11.1 billion over the next decade in Defence for an accelerated delivery of Navy’s future surface combatant fleet and to expand Australia’s shipbuilding industry.

This comes on top of the Albanese Government’s investment of an additional $30.5 billion to Defence’s Integrated Investment Program out to 2032-33.

This additional $11.1 billion of funding for the future surface fleet alone brings both acquisition and sustainment investment in the fleet to $54.2 billion in total over the next decade.

This investment provides a clear pathway for the shipbuilding industry and workforce in South Australia and Western Australia.

The Albanese Government thanks Vice Admiral William Hilarides, USN (Retd), Ms Rosemary Huxtable, AO, PSM and Vice Admiral Stuart Mayer, AO, RAN for their leadership of the independent analysis and contribution to the most comprehensive update to Navy’s fleet in decades.

Quotes attributable to the Deputy Prime Minister, the Hon Richard Marles MP:

“The enhanced lethality surface combatant fleet will ensure the Navy is optimised for operations in our current and future environment, underpinned by the meticulous assessment conducted by the Independent Analysis Team.

“Australia’s modern society and economy rely on access to the high seas: trade routes for our imports and exports, and the submarine cables for the data which enables our connection to the international economy.

“The Royal Australian Navy must be able to ensure the safety and security of our sea lines of communication and trade routes as they are fundamental to our way of life and our prosperity.”

Quotes attributable to the Minister for Defence Industry, the Hon Pat Conroy MP:

“This significant advancement in Navy capability that will be delivered under this plan requires a strong, sovereign defence industry.

“This plan ensures Navy’s future fleet can meet our strategic circumstances by delivering a larger and more lethal fleet sooner and secures the future of naval shipbuilding in Australia, supporting 3,700 direct jobs over the next decade and thousands of indirect jobs for decades to come.”

  Quotes attributable to the Chief of Navy, Vice Admiral Mark Hammond AO:

“A strong Australia relies on a strong Navy, one that is equipped to conduct diplomacy in our region, deter potential adversaries, and defend our national interests when called.

“The size, lethality and capabilities of the future surface combatant fleet ensures that our Navy is equipped to meet the evolving strategic challenges of our region.”

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