Stragey vs Tactics

During these past few terms of my stay with the college, more and more I find myself being involved and wanting to be involved with frantically defining the degree program’s direction brought by external factors such as CHED mandated compliance with the K-12 system, OBE, and other competing universities that offers the same degree program.  Given that the thrust of the college now is to for the students have real-life projects, I took it upon myself provide the students systems development projects that addresses problems and concerns of the different offices and departments.  These systems will be using the current IT infrastructure of the college, and hence we will have to coordinate with the IT Department.

Given the analysis tools that we have discussed, I am inclined to think that the information systems strategy employed by the IT Department somehow prioritizes improvements in the enrollment process of the college, and having all other application development activities on hold.  Sad to say that given all of the models and frameworks used to analyze an information systems strategy, the IT strategy seems to only be supporting a limited aspect of the college.  The IT department has several projects already in their pipeline, that the information systems needs of other offices are no longer tackled.  I would now like to think, that this is where I come in.

I understand that in the grand scheme of things, student enrollment could be one of the college’s main value chain process.  However, I do believe that this does not, in any way, diminish the value of other processes within the different offices and departments of the college.  With this, I have been approaching the other offices and soliciting from them current concerns they may have with their processes and I in return propose IT solutions that may have the potential of improving their situations.  Trying to discuss ways on how having an information systems in place can enable them to perform their functions better.

These attempts may not necessarily address directly the IT department strategy on improving the enrollment system of the college.  Though I strongly believe that, these small operational level solutions do provide a supportive role to the overall business strategy.