Alignment as a strategy

As we have continued with our topics for this trimester, I have progressively came to realize that creating disconnected end-user computing systems, not only was it an evidence of having a very young information systems capability thinking on my part, but moreover, it painstakingly showed me that my objectives in planning and creating these systems were not aligned with the identified business strategic initiatives of the college, as well as its IT strategies.

At an operational level, the creation of these end-user computing systems seems critical in improving the tasks of these process owners.  But, after slowly understanding the theoretical concepts through class discussions and conversations with our Policies and Strategies instructor, an eventual concern of having operational independent systems is integration of these systems.  These concepts were enforced when the Executive for Administration gave me practical reasons like why would the college pay for the development of a certain system that the college is already planning on implementing.  So now, at an organizational stand point, the development of these operational systems may seem to have become immaterial amidst all of the other information systems that the college planning for.

Granting that the main objective of developing these small systems is for student exposure and for them to gain experience in developing live systems, it would now be apparent that the alignment of these systems must also be taken into consideration.  This now leads me to reevaluate the objectives and strategies of this systems development unit, and begin to contemplate that alignment of this unit to the strategic initiatives of the college may be a viable strategy.

With this, a new approach to take could be is to attend meetings and planning sessions of some of these planned information systems, and examine how the systems development unit of faculty and students can support this initiative.  Inquire from the IT department, which of the planned systems can be offloaded to the unit, so the unit won’t be blindly producing systems that has the chance of not getting implemented or used.  Lastly, immerse the development unit in training to increase their skills in constructing the identified systems, and making them both functional and usable.