You are required to develop a properly referenced management report of 2500 words in length for senior management that will consider all of the following five elements

  1. Consider an organisation or an industry with which you are familiar. This may be somewhere you have either worked full-time, been on a placement or worked parttime in. It may even be an industry you are particularly interested in or have read a lot about recently. The organisation can be large, private, public (but NOT education based), an SME or even from the third sector (charity).
  2. It is from this organisation that senior management will consider your report which should have a structure similar to the inputs & strategy formulation process of Figure 3.7 below.
  3. You should evaluate the challenges, issues and potential disruptors facing the organisation/industry as well as contemplating the development of an appropriate business strategy along with the supporting IS/IT elements.
  4. To do this you will need to apply some of the tools and techniques that have been shown below. You should consider the application of at least TWO of these techniques and PESTEL cannot be one of them but it can be included if appropriate.
  5. You will have to select & apply the most appropriate tools & techniques because, just as in a game of golf, your choice of tools will depend on where you stand and what your objectives are. You will need to justify your choice of tools & techniques and evaluate their effectiveness (strengths, limitations etc.). It is acknowledged that you will have limited access to information sources regards your chosen organisation/industry. However even a cursory internet and library search will reveal some basic information from which you can extrapolate.

Remember the “art” of business and IS/IT strategy formulation will always take place in the presence of huge amounts of uncertainty and unknowns. The important element for this assessment is the willingness to undertake this kind of “whatif” type analysis and extrapolate from known elements and the use and application of the discussed tools and techniques to illuminate the situation.