Developing a Technology Supported Collaborative Strategic Planning Process for Higher Education

The process of strategic planning generally requires a large group of individuals work together to diverge and converge on a vision, mission, and core values. Research suggests these activities are critical for the advancement of a group task. However, this type of group work is time consuming and it has been shown to be a slow and painful process. The goal of this research is to develop and test a repeatable collaborative process for strategic planning in an Information Systems department with a College of Business at a medium-sized U.S. public university. The repeatable collaborative process in this research uses group support system technology and facilitation. Survey results and qualitative comments from the IS department participants show that satisfaction related to the strategic planning experience was high and that that the process was a success both from an individual and group perspective.