strategic planning process

Scenario:

A volunteer organization 'AllTechComm' is largely a group of computer professionals who wanted to give back to the community in a variety of ways, both non-technical and technical. A portion of your organization is support, HR, or training-oriented, and has only basic technical knowledge. You are the newly appointed VP of Technology. You have been part of the organization for 2 years, 1 year as an employee. Your role is to oversee the technical department of the organization, plan for future growth in the department, and provide guidance to the technology-based projects executed by the volunteers. AllTechComm is 3 years old with an average of 100 active volunteers at any given time. There are 10 employees, 6 full-time (including you) and 4 part-time.

The organization has 3 regular projects and one pet project they plan and execute each year. The three regular projects are: 1) Literacy Aid for Underprivileged Children 2) Volunteering technical expertise to other charitable organizations who can not afford expensive technical support 3) Working with homeless/poor individuals to create a resume and to search job boards. The pet project for the coming year is nicknamed TechnoSeniors, where the volunteers teach seniors in minimum care nursing homes how to connect to the internet, send email to their family and play computer games such as solitaire. The goal of the project is to help elderly people stay connected to friends and family, and keep their minds sharp slowing the mental decline sometimes associated with old age.

Your mandate as VP of Technology is to keep the regular projects strong and growing, plan for TechnoSeniors, and overhaul the AllTechComm intranet. Your must make the intranet one in which volunteers can sign up and manage their schedules, profiles, keep in better contact with their Project Leaders, and actually accomplish work together.

Some of your volunteers at AllTechComm understand strategic thinking well, and some others do not. You decide to educate the group by posting a short white paper on your intranet. This white paper will be an introduction to strategic planning and critical evaluation of plans.

Use the Internet to do research on the strategic planning process. Also, find on the Internet a Strategic Plan an organization has created to make decisions about their information systems. Then, incorporate into the 3-4 page white paper, your answers the following questions:

What are the steps involved in a strategic planning process?
What makes this planning process 'strategic'?
How does the strategic plan you found incorporate the aforementioned steps? (Does the plan contain all the steps? What is missing? What has been added? Etc.)
Do you think this organization would be able to put their plan into motion? Why?
Would you make updates to the document as things have changed in the world since it was written? Why?