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FIT5102 IT STRATEGY AND GOVERNANCE
Assignment 1 (20%)
Submission Deadline: 14 Sep 2021, 5:00 PM (AEST)
Group Assignment (two students from the same tutorial)


Learning Objectives
● Critical Analysis of IT Strategic Planning Approaches – Demonstrate the ability to carry out research
into academic theories and to critically analyse approaches, techniques, and principles/philosophies for
IT strategic planning.
Group Assignment:
● This assignment promotes students' collaborations working in pairs. Students must form their group
within the same tutorial, the latest being the end of week 5. You will choose your group via the
Assignment One Groups (see Moodle Assessments page).
● Students will be graded as a group. Every student in the group is required to participate and contribute
to the assignment actively. These would be used as a basis for marks adjustment for the assignment's
final score (if necessary). At the end of the assignment, all students must complete their Peer Assessment
(to be made available in Moodle) confidentially and individually. Failure to complete the assignment
peer assessment by the due date might result in a lower mark for the final score.
Submission Requirements
● Your assignment should be submitted to Moodle in MS Word or PDF format. The file names should
contain Unit Code, assignment number and your Group ID number, following either of these formats:
FIT5102A1_GroupID.docx OR FIT5102A1_GroupID.pdf
● Only one of the group members will submit the assignment for the group.
Recommended Report Outline:
● Title page (with assignment title, student name, ID, unit code, tutors name)
● Table of contents
● Introduction section, e.g., purpose, scope
● Body (responses to the assignment tasks)
● Conclusion e.g. summarise strategies highlights, the implications, future directions.
● One single aggregated reference list at the end of the document.
Writing style:
● Writing clear sentences and paragraphing, for examples:
o Writing style attributes: http://www.monash.edu/it/current-students/resources-and-
support/style-guide
o IT/business report genre (http://www.monash.edu/rlo/quick-study-guides/features-of-
reports).
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o Writing clear paragraphs: http://www.monash.edu/rlo/research-writing-
assignments/writing/clear-communication/writing-clear-paragraphs
o IT report: approaching the task: http://www.monash.edu/rlo/assignment-
samples/information-technology/approaching-the-task
● Font - Times New Roman font, size 12, and single space.
● Paging - each page (except the title page, table of contents) must be numbered.
● The report should be approximately 3000 words (+/- 10%) in length. This word count does not include
and diagrams figures, charts, tables, appendices or references. There will be a penalty for shorter
papers or papers that are too long.
References:
● Students are encouraged to search for relevant extra readings and draw on suitable literature from
academic publications as well as practitioner outlets. All sources of information must be fully and
appropriately acknowledged using in-text citation and reference list. The reference section should use
the American Psychological Association (APA) style of referencing
(http://guides.lib.monash.edu/citing-referencing/apa).
Late Submissions:
● Late submissions will be penalised as stated in the submission link in Moodle.

Instructional Guidelines
● There are two parts in this assignment.
● In the first part, you will choose a case organisation, based on your research about the case
organisation, apply some of the techniques, approaches and principles learnt to date in this unit to
conduct IT strategic planning.
● You are required to seek information beyond the resource provided. However, you are not required to
contact the organisation for information. You may make reasonable assumptions, justify them in the
report, and support them with references if appropriate.
● In part two, you will carry out research into academic theories, critically analyse some of the
approaches and principles/philosophies for how to conduct IT strategic planning.

Part 1:
Select a case organisation (from online or other reading materials) and complete the following tasks.
1. Introduction to the business/case organisation (3 marks)
Demonstrate your understanding of the case organisation:
● Descriptions of the case organisations and its nature of business.
● Use the Porter’s value chain to describe the core business activities and provide examples for each of
the components in the value-chain.
● Use Porter’s Five Forces to analyse the forces that are threatening/competing with the
business/organisation.
● Use SWOT analysis to discuss the strength, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of the case
organisation.
2. Evaluate the role of IT in the case organisation (2 marks)
Demonstrate your understanding of the role of IT in the case organisation.
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● Discuss the IT infrastructure in the case organisation. You may select one specific business area of the
organisation (e.g., logistics, marketing, sales) or decide to have a broader perspective (e.g., across all
areas of the business), and describe the role of IT in the area you selected.
● Discuss how IT achieves the business competitive advantage.
3. Analyse the IT strategy in the case organisation (3 marks)
Demonstrate your understanding of the IT strategy and business strategy in the case organisation.
● Identify an IT strategy in the case organisation and describe how technology could support or even
shape the business strategy.
● Analyse and discuss whether there is misalignment/alignment gap between IT strategy and key
business objectives in the case organisation. If there is, suggest methods to minimise the gap.
Otherwise discuss how alignment was achieved.
● Analyse and discuss what processes in this organisation need Business Process Reengineering or
Business Process Improvement.

Part 2:
1. Select two (2) strategic planning approaches or techniques from those covered in this unit. Critically
evaluate and discuss each approach, including the theories/principles/philosophical underpinning of the
approaches you have selected, and the advantages and disadvantages of each of your selections. (4 marks)
2. Discuss how you would use these in combination in an organisation. (2 marks)
3. Draw a careful set of conclusions and make recommendations about the use of each. (2 marks)
A high-quality response to the task will not simply describe or summarise the theories and approaches. To
produce a good final evaluation of the theories, your writing must critically analyse the theories using quality
evidence and logical reasoning.

References (2 marks)
● Include at least ten significant1 references and cite them in the body of your assignment report and add
full references in the bibliography (use APA style).

Overall presentations (2 marks)
● Overall presentations, e.g., writing structure, flow, headings/subheadings, paragraph construct and
linkage, general grammar.

Assessment Criteria
Marking rubric will be provided in Moodle.
Your submission will be evaluated in terms of the following criteria:
● Depth of analysis
● Completeness and correctness of arguments
● Clarity of expression
● Use of appropriate references to support arguments




1 These may include websites and newspaper articles and should be as current and substantive as possible – you are expected to
provide at least six published peer-reviewed academic articles, e.g. journal, conference article, book, book chapter. You should
acknowledge all sources of information.