The politics of information systems planning: The consultant versus the CIO

This paper attempts to study the politics between external consultants and the CIO in IS planning projects. Since these projects use business goals and strategies and the starting point, most consultants tend to sideline the CIO, at least till they reach a stage where technology solutions are to be worked out. Based on three cases, the author argues that this can lead to extreme conflicts between these two, and ultimately to the failure of the project. A three – stage model of engagement between the consultant and the CIO is proposed, and this model matches the typical learning path of any consultant. These stages are Involvement, Appreciation, and finally Partnership. We conclude that the ideal way to take an IS Planning project to successful completion is for the consultant and the CIO to be equal partners in it. Once again this is easy to understand since such projects involve cross functional teams, each with its own priorities and set of egos. Researchers have found that politics is prevalent between user departments, between the IT department and users, and between just about everyone else (Klaus et. al.,2015; Nath, 2016), and this is one of the major reasons for failure. So the key in such projects is business goals, strategies, critical success factors, etc. IT and IT based systems come in only in the latter half of these projects when solutions are examined. And this is a critical issue in such projects.