Regional Planning

Techniques
Bachelor Degree in Regional Development Planning Third Year

Session on
STRATEGIC PLANNING FRAMEWORK

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Contents

 SP definition
 Overview of SP process
 Preparation phase
 Situation analysis

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Strategic Planning (SP)

 Strategic planning is a process that charts an institution’s broad direction

forward.

 It helps an institution decide what it wishes to achieve and the main actions it
will need to undertake in the future.

 It is a collective and participatory process, involving senior management,

employees, and consultation with a wide range of stakeholders.

 It looks at the big picture from a longer-term perspective.

 A strategic plan clarifies institutional priorities and unifies the staff in the
pursuit of shared objectives.
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The main purposes of Strategic Planning
 To improve performance
 To create more relevant institutional structures
 To increase levels of institutional, departmental, and
individual accountability.
 To improve transparency and communication between
management, employees and stakeholders.
 To establish priorities for efficient and effective resource
allocation.

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Strategic Planning Process

 SP-Process involves seven steps

– Preparation phase
– Situation analysis
– Mission, vision, and core values
– Objectives
– Targets
– Monitoring and Evaluation
– Documentation
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Preparation stage

 Organize a preparatory meeting of management and key resource persons and

assign tasks and responsibilities.
 Specifically:
– Decide the methodology to be used in the process;
– Decide in some detail who does what;
– If workshops are to be held, decide who attends and whether internal or
external resource persons will be needed and what the major results should
be;
– Decide which external stakeholders will be invited, and what their roles
will be;
– Prepare a schedule or work-plan and decide on logistics and financing;
– Disseminate the work plan to all relevant parties.

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Situation Analysis stage

 Situation analysiss is an analysis done with the aim of bringing

into light organization’s
 achievements, constraints, and opportunities necessary for
guiding future undertakings.

 Thus, it should establish critical issues, to be used later during

the development of
 Vision, Mission, Objectives, and Targets.

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Methods used for situation analysis

 Review of relevant information

 Performance Review
– M&E reports
– Independent service delivery surveys.
 Self Assessments or Benchmarking Exercises
 Stakeholder Analysis
 Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Challenges
(SWOC) Analysis

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Review of relevant information
 Collect and review of relevant information/literature review
 The information available includes the following policy
documents and reports:
– Mandates and Statutes: These may define the function and role of education
organization. They should guide the review of the mission, vision and
objectives.

– Policies: Policies may contain a discussion of problems and objectives. In

some cases they may broadly define strategies that are relevant to organization.
These include both
– Internal to organization or
– External (both local and international) that have implications to
organizations core business

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Performance Review
 The performance review undertakes a review of
the previous strategic plan (or an implementation
plan) taking into consideration
– Targets,
– achievements
– Challenges,
– And way forward

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Performance review matrix

Target Achievements Challenges Way forward

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Self assessments and benchmarking

 Self Assessments investigate internal

factors of success.
 This may be done in a workshop
environment, where the organization,
– assesses itself according to a series of
established criteria in order to identify
strengths and areas for improvement.
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Stakeholder Analysis
 Stakeholder Analysis (SA) is a methodology used to facilitate
institutional and policy reform processes by accounting for and
often incorporating the needs of those who have a ‘stake’ or an
interest in the reforms under consideration.

 With information on stakeholders, their interests, and their

capacity to oppose reform, reform advocates can choose how to
best accommodate them, thus assuring policies adopted are
politically realistic and sustainable.

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Who is stakeholder

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What you need to know

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When should the analysis done

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 Steps in the process of stakeholder analysis
 Prepare the process: purpose of the analysis, who will do it, and when.

 Defining core functions: Clearly articulated the core functions of the

organization

 Identifying Stakeholders: who are key service recipients, organizations doing

same or similar activities, supporter, policy making bodies or any that may have
influence.

 Collect information on stakeholders: Holding the Workshop, focus group

discussion or interview. (FGD of 6-12 people) and 1 or 2 observers.

 Document the results. This can either be in written form (summarizing the
main points) or as a simple matrix.

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Stakeholder identification

 Three categories can be pointed out:

– Public sector stakeholders

– Private sector stakeholders

– Community sector stakeholders

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Stakeholder assessment

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 High power, interested people: these are the people you must fully engage and
make the greatest efforts to satisfy.

 High power, less interested people: put enough work in with these people to
keep them satisfied, but not so much that they become bored with your
message.

 Low power, interested people: keep these people adequately informed, and talk
to them to ensure that no major issues are arising. These people can often be
very helpful with the detail of your project.

 Low power, less interested people: again, monitor these people, but do not
bore them with excessive communication.

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