Purpose

This narrative discussion is a defense for a particular perspective on how or why an organization should move in a particular strategic direction in terms of developing new business, new markets, new facilities, or new resources. Strategic development plans outline the vision for how those new components would be integrated into the traditional organizational practice. They also delineate how the approach serves the organization’s vision.

Application

Strategic development plans are a component of presentations to stakeholders on how and or why they should endorse the vision as outlined. The plans are used as the foundation for implementing new projects related to the new business, markets, facilities, or resources.

Content

A strategic development plan includes information on the current state of the organization, the proposed changes, the envisioned outcome, and the relationship of the change to the organization’s overarching strategies and visions. As a narrative discussion, the information may be presented in virtually any sequence, but the key is to ensure that clear relationships are drawn between the change and the organizational strategy.

The plan includes a high-level, step-by-step outline of how the development plan will be implemented and how the changes will be phased in.

Approaches

As a plan, the level of detail will vary depending on the amount of information available and the progress that has already been achieved toward the goals. The more information that is available (and the greater the level of involvement of the document’s audience), the more detail that may be offered in the development plan.

Considerations

Because there are different types of strategic development plans (markets, facilities, resources, and so on), there will be differences in emphasis. The key is to select an area of emphasis and to keep the document focused on that area. A key failing in strategic  development plans is that they sometimes become overly ambitious, attempting to address too many strategic areas concurrently.