Strategic planning is the process of determining an organization's long-term goals and then identifying the best approach for achieving those goals. A strategic plan: represents a shared vision of what will be; provides a framework applicable to a specific period of time (though this framework may change as internal and external business factors change); identifies an overall direction (but not the means of achieving it); identifies the predetermined direction toward which short term actions will be pointed; identifies the context within which the organization accepts or rejects new products and opportunities; and assigns its resources to current services.

Strategic planning enables an organization to think about the big picture and future plans, align stakeholder needs with a plan that can be put into operation, make decisions, prioritize and solve problems, deal with change, and facilitate teamwork. A strategic plan, for example, might state that a software company should move away from large proprietary software targeted to large corporate customers and toward open standards software marketed to mass-market consumers. Tactical plans would need to be developed to meet this strategy, including, for example, a software development plan, a marketing plan, financial plans, etc.