In terms of the effectiveness of the planning preparation process, some critical quality factors have been defined and maximum effort has been made to ensure the fulfillment of these factors throughout the process. These critical quality factors can be summarized as follows:
- Show necessary attention to the representational power of the vision, mission, and core values
- Develop a focused and effective strategy along with an implementation and follow-up plan
- Provide a strong definition not only for the essence but also for the procedure
- Clearly address the organizational structure required for agile and effective governance
- Ensure effective communication (timely, accurate, informative and guiding communication)
- Ensure high participation and adoption
6 working groups have been established for the preparation of the strategic plan:
- Education: Clarifying the learner-centered new education strategy
- Research: Reviewing strategies for achieving high research performance
- Impact Vision – Contribution to Society / Sustainability: Defining the strong link between core activities, impact vision, and societal contribution, and developing strategies to strengthen our university's resources and impact area
- Internationalization: Evaluating the strategy for international recognition and visibility and strengthening the university’s position internationally
- Effective Management and Strengthening of Resources: Considering the goals identified in the first 4 working groups, developing the university's resource strategy and creating a roadmap for the improvement and utilization of resources
- Administrative Working Group: An Administrative Working Group has been established, primarily focusing on evaluating administrative processes and issues (such as management systems, infrastructure, human resources, organization, etc.) in order to achieve the strategic objectives defined in the main perspectives. In addition, faculty working groups have been structured within the faculties to ensure coordination among the working group members and to include any faculty feedback in the process, if available.
- A Strategic Plan Project Coordination Committee has been established to ensure the main coordination of the strategic planning process and the synchronized flow of information between groups. This committee is responsible for assigning team members, providing them with relevant information, clarifying the work plan based on working groups and creating guiding content for all main perspectives (such as environmental analysis, global trends, higher education trends, and preliminary preparations for the current situation analysis, etc.).
The working groups have identified the current needs related to their thematic areas, conducted environmental analyses and defined key concepts in the main perspective areas. At this stage, national/international examples were reviewed and focus topics were compiled. Internal reports on critical topics were examined. Following the initial work of the working groups, a one-day "Strategic Plan" workshop was organized with the participation of external stakeholders. In this workshop, aimed at determining the strategic direction, approximately 100 participants from both internal and external stakeholders shared their views. Following this workshop, the strategic pillars, initiatives and actions were determined, and implementation plans were prepared in alignment with these initiatives and actions. Additionally, performance targets were established.