Is it common for universities to have scientific development plans?
In the United States, at least, this does not generally happen except at a very coarse level.  Thus, for example, many universities engage in "cluster hiring" in which a number of positions are hired together as a strategic investment in making something interesting happen in a particular area, often coupled with some internal monies being set aside to support collaboration between those hires.  Likewise, a department may often decide to hire in a particular area where they wish to grow or to shore up weakness, or a university may set up an internal funding program for something that it is interested in.

Once faculty have been hired, however, the traditions of scientific freedom of inquiry mean that it would be looked on very askance for any person or group to try to assign faculty to work on specific research projects as part of their job.