A coevolutionary framework of business-IT alignment via the lens of enterprise architecture

Abstract

Due to the turbulent external business environment, the complexity of internal relations of the organization and the emergence of subversive IT roles, the business-IT alignment (BITA) has become increasingly difficult. The unsuccessful realization of BITA will lead to the waste of organizational resources, the reduction of return on investment and eventually the loss of competitive advantage. In recent years, coevolution has received widespread attention due to its ability to describe the dynamic relationship between IT and business. Multiple principles such as quickening learning action loops and adopt suitable organizing principles for achieving business and IT coevolution (BITC) are obtained. However, the continuous BITC is still hard to be achieved because of the lack of complete BITC management. This paper focuses on the management process of the BITC and how to perform it gradually. A coevolution framework combines the enterprise architecture (EA) approach with the coevolution analysis is proposed, which contains the design of EA, the sensing and governance of the misalignment and the procedure of the EA misalignment prevention. The steps for the governance and prevention of misalignment are discussed in particular. Through comparison with the principles, characteristics and methods of coevolution in the literature, the proposed framework is evaluated. The results show that the proposed framework is effective for BITC implementation.