Critical regular components of IT strategy: Decision making model and efficiency measurement

Abstract

Existing approaches suggest that IT strategy should be a reflection of business strategy. However, actually organizations do not often follow business strategy even if it is formally declared. In these conditions, IT strategy can be viewed not as a plan, but as an organizational shared view on the role of information systems. This approach generally reflects only a top-down perspective of IT strategy. So it can be supplemented by a strategic behavior pattern (i.e. more or less standard response to a change that is formed as result of previous experience) to implement a bottom-up approach. Two critical regular components that establish the behavioral pattern regarding IT are proposed here: a model of IT-related decision making, and an efficiency measurement metric to estimate the maturity of business processes and appropriate IT. Usage of proposed tools is demonstrated in practical cases.