business-IT Alignment Maturity Research Articles

Business IT Alignment Impact on Corporate Sustainability

Business–IT alignment (BITA) has become crucial for effective organisational management in today’s interconnected global economy. This article investigates the relationship between BITA and corporate sustainability, exploring how businesses can leverage BITA for sustainable growth and development. The study employs a case research approach in a multinational manufacturing organisation, utilising a mixed methods research (MMR) design. In the quantitative part of the research, the PLS-SEM technique was used to examine the influence of six BITA factors on employees’ self-perceived action competence for sustainability (SPACS). This study confirmed that all six BITA factors strongly influence all three SPACS factors. In the qualitative part of the research, semi-structured interviews were used to measure the BITA maturity level of the organisation and the influence of BITA factors on corporate sustainability. Based on quantitative and qualitative research results, it can be confirmed that BITA strongly influences corporate sustainability. Results also confirm that there is no universal approach to BITA and its influence on corporate sustainability. Organisations must focus on all factors of BITA equally to achieve better levels of BITA and ensure its influence on corporate sustainability.

Assessing Business-IT Alignment Maturity at a Colombian University

Over the last decades, the role of the IT department within an organization has gradually gained importance. Technology has permeated all areas within organizations and nowadays is the cornerstone of almost all business processes. Thus, business-IT alignment (BITA) is considered an essential success factor for almost any organization. Consequently, the evaluation and improvement of this alignment have been a growing concern among researchers and organizations. This study assessed the BITA maturity in a Colombian university, applying Luftman’s SAM (Strategic Alignment Maturity) model. The conducted assessment collected, analyzed, and contrasted perceptions of business and IT personnel. Similarly, we investigated the personnel’s perceptions at the strategic, functional, and operational levels regarding the SAM factors. Furthermore, we compared our results with other BITA assessments in educational institutions, Latin American organizations, and worldwide results. Finally, we drew some conclusions that can be useful for practitioners who seek to apply Luftman’s assessment.

He effect of information technology business alignment factors on performance of SMEs

Strategic IT-business alignment is being expanded by researchers and professionals owing to its beneficial effect on the performance of SMEs. Luftman (2000) [Luftman, J. (2000). Assessing business-IT alignment maturity. Communications of the Association of Information Systems, 4(14), 1–50.] created the Strategic Alignment Model (SAM), which integrates various alignment viewpoints to offer a cohesive perspective on IT-business alignment. While SAM was widely implemented for western IT studies by theoreticians and practitioners, its adoption is not evident in the Middle East with few available studies. The goal of this gap is to examine the effect of small and mediumsized enterprises (SMEs) in Iraq of three alignment styles (communication, governance and competency) listed in SAM. The findings of the current study verified the beneficial effect of all sorts of IT alignment centered on a survey of 228 owners, IT managers, but the latter has also shown a strong positive influence across various types of alignment. Theory and implementation implications are addressed, and more research recommendations are suggested.

An approach to measuring business-IT alignment maturity via DoDAF2.0

An approach to measuring business-IT alignment maturity via DoDAF2.0

Intra-Organisational Barriers to Business-IT Alignment

Business-IT Alignment (BITA) remains a challenging endeavour for many organisations despite the continuous attention it garnered among researchers and practitioners. The literature provides a list of factors determining whether organisations succeed to achieve BITA or not. However, BITA studies were conducted in a few industries in developed countries. This case study is aimed at addressing the lack of BITA studies in developing countries. The data was collected from a bank in Ethiopia through interviews and internal documents. The study employed thematic analysis, which revealed 21 intra-organisational barriers to BITA. Business and IT leaders may find the result of the study invaluable to plan activities that might overcome these barriers and improve BITA maturity, which in turn improves overall organisational performance.

Resource allocation approach to associate business-IT alignment to enterprise architecture design

Enterprise architecture (EA) development is always a superior way to address business-IT alignment (BITA) issue. However, most EA design frameworks are inadequate to allocate IT resources, which is an important metric of BITA maturity. Under this situation, the idea of IT resource allocation is combined with the EA design process, in order to extend prior EA research on BITA and to demonstrate EA's capability of implementing IT governance. As an effective resource allocation method, portfolio decision analysis (PDA) is used to align business functions of business architecture and applications of system architecture. Furthermore, this paper exhibits an illustrative case with the proposed framework.

Evolvement of Business-IT Alignment: A Conceptual Model and Intervening Changes From Resource Allocation

Recently, dynamic business-IT alignment (BITA) has attracted increasing attentions. However, the description and the governance of dynamic BITA are insufficient in the literature. To address this gap, a conceptual BITA evolvement model is proposed combining enterprise architecture with the BITA maturity framework, and a sustainable BITA factor on dynamic resource allocation is introduced in this evolvement model. To discuss the sustainable factor in a comprehensive way, we explored a series of possible changes and corresponding resource influences within the alignment of business functions and applications. A dynamic resource allocation algorithm is proposed, and an illustrative case study is presented to verify the algorithm’s efficiency.

Assessing Business-IT Alignment Maturity and Application Architecture Components in Companies with Enterprise Architecture Implementation

A comprehensive program acts as an integrated force among various business aspects, such as objectives, organizational structure, processes, data, automation aspects and hardware program. This study aimed to examine the business-IT alignment through the alignment between the components of enterprise architecture. Business-IT effective alignment requires analyzing the business problems and changes at all levels. The business -IT interface must be based on transparent and consistent business requirements and information; in fact, business related solutions should interact with IT solutions (Consurtium, 2001). This article tried to examine the business-IT alignment through the alignment between the components of enterprise architecture.

Assessing Business-IT Alignment Maturity and Application Architecture Components in Companies with Enterprise Architecture Implementation

A comprehensive program acts as an integrated force among various business aspects, such as objectives, organizational structure, processes, data, automation aspects and hardware program. This study aimed to examine the business-IT alignment through the alignment between the components of enterprise architecture. Business-IT effective alignment requires analyzing the business problems and changes at all levels. The business -IT interface must be based on transparent and consistent business requirements and information; in fact, business related solutions should interact with IT solutions (Consurtium, 2001). This article tried to examine the business-IT alignment through the alignment between the components of enterprise architecture.

Leveraging business-IT alignment through enterprise architecture—an empirical study to estimate the extents

Achieving business-IT alignment (BITA) as a long-term and appraising management issue can be accomplished in a few ways, enterprise architecture (EA) being one of them. This paper attempts to give a critical understanding of the effects of performing EA on different aspects of BITA maturity through a global survey. A total of 236 respondents from 60 countries, a relatively large response for a survey, were selected. The main purpose of the research is to examine these impacts and to identify directions for innovative practices in the future, the unique contributions of this work. A questionnaire designed on the Luftman's maturity model as well as various other statistical methods, including PLS path modeling, Wilcoxon matched-pairs signed-ranks test and Mann---Whitney U test, are applied to understand how the EA can deliver benefits. The implications of our findings in this study as well as its limitations are discussed from different viewpoints to enable both academics and practitioners to detect the flaws in the existing EA frameworks and propose improvements.

Assessing Business-IT Alignment Maturity and Application Architecture Components in Companies with Enterprise Architecture Implementation

A comprehensive program acts as an integrated force among various business aspects, such as objectives, organizational structure, processes, data, automation aspects and hardware program. This study aimed to examine the business-IT alignment through the alignment between the components of enterprise architecture. Business-IT effective alignment requires analyzing the business problems and changes at all levels. The business -IT interface must be based on transparent and consistent business requirements and information; in fact, business related solutions should interact with IT solutions (Consurtium, 2001). This article tried to examine the business-IT alignment through the alignment between the components of enterprise architecture.

Contribution of Agile Software Development Methods to Business-IT Alignment in Non-profit Organizations

INTRODUCTION Regularly articles about the importance of alignment between business and are published. For example, according to the results of the 16th strategic Information Management / Trends in IT by Derksen and Luftman (2011), the topic is still a big concern for managers. Where 'IT and business alignment was the 3th most important concern in 2010, in 2011 it is the number one concern for management in the Netherlands (see Table 1). management 2011-NL 2010 2009 2008 2007 2006 2005 2004 concerns Business 2 1 1 7 4 Productivity & cost reduct. Business agility 7 2 3 13 17 7 5 and speed to market and business 1 3 2 1 2 1 1 1 alignment reliability and 3 4 6 efficiency Business Process 6 5 4 18 15 11 5 10 Man./reengineering strategic 8 6 7 3 8 4 4 4 planning Revenue generating 16 6 8 innovations cost reduction 5 8 5 7 4 Security and 4 9 9 8 6 3 2 3 privacy Globalization 20 10 15 Knowledge 9 management Change management 10 management 2003 concerns Business Productivity & cost reduct. Business agility 7 and speed to market and business 1 alignment reliability and efficiency Business Process 10 Man./reengineering strategic planning Revenue generating innovations cost reduction Security and 3 privacy Globalization Knowledge management Change management Table 1: Top 10 Management Concerns NL Versus Global (Derksen & Luftman, 2011). Articles and papers often focus on the importance of business-IT alignment and describe the use of frameworks to measure the business-IT alignment maturity (e.g. the BIA Maturity model, Luftman and Kempaiah (2007)). However, the actions to accomplish a better alignment are often harder and more complicated to define. software is a group of software methods based on iterative and incremental in small multifunctional teams. Agile software development was coined by the Manifesto. (Beck et al., 2001) The main characteristics are: * Individuals and interactions over processes and tools * Working software over comprehensive documentation * Customer collaboration over contract negotiation * Responding to change over following a plan software claims to be more responsive to changing business needs than traditional software methods (Beck et al., 2001). Through means of early, systematic and continuous involvement of business members in the software team a high degree of involvement of the business is guaranteed. A few well known agile software methods are: * Extreme programming * Dynamic software method (DSDM) * Crystal methodologies * Scrum Dyba and Dingsoyr (2008) reviewed all empirical studies on agile software methods up to 2005. They concluded that there was not yet any substantial empirical evidence on the effectiveness, strength and limitations of agile software developments. They recommend much more empirical investigations should be conducted, especially on the popular agile method Scrum. In line with these recommendations some empirical data will be provided in this paper on the effects of the agile software Scrum. Our aim is to provide insight into improvement of business-IT alignment maturity by using the agile software method Scrum within non-profit organizations. Scrum is chosen because it is one of the most used and researched upon (Dyba & Dingsoyr, 2008) agile software methods. …

The Impact of National Cultures on Business & IT Alignment

Aligning IT to business needs is still one of the most important concerns for senior management. The message of Business & IT Alignment (BIA) is logical and undisputed, but implementation apparently difficult. As part of a research program on the differences between the theory and practice of BIA this paper presents a conceptual exploration of the impact of national cultures on the maturity of BIA. The paper relies on Hofstede’s framework of cultural dimensions (Hofstede, 1980) to understand the concept of culture. We present a compact literature review on the influence of culture on IT that leads to the conclusion that there is an influence and that it is likely that also alignment of business and IT will be affected by cultural aspects. After a brief introduction we analyze this influence by conceptually assessing the potential impact of Hofstede’s cultural dimensions on the variables of BIA maturity. I

Uncovering ITIL claims: IT executives’ perception on benefits and Business-IT alignment

Over 45% of companies are estimated to use IT Service Management (ITSM) frameworks, yet, these frameworks can be imitated and hence the competitive advantage gained from these will quickly become obsolete. Therefore, research on the benefits of ITSM must focus on both operational and strategic benefits. An international survey of 441 firms was conducted to examine the benefits that IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL), the de-facto ITSM framework, provided to the IT organizations. The research focused on how (1) operational benefits, and, (2) strategic positioning of the IT organizations, specifically how the perceived level of Business-IT alignment maturity evolved as the adoption of ITIL increased. Results indicate that as the adoption of ITIL increased, the number of realized operational benefits increased, as well as the levels of maturity of the Business-IT alignment. This indicates that the further the implementation of ITIL the greater the operational and strategic benefits to the organization. Implications for practitioners and researchers are also discussed.

Business–IT alignment maturity of companies in China

Business–IT alignment has been consistently ranked as the number one concern of IT and business executives. Maintaining the alignment has been found to lead to stronger business performance, higher perceived value of IT and improved IS strategic planning; therefore addressing the issue is both important and timely. The economic growth in China in the last decade has led to greater availability of IT and its widespread use as a critical resource. Despite the increasing interest in Chinese IS issues by both researchers and practitioners, empirical research focusing on human- and organization-related IS issues in China is scarce. Using data collected from 130 business and IT executives from 22 companies in China, 11 of which were multinationals operating in China, we explored several questions in the area of business–IT alignment. An instrument designed to measure the six dimensions of business–IT alignment maturity was cross-validated using a sample of companies in China. Then, the instrument was refined to develop a measurement method that offered better reliability and validity in the context of Chinese companies. The relationship between the alignment maturity dimensions and IS strategic alignment was then examined. Finally, the alignment maturity of companies in China was assessed to provide a snapshot of business–IT alignment in China. A comparison between the 11 Chinese domestic companies and 11 multinational operating in China provided insight into the different IT practices of the two types of companies. Implications for researchers and practitioners are discussed.

Assessing Business-IT Alignment Maturity

Assessing Business-IT Alignment Maturity