Business-IT Alignment

Business-IT Alignment can be defined as:

"..an agreement between business and IT leaders to work together to achieve organizational goals through the use of Information Technology"

Business-IT Alignment is considered to be the holy grail of IT Business Management. Business and IT leaders are constantly seeking ways to ensure that investments in IT deliver run, grow or transform business outcomes. Several models exists which try to align the "ends" business leaders are trying to achieve, with "means" which IT and Operations are expected to deliver.

Some organizations adopt Business-IT Convergence model instead of alignment which signifies that business and IT may converge into a single strategic unit instead of two separate planning entities. The term Business-IT Collaboration is also used in place of alignment with emphasis on close cooperation between business and IT.

A few things should be considered here:

• Business leaders' thought process and vocabulary relates to business model (value creation), operating model (value delivery) and business strategy (direction )

• IT vocabulary involves IT concepts like infrastructure, applications, stacks, IT components, licenses, IT services, IT risks and controls

• Finance vocabulary involves chart of accounts, accumulation and aggregation of costs by service (IT Services), function (IT Tower) and purpose (IT Cost Pool)

• A common layer can bring IT, Business and Finance perspectives together

• Business Capability can fill this void to provide a common layer to bring business, IT and Finance together (figure 1)

figure 1: Capability provides a common theme between strategy, business & operating models

Read more about Business Capabilities here