business/IT alignment

What are the strategies to quickly align business with IT? How can a CIO use these strategies in his or her role as a business partner to entice forces in various business and functional units to unite?

No business will ever reach the goal of “business and IT alignment”. Should this discourage you from pursuing business and IT alignment? NO! It is a worthy goal to pursue. Indeed, it is a critical one to pursue. You might never reach alignment but you can take steps to get ever closer. This requires a process. Often, we ignore the fact that business and IT alignment is a process. This process does not have a starting point nor does it have an end. It is a series of “learn and do” cycles that incrementally get towards alignment. Let me explain.

This case study uses Forrester's Total Economic Impact (TEI) to evaluate the financial impact of implementing the Sun Ray Virtual Display Terminals. The document shows all calculations and assumptions that go into creating this business case using Total Economic Impact (TEI).

This article was originally published in 1999. However, it is on the money even today. Authors Jerry Luftman and Tom Brier walk through the issue of business and IT Alignment with specific examples and advice on how to achieve this goal. A must read!

One of the toughest questions to answer is: is my business is alignment with IT?
Prof. Luftman tries to answer this question in this paper originally published in 2000.

The disconnect between business and IT is often lamented. A lot is spoken and written about this chasm. Ostensibly, a lot is done to bridge it. Yet, most would agree the chasm still exists.

Alignment is an issue but are you focused on the right strategy to fix it?

This in-depth - 78 pages - presentation goes into just about everything you would have wanted to know about business IT alignment aka IT Strategy (ICT Strategy, IS strategy, IS strategic alignment, IT Alignment, strategic information systems planning (SISP)...).

This study finds that "Many corporate boards now consider IT to be an untapped mine rich with possibilities for their companies’ future results." However, they do not know how to deal with "IT issues within the context of the board’s role and how to grapple with IT’s inherently complex nature and rapid pace of change."

The value of this study, however, is in the "eight big ideas" that will help solve this problem.