The Chronicler's Web (TCW)

By DAN CALLOWAY
Published 15 November 2009

WEAVERVILLE, NC - Reich and Benbasat (2000) argue that the establishment of a strong long-term alignment between IT and organizational objectives received its greatest influence from shared domain knowledge between the two factions.  Here, shared domain knowledge is defined by Reich and Benbasat (2000) “as the ability of IT and business executives, at a deep level, to understand and be able to participate in others’ key processes and to respect each other’s unique contribution and challenges” (p. 86).  Research conducted years later by Luftman and Kempaiah (2007) appeared to modify the findings of Reich and Benbasat (2000) by indicating that there are three reasons why attaining IT-business alignment has been so elusive: (1) the definition of alignment is frequently focused only on how IT aligns with the business organization; (2) organizations have often looked for a silver bullet wherein mature alignment cannot be attained without effective and efficient execution and a demonstration of value, but this is not sufficient; and (3) there has not been an effective tool with which to measure the maturity of IT-business alignment—one that can provide a descriptive assessment and a prescription on how to improve.  Luftman and Kempaiah (2007) went on to identify six components of alignment maturity: (1) communications, (2) value, (3) governance, (4) partnership, (5) scope and architecture, and (6) skills.  Furthermore, they identified five levels of alignment maturity within organizations: (1) Level One – initial or ad-hoc processes, (2) Level Two – committed processes, (3) Level Three – established focused processes, (4) Level Four – Improved managed processes, and (5) Level Five – optimized processes.  They determined through their research that the majority of organizations are at Level Three on their alignment maturity scale.

Glen (2003) argues that an IT leader’s responsibilities of furnishing external representation for geeks and the organization in which they work are to acquire information, establish and maintain alignment between IT and the business organization, obtain sufficient resources for IT, manage expectations, project prominence, protect the geeks, insulate the geeks, and attract more geeks to work for IT.  When an organization pursues the goal of shared domain knowledge, as defined by Reich and Benbasat (2000), then the organization seeks to acquire equally the knowledge pertaining to future business plans; the political landscape; the technological landscape; the attitudes of clients, their expectations, and impressions; and the sociopolitical and economic environment surrounding the business.  Furthermore, in seeking shared domain knowledge, this allows the organization and IT to share in the resources that they need to be successful, such as the budget, people, equipment, physical space, test data, and client attention.

When an organization has attained the goal of shared domain knowledge, the IT leader’s role within the organization is then further enhanced by his/her responsibility to establish and maintain an alignment between IT and the business organization (as seen by Reich and Benbasat (2000)) through a mutually supportive relationship among the technologies, goals, and processes of that organization that reaching this goal affords.  Some of the factors that must be aligned are: (1) business problems being solved or opportunities being exploited; (2) technical solutions to business problems; (3) budgets, schedules, and quality constraints on projects;  (4) goals of client constituencies; (5) future applicability of the solutions; and (6) implementation approaches.  The geek leader’s external representation role, at this point in the alignment, is to be the advocate for the contributions that the geeks and technology bring to the overall organizational strategy decisions (Glen, 2003).

References:

Glen, P. (2003). Leading Geeks: How to manage and lead people who deliver technology. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Luftman, J., & Kempaiah, R. (2007). An Update on Business-IT Alignment: “A Line” Has Been Drawn. MIS Quarterly Executive , 6 (3), 165-177.

Reich, B. H., & Benbasat, I. (2000). Factors that Influence the Social Dimension of Alignment Between Business and Information Technology Objectives. MIS Quarterly , 24 (1), 81-113.