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

Measuring the business-IT alignment(BITA)of an organization determines its alignment level,provides directions for further improvements,and consequently promotes the organizational performances.Due to the capabilities of enterprise architecture(EA)in interrelating different business/IT viewpoints and elements,the development of EA is superior to support BITA measurement.Extant BITA measurement literature is sparse when it concerns EA.The literature tends to explain how EA viewpoints or models correlate with BITA,without discussing where to collect and integrate EA data.To address this gap,this paper attempts to propose a specific BITA measurement process through associating a BITA maturity model with a famous EA framework:DoD Architectural Framework 2.0(DoDAF2.0).The BITA metrics in the maturity model are connected to the meta-models and models of DoDAF2.0.An illustrative ArchiSurance case is conducted to explain the measurement process.Systematically,this paper explores the process of BITA measurement from the viewpoint of EA,which helps to collect the measurement data in an organized way and analyzes the BITA level in the phase of architecture development.

A coevolutionary framework of business-IT alignment via the lens of enterprise architecture

Due to the turbulent external business environment, the complexity of internal relations of the organization and the emergence of subversive IT roles, the business-IT alignment(BITA)has become increasingly difficult. The unsuccessful realization of BITA will lead to the waste of organizational resources, the reduction of return on investment and eventually the loss of competitive advantage. In recent years, coevolution has received widespread attention due to its ability to describe the dynamic relationship between IT and business. Multiple principles such as quickening learning action loops and adopt suitable organizing principles for achieving business and IT coevolution(BITC) are obtained. However, the continuous BITC is still hard to be achieved because of the lack of complete BITC management. This paper focuses on the management process of the BITC and how to perform it gradually. A coevolution framework combines the enterprise architecture(EA) approach with the coevolution analysis is proposed, which contains the design of EA, the sensing and governance of the misalignment and the procedure of the EA misalignment prevention.The steps for the governance and prevention of misalignment are discussed in particular. Through comparison with the principles,characteristics and methods of coevolution in the literature, the proposed framework is evaluated. The results show that the proposed framework is effective for BITC implementation.

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.